ANTE MORTEM

Edited by Jodi Lee

Introduction

BACK FROM THE ABYSS

Jodi Lee

Much has been made in the past months of editors and publishers that don’t continue and follow through on contractual obligations, or that don’t even stick around long enough to see their vision through to the end. This has become far too common-place in the last while, too many small presses or one-off groups popping up over night, and then disappearing just as fast. Sometimes, writers are lucky and retain their stories. Other times, unscrupulous people go ahead and publish the stories anyway, without contract, without payment, without permission; in the worst cases, stories are stolen outright and published in someone else’s name.

Those of us who were accepted to a particular anthology, one that did not materialize, were lucky enough to keep our rights, to keep our stories intact. While the ‘publisher’ may not have been real, using a pseudonym and drop-box to conduct business, at least for this, he was honest. All rights were returned to those who wished to retain them.

I was angry when I was first told of the deception, and while I’d stewed over it, steamed and waited for my contract to run out, I thought about the other authors, some of whom I’m proud to say are more than ‘table of contents acquaintances.’ I’m very proud to call them my friends. What of their stories? I then contacted as many as I could, with the seed of an idea.

Belfire was in its infancy, we hadn’t even released a single book yet, and I had two other projects on the go besides Belfire proper, but I didn’t care. Something about these stories and these writers thrilled me, there was a spark. Within a week, we’d germinated the seed and Ante Mortem became a reality; within a month, everything was set. The hideous project from the past would not haunt us evermore: we had turned back the clock, and re-entered pre-death.

Each of these stories has something in common. Each has either been accepted to an anthology or a magazine that subsequently, for whatever reason, did not publish the piece. For this, that we have been able to give these stories a new home, a proper home, we are very, very grateful. We all hope you enjoy the selections in our own life before death – Ante Mortem!

Jodi Lee

New Bedlam, December 2010

TINY FINGERS

Aaron Polson

Isaac Bauer’s fingers twitched, looking for something to hold. He’d quit smoking a month ago, but Anne was late. Anne was never late. He shoved a hand in his pocket and rummaged for a pack of gum. The gum would have to do. The sky over Springdale faded from pale grey to granite as he waited at the corner of 15thand Arthur, scraping the cracked sidewalk with the side of his shoes. Forty-five minutes after their planned meeting time, Isaac surrendered.

He had already left two messages, but he tried dialing her cell phone again. “Shit,” he muttered as Anne’s voicemail greeting sounded in his ear. He snapped the phone shut and breathed a long slow sigh, counting slowly in his head to steady his frustration. His nervous fingers found the small jewelry box in his jacket pocket and traced the corners and angles of its soft surface. She stood me up, he thought, and then, maybe she’s in trouble. “No. Nothing ever happens in Springdale,” he said to himself, shaking off the thought.

Before Isaac turned toward his apartment, he traced the path Anne would have taken to meet him at the corner. He walked down dark neighborhood streets and felt the closeness of the houses. He walked as far as the new playground, a slab of concrete with two looming lamps reflecting an odd orange hue from the sea of grey. A slight chill forced him to flip his collar around his neck and rubbed his hands together for warmth. Isaac surveyed the playground for a moment. He thought of Anne and felt a pit grow in his stomach. The grey air iced over, and Isaac walked home.

Isaac called Anne thirty times over the next few days. Nothing. Anne was gone. He drove to her house only to find black windows and her car in the drive. Without the car she couldn’t have gone far. His initial frustration had burned away, giving space to a solid fear, a growing unease about her safety.

“Springdale Police. Can we help you?”

“Yeah. I need to report a missing person.” Isaac’s hand trembled as he spoke. Calling the police made her disappearance serious, and that frightened Isaac.

“How long has the person been missing?”

“About three—” Isaac glanced at the calendar on his refrigerator. “She’s been gone about a week.”

“Name?”

“Excuse me?”

“What is the name of the missing person?”

“Oh… yeah. Anne. Her name is Anne.” Isaac’s neck started to burn and his stomach tightened.

“Last name?”

“Sorry. Renner.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes, trying to see Anne’s face, her smooth strands of maple hair, her green eyes, and porcelain smile. “Anne Renner…” he repeated without thinking about his words.

“Sir, are you a member of Anne’s family?”

Isaac sighed. “No, no I’m not.”

“Relationship to the missing?”

“I’m her fiancé—er, boyfriend.” Isaac slumped to his bed. “She doesn’t have any family. No close family anyway.” One hand held the phone while the fingers of the other raked through his cropped hair. His eyes scanned the room, resting on the jewelry box on the edge of his desk.

Isaac drove past Anne’s house every day after work. He walked in the evenings, sometimes taking long, meandering trips through dark, quiet neighborhoods that would lead him down Anne’s street. He placed signs bearing her photocopied picture around town—little handmade posters that included his telephone number. The signs seemed unnecessary; Springdale was a small town, and news of a missing person traveled faster than a flame across an oil slick. Isaac called the police repeatedly, usually receiving an explanation that adults pick up and leave all the time; it wasn’t a crime.

Four weeks—almost a month—burned from the calendar, and his phone rang.

“Hello,” Isaac said.

“Yeah, uh, are you the one who left the flyers up around town,” a voice said on the other line. “Uh… Isaac?”

He had dealt with pranks before, people who would call, harass him, joke about seeing Anne. “Yes,” he said.

“Look, I’ve got something for you. I’ll meet you at the bakery—you know the one downtown, Tasty Pastry. Tuesday, 7 AM. My name’s Nick.”

Isaac opened his mouth, but the line was dead.

Isaac arrived early. The late October air grew colder each day, and he was dressed in a simple blue sweater with an insulated flannel jacket. He stepped into the bakery and staggered in the warmth. Taking a seat with his back to the wall and next to the front window, he slipped from his jacket and waited.

Most of the bakery patrons were old—retirees out for coffee and socializing on a Tuesday morning. An occasional younger man or woman would rush in, exchange a pleasant but hurried exchange with some of the retirees before snapping orders at the clerks, paying quickly, and zipping from the place. The door swung open, and a young man, probably in his twenties although not a native of Springdale—Isaac didn’t recognize him from high school—stepped into the bakery and moved his head from side to side, surveying the room.

“Nick?” Isaac asked.

He turned, showing a lean, long face, pale cheekbones at contrast with almost black hair, and foggy grey eyes. The man sat in a chair opposite Isaac, almost gliding like a ghost.

Nick studied Isaac for a moment before speaking. “Take this. I can’t explain more. I’d be in deep shit if someone knew I copied that.” He pushed a small envelope with a bulge in the middle across the table.

“What is it?” Isaac asked.

“Just watch it. I don’t know if it will help, but it will make you think.” Nick looked into Isaac’s brown, almost black eyes before he pushed from the table, muttered, “good luck” and slipped out of the door.

Isaac picked up the envelope and tore off a corner. A little black bullet—a plastic flash drive—fell out and rattled on the table.

On the computer monitor, he watched the pixilated Anne Renner cross the street from Larry’s Market to the new playground. He looked at the picture of Anne above his desk, the smiling photo snapped at a picnic last summer. His eyes came back to the screen. Evidently Nick—or a friend of his, while operating the security camera in Larry’s parking lot, caught Anne and followed her. Isaac didn’t want to know why. The perspective zoomed closer until she nearly filled the screen. The image was blurry and a little grainy—especially after the zoom—but it was clearly Anne. Isaac recognized her coat and knew her walk. He watched as the video Anne passed behind a row of bushes, emerging on the other side as she cut across the basketball court.

And then she was gone.

Not gone as in a dark figure leapt from behind the bushes and kidnapped her gone. Not gone as in she walked out of the frame gone. Just gone, snap. Isaac’s stomach went cold, and his hand tightened on the mouse. He leaned forward, scrutinizing the monitor as he clicked the rewind icon. The mystery happened in reverse—one moment no Anne, then she walked backwards across the open slab.

He paused the video, reduced the frame rate, and played back the scene. Anne walked across the concrete again, and then disappeared. At the reduced frame rate, half of normal speed, Isaac noticed something. He reversed the clip again, set the disappearance to loop, and played back. The small, monochrome Anne vanished again and again until he clicked pause, and advanced frame by frame. One frame she took a step, in the next her face changed—a dark blotch where her open mouth would be, almost a look of surprise. Something lined and grey seemed wrapped around her ankles, but the image was too rough to make out enough detail. In the following frame, Anne’s body seemed half devoured by the court. She was totally gone when he advanced another frame. Isaac hunched even closer to the screen. His stomach vaulted and blood thickened.

He sat there clicking forward and back, entranced by the odd sequence of images: one frame surprised, the next half gone, and finally no sign of her. He studied the time stamp on the video—6:49 PM. She would have been on time.

Snatching his cell phone from his desk, he punched the number for Larry’s Market. He stood and began pacing in his small apartment.

“Hello, Larry’s. How can I help you?” a withered voice asked.

“Yeah, hi. Can I speak with Nick.”

“Nick? We don’t have a Nick here.”

Isaac slumped into his old rust-red recliner. “A security guy—Nick?”

“I’m sorry. Our security guy quit yesterday, but I don’t remember his name. Moving out of town, I guess.”

“Thanks,” Isaac muttered.

“Sorry buddy.”

“Look, calm down Mr. Bauer,” the sergeant, a ruddy-faced man with bushy moustache and eyebrows, placed one hand on Isaac’s thin shoulder, urging him to sit in a nearby chair. “We looked at the video. It must be a hoax.”

“Hoax?” Isaac’s voice was distant and disbelieving.

“Look, you get some two-bit hooligan who knows a little about digital video, and you can come up with all sorts of odd mash-ups.” The sergeant leaned on the edge of his desk. “You’ve been posting these flyers all over town, right?”

“Yeah,” Isaac said. He took the seat as the police officer suggested.

“Some wacko does a little doctoring with a surveillance video, and wham. They know they’ve got you.” He grabbed the flash drive from his desk. “We’re going to keep this, if you don’t mind. Evidence and all. But I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m sorry some jerk had to yank your chain like that.”

Isaac’s face was pale, lost in thought. “Yeah,” he said, “yeah. Kind of a raw deal.”

He drove to the playground after leaving the police station. The concrete slab stretched away from the sidewalk, looking pale and insignificant in the late afternoon light. Isaac stepped from his car, looked across the street at Larry’s, and noticed the high lamppost that was home to the small, seeing eye of a security camera.

He stepped away from his car, and shivered because of the cold fingers in the air. Isaac’s shoes whispered through the grass and then tapped lightly on concrete as he stepped onto the court. The breeze faded, leaving the playground in silence. A dog barked in the distance.

“It’s not a goddamn hoax,” Isaac said aloud, kicking at the edge of the grey concrete. The wind jumped at him again, and he thought a voice whispered Anne’s name.

Isaac hadn’t been in the Springdale Public Library since high school, and that had only been because his art teacher required a journal entry detailing the interior architecture of the Carnegie building. When he asked if he could read old articles from the Sentinel online, a friendly librarian laughed and ferried him into a dark room lined with shelves full of musty folios containing the last thirty years of the local paper. He was looking for anything about that playground.

After an hour of old, yellowed newsprint, Isaac found what he was looking for: on the front page of a Sentinel from the previous year, a picture of five men in hard hats stood in the center of a vast expanse of grey concrete. The caption read, “Conco Pours Slab for Donated Playground.” As the Sentinel was a small paper, the picture was only accompanied by a brief article, but Isaac had what he needed. An old buddy from high school, Jarrod, started working for Conco after dropping out of college.

He left the dusty interior of the library after saying a cursory thank you to the librarian. Outside of the dark building, the day was cold but clear with a bright sun hanging in a brilliant blue. As he walked to his car parked on the street, Isaac flipped open his cell phone, dialed for information, and requested the listing for Jarrod Wagner in Springdale.

After three rings, a voice muttered “hi” on the other end of the call.

Isaac, now sitting in his car as a shelter from the cold outside, said, “Hey, this is Isaac, Isaac Bauer. Am I talking to Jarrod?”

“Isaac. Holy shit. Meg—you know the curly brunette down at the Tasty Pastry—she said she saw you the other day. How long have you been back in town?”

“A few months, sort of. I still commute.” Isaac felt dizzy and awkward, talking to someone from whom he had grown apart after college and starting a career. “Look, Jarrod. I don’t know if you’ve seen my flyers.”

The line was silent for a moment. “Yeah. Yeah, hell of a deal,” Jarrod muttered. “Look, I’m sorry buddy, I should have called, just to send some sympathy, you know. I didn’t know what to say.”

Isaac closed his eyes. “Can you help me now? Do you still work for Conco?”

More silence, then: “No… not anymore.”

“I see. Were you working for them when they poured the playground last year?”

“Yeah. Look, if you want to know about that playground, I can’t tell you much,” Jarrod’s voice shook slightly and he rushed his words. “Conco was just a subcontractor. Evergreen Development, they donated everything, part of a deal they had with the city. That’s all I know.”

Isaac paused this time, thinking about the nervousness in his friend’s voice, trying to make sense of his apparent anxiety. “Evergreen Development? Didn’t they build those condos, The Legends, out west of town?”

“Look, that’s all I can say. We should get together some time, okay?” The phone went silent as Jarrod ended the conversation.

Isaac drove home and watched Anne disappear on his computer. The police possessed the original, but he had copied the file onto his hard drive. He watched at regular speed, he watched in slow motion, and he watched frame-by-frame as she vanished into the concrete. He watched Anne disappear every night.

Over the next few days, Isaac called Evergreen Development’s corporate offices at least five times. No one who ranked higher than receptionist would speak with him. He walked around Springdale a great deal over that time, passing the playground, and tearing down every flyer he found. Jarrod called after a few anxious and frustrating days, and he arranged to meet Isaac after sundown at the playground.

Isaac walked, trying to push Anne’s memory aside and forget the strange video that lived in his computer. He didn’t have the courage to delete the file—something about that short clip was sinister and unreal, but it somehow told Anne’s story.

Jarrod stood on the sidewalk adjacent to the basketball court. He paced slightly while smoking a cigarette. When he saw Isaac approach, Jarrod dropped the butt and ground it with the heel of his shoe.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” Isaac said when he was in range.

“I haven’t seen you in a few years. A lot has happened since then.”

Isaac pointed to a large manila envelope that Jarrod clutched under one arm. “What’s that?”

“Evidence. Something for you, after we talk.” Jarrod looked at Isaac and shook his head slightly. “Anne wasn’t the first one you know.”

“First one? What are you talking about?”

“The first one to vanish here.” Jarrod looked at the slab.

“I never said she vanished here… how did you know?”

Jarrod patted the envelope. “I know. You called, asked about the playground job. Anne was gone. Cops probably told you she just left, adults do that kind of thing, right?”

Isaac nearly staggered back, away from his old friend. “Yeah…”

“Don’t you think it’s a little weird that no one is out here after the sun goes down? Hell, not that many people use the playground during the day.” Jarrod watched Isaac for a moment, reading his face. “Two other people disappeared here. One was a kid, a little girl about nine. Her folks were on a walk, pushing a stroller with her little sister around the corner.” Jarrod pointed to a nearby intersection. “She ran away, started to cross the playground, cut the corner. Poof, gone.”

“Gone?”

“Gone. They took their eyes off her, and she vanished. Whole town went nuts for months. That was about a year ago.”

Isaac looked at the playground and scrutinized the slab. “I saw something about it in an old paper at the library. I didn’t make any connection.”

“Yeah, well, who really would? I learned the town doesn’t get so excited when an adult vanishes. It happened about six months after the girl. She was a nurse up at the county hospital, not from around here. Nick showed me the video. He was kind of a perv. Always watched the women from the security room after they left the store.” Jarrod stopped for a moment and brought one hand to his mouth. His voice cracked as he said, “she just vanished… right there… in the middle of that goddamn court.”

“Did you know her?”

Jarrod’s shoulders slumped as he nodded. “We were sort of dating. Nobody said anything. The cops wouldn’t believe the video, called it a hoax.”

Isaac took a few steps onto the slab. “I don’t understand.”

“I don’t either, man. But I know what’s under that slab. Goddamn Evergreen.”

Isaac turned and looked at his old friend.

“Do you remember that creepy spot out west—we called it Diphtheria Hill or whatever?”

“Yeah, the legend. Kid’s stuff. We scared our girlfriends in high school, brought them out there to make out. The story was that a bunch of pioneer kids were buried out there… they all died of diphtheria… a sort of mass grave on top of the hill. Nobody ever found anything, like gravestones.”

Jarrod took the envelope in one hand. “Where do you think The Legends was built, huh? And the graves weren’t on top of the hill, Isaac. They found them, all these little bones—dozens of bodies, maybe hundreds—right where Evergreen was digging foundations for the condos.”

Isaac frowned, looked back at the court. “I still don’t…”

“Look, what would happen if somebody found out? Evergreen would lose the land—historic location and all that. Red tape out the ass, Isaac. They had to do something with those bones, and they found a lot of them. They pledged a new playground to the city council that week.”

Isaac’s face bleached white.

“I was there, man. I helped pour the cement over those bones, no questions asked.” Jarrod’s voice broke, and he stopped for a moment, wiping the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand. “I don’t know how, there’s a lot of crazy shit in this world I don’t understand, but three disappearances in one year—something is not right about what we did. Something isn’t right about this goddamn playground.”

Isaac backed onto the sidewalk.

Jarrod handed him the envelope. “Here. You take a look. Do what you want with this shit. I’ve had enough of it.” He turned and walked into the darkness.

When Isaac tore open the envelope, a pile of papers and even a few photos slipped out onto his kitchen table. Most of the papers were copies of emails sent from executives at Evergreen to a foreman at Conco—Jarrod. The text of the emails verified Jarrod’s tale about the bones. The pictures looked like they could have come from an archeology site, not the ground work for condos. Isaac collapsed on his bed, trying to understand anything and pushing any wild thoughts of what could have happened to Anne from his mind. He lay in bed until dawn forced through his blinds.

In the morning, he reviewed the video again, pausing on the frame just before Anne seemed to sink into the concrete. Jarrod’s story stabbed at his brain. Isaac squinted at the monitor, studying the strange blurs at Anne’s feet. The realization hit like cold needles jabbed into his neck. Those small blurs looked a little like hands. Something—Isaac shuddered to think what—had pulled Anne into the solid concrete slab.

Isaac called in sick to work and composed a letter to the Kansas City Star. He wanted the story told, wanted people to know about Evergreen’s destruction of a historical site and the attempted cover up. He wanted somehow to tell the world about the impossibility of what happened to Anne, the nurse, and that little girl. No one would believe that story, but he could at least blow the whistle on Evergreen’s fraud. After packing the letter, Jarrod’s emails, and the pictures in a large envelope, Isaac walked to the post office and sent it all away.

But he couldn’t send Anne away. She was out there, yanked down by those tiny fingers.

Anne.

Isaac sat at his computer and watched the video one last time before deleting the file. He leaned on his hands and cried until his body ached. Utterly spent, he floated to his bed like a ghost, collapsed, and fell asleep.

He slept most of the afternoon. As the sun slipped beyond the horizon and his room darkened, Isaac rose, put on his shoes, and grabbed his jacket and the small jewelry box resting in a desk drawer. He left the apartment, not bothering to lock the door, and walked into the night.

The playground looked the same as it had on other evenings: a wide, pale expanse washed with an odd orange light under the streetlamps. Isaac stood on the sidewalk for a minute, opened the little jewelry box, and pulled out the ring. He turned it over in his naked fingers, the cold air biting at his skin. Isaac walked out into the middle of the concrete slab, sat down approximately where he watched Anne slip under the surface, and waited for the tiny fingers to find him and pull him down.

THE GOOD FRIEND

Natalie L. Sin

Hyun tried sleeping on the couch but Joon’s rhythmic moaning, along with the Vietnamese woman’s more frantic pitches, made it impossible. Resigned to a late night, Hyun slipped into a pair of house shoes and padded out onto the deck. The resort Joon chose for their vacation, a graduation gift from his father, was the sort of place most traveler’s could only dream of enjoying. Set in a secluded patch of forest in Vietnam, the rooms consisted of twelve luxury cabins encircling a private lake. Each cabin had a sitting room and small kitchen, in addition to the bedroom, and a deck overlooking the water.

Joon and Hyun’s cabin had two full beds, with the understanding that if either guy brought home a girl the other would take the couch. As Hyun sat down and dipped his feet into the lake, he reflected that Joon would likely not be spending any nights contorted on narrow cushions.

“Aren’t you afraid of a turtle biting your toes?”

Hyun was startled to find he had company. In the cabin to his left, a woman regarded him from her hammock. He thought she must have just woken up: Her long, dark blond hair fell in all directions across her shoulders and face. She pushed the worst of it away from her eyes and warned him again about turtles.

“Seriously, your toes probably look like little fish to them.”

Though not convinced his feet were in peril, Hyun stood up and waved shyly to the woman.

“That’s better. I’m Mai, by the way.”

“Hyun.”

Back in the cabin, Joon began to roar dirty talk in Korean. Mai cocked her head.

“Wow. Your friend is having a good time.”

Hyun felt himself turn red. “I’m sorry. He met a girl and…”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Mai swung her legs over the edge of her hammock. Her first few steps were wobbly, and for the first time Hyun noticed the wine bottle in her hand.

“I had a roommate in college like that. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and hear her telling some frat boy she was a bad girl and needed a spanking. Traumatized me for life.”

“You are lucky you don’t speak Korean.”

Mai smiled. “Want to come over here? We can have wine and wait for your friend to wear himself out.”

Hyun hesitated. He didn’t want to disappear on Joon, assuming he ever emerged from the bedroom. Then again, he would probably fall asleep as soon as the woman left.

“OK, I’ll come around.”

“You could jump over. Much quicker.”

Hyun eyed the distance warily. It was over five feet from his deck to Mai’s, and he would have to jump from the railing.

“You can do it.” Mai encouraged him.

It was a stupid idea, Hyun was nearly convinced of it. Yet coming out of a pretty girl it sounded much more sensible.

“You really think I can make it?”

“Yes. But don’t fall in.” Mai giggled. “The turtles will get you.”

Hyun wasn’t afraid of turtles, he was afraid of getting hurt. Landing wrong on Mai’s deck could result in broken bones. Hyun tried not to dwell on it as he stepped up onto the railing, his right hand clinging to the edge of the roof.

“Count of three?” Mai asked.

“Yes. No. I mean, I’ll do it.”

With a deep breath, he went for it. For a split second, Hyun was sure he was going to land on his feet. Then gravity grabbed him by the balls and plunged him under water.

When his head popped up, Mai was reaching for him. She pulled him onto the deck, where he flopped onto his back like a dead fish.

“Are you all right? Did you swallow a lot of water?”

Hyun shook his head. He was about to speak, when Joon’s voice rang out, this time in English.

“Harder, I’m a bad boy!”

Hyun and Mai looked at each other and burst out laughing. When his eyes teared up, she wiped them away with her thumb, then leaned in to kiss him. She tasted like white wine and cilantro. A long trail of wet clothes later, they were adding their own sounds to the night.

“What happened?” Hyun asked drowsily, when he awoke to Mai brushing his hair with her fingertips.

“You fell asleep.”

“I did?”

He didn’t remember falling asleep. He remembered her lips on him, all over him, until they met his again and he was inside her.

“It’s all right, you’re cute when you sleep. Can you stay?”

“Let me leave my friend a note, so he doesn’t worry.”

“That’s sweet.” She kissed the tender spot below Hyun’s ear. “Your clothes are still wet, better take my bathrobe.”

With Mai’s robe cinched tight around his waist, Hyun walked over to his and Joon’s cabin. At first he was relieved not to hear any noises, but soon the silence became disconcerting. Joon usually snored like a bull.

“Joon?” Hyun called out.

Frightened that his friend had gone looking for him in the forest, in which case he would surely become lost, Hyun pushed open the bedroom door. Inside, he saw Joon pinned to the mattress by what looked like a monstrous insect. Long serrated legs, bent backwards like a cricket’s, braced the beast on the floor while, on the other end, smooth mandibles jutted from beneath a shovel-shaped head to wrap around Joon’s throat. A bulbous thorax hung between Joon’s splayed legs and thrust viciously into him.

Before Hyun could react, a wet splat and the hum of giant wings drowned the air. The creature’s mandibles released, and Joon began to scream. Whether frightened or simply through with him, the bug pushed itself off Joon and scrambled over the bed towards Hyun. With nothing to defend himself with, Hyun raced out of the bedroom, his eyes darting everywhere in hopes of finding a weapon. Once outside, and still empty handed, he prepared to make a sharp turn for the lake but was tackled from behind. Hyun twisted away and kicked as hard as he could with both feet. The right foot caught the monster in the eye, making it stagger away.

“Hyun, catch!”

Mai was standing in the doorway of her cabin, an empty wine bottle gripped menacingly in her hand. Hyun caught it in the air and spun around to bash it against the skull of his six-legged attacker. When it cowered, Hyun hit it several more times until, with a deafening shriek, it fled to the sky and vanished.

Joon had stopped screaming by the time Hyun and Mai got to him. He lay on the bed, barely responsive, as Mai pulled blankets over his lower body. There was blood everywhere, along with a vicious black substance that smelled like burnt salt. Already, his neck was turning black and blue.

“Joon, can you hear me?”

Hyun took Joon’s hand and was relieved to feel him squeeze back. On the other side of the room, Mai picked up the phone to call for help. Joon started to moan, and Hyun comforted him as best he could.

Things got worse when the paramedics arrived. As they were strapping Joon to the stretcher, his body started to shake violently. Sedatives were administered until, finally, his body was still. Hyun watched his friends eyes roll back into his head, and tried not to think about the blood soaking the bed sheets. At the hospital, after calling Joon’s family, he paced the waiting room until Mai arrived and forced him to be still.

“The best thing you can do for him is be calm and patient,” she said.

She coerced him into laying down for “just a little bit.” With his head in her lap, Hyun struggled to stay awake despite Mai stroking the back of his neck.

It wouldn’t have done any good to stay up. While Hyun slept, Mr. Cheong phoned the hospital and forbade the staff to speak of his son’s condition. Hyun could only get the doctors to tell him that Joon was stable and “responsive.” When Mr. Cheong arrived late the next day, Hyun was abruptly dismissed. He knew there was no use in arguing. Since they were first friends, Mr. Cheung considered Hyun an asset to his son’s life. Though from a lower class family, Hyun got excellent grades, stayed out of trouble, and in turn kept Joon from getting into as much as he would have otherwise. Now Hyun feared he had fallen out of favor: Mr. Cheong was fiercely protective and made enemies easily.

Despondent, Hyun retreated to the resort where he found his cabin cordoned off. Not knowing what else to say at the time, he had told police that a stranger broke in and attacked Joon. The hotel manager allowed Hyun to collect his things and offered him a free weeks stay in the future, by way of apology. When the man left, Hyun went to Mai’s cabin and took her up on the wine she’d offered when they met. When the bottle was drained, he curled up beside her in bed and talked about Joon: how he had always looked out for Hyun, ever since they met, and how he never cared about Hyun’s parents working in a factory, or that he wore clothes from Good Will.

“Everything will go back to normal,” Mai said when he finished. “Just give it time.”

“I don’t want to go back alone. My flight to Chicago is tomorrow.”

“Where in Chicago?”

Hyun told her his address. When she didn’t respond, he asked what was wrong.

“Nothing. It’s just,” Mai shook her head in disbelief, “Hyun, I live two blocks away from you.”

“Are you sure?” It sounded ridiculous, but wonderful.

“Very sure. Why don’t I cut my trip short and come back with you?”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to. I’ll miss you if you leave.”

“You just met me.”

“Granted.”

Mai sat up in bed and looked at Hyun. Something in her eyes made heat spread across his stomach.

“However, under the circumstances I think we’ve bonded more than time would have otherwise allowed. And I want to go back with you.”

As soon as he said yes, Mai was on the phone with the airline agency. Luck was on their side, and she managed to get on the same one as Hyun’s. By the time the plane landed at Chicago airport, his thoughts were racing. He still hadn’t heard from Joon, and his exhausted mind taunted him with morbid possibilities. Distraction came when they reached his apartment: there was an envelope stuck on the door and Hyun’s key didn’t fit in the lock. Disoriented, he let Mai read the letter.

“Mother-fucker,” she spat.

“What?”

She looked up from the paper clenched in her fist, and her expression turned from rage to sorrow.

“It says that your things have been moved to a storage facility. The address is on the bottom. Your friend’s father has generously paid for the first month’s fees.”

“He kicked me out?” Hyun asked, unable to fully process the news.

“This is ridiculous. I’m sure when Joon feels better, he’ll straighten things out. Do you have someone you can crash with for a few days?”

Hyun shook his head. “Joon was my only friend here. I haven’t even started my new job yet.”

“All right, well, at the risk of sounding impetuous you can crash with me. I don’t think they let you sleep in those storage places.”

“I can’t do that to you.”

“Sure you can.” Mai took his hand and led him back to the elevator. “I have an extra room you can use. Right now there’s nothing in it but book shelves and a fish tank. It was going to be my home office.” She rolled her eyes.

Hyun didn’t argue after that, he was too miserable. It was easier to follow Mai. Since she didn’t have anything for him to sleep on, she put Hyun in her bed and took the couch.

“We can buy a futon or sofa bed, if things take some time to work themselves out,” she assured him.

Over a month later Hyun still hadn’t heard from Joon, despite sending him numerous emails and phone messages. Eventually he felt compelled to tell Mai he would need to get his own place, he couldn’t count on her charity indefinitely.

“It’s not charity if you pay rent,” she countered. “Honestly, you’d be doing me favor.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“I’m serious.”

With gentle prodding, Hyun learned the whole truth. Mai explained how her family had money once, and how her father loved to travel. Especially in Asia. Vietnam was his favorite, he named her after one of it’s native flowers. Unfortunately, a series of bad investments had bankrupted the family. Still, he clung to the dream of seeing his favorite vacation spot one last time. When he died, Mai did the best she could: She laid her father’s ashes to rest in the waters of the resort lake. It drained her bank account, leaving her to juggle credit cards until she got back on her feet.

“Don’t feel pressured, I swear I can get by. And if you get sick of me you can always leave, no notice required!”

Hyun couldn’t imagine himself getting sick of her, so they moved his things out of storage that afternoon. The next night, he got a text message from Joon.

Where are you?? Your things are all gone!

Hyun called him right away. Joon answered on the verge of panic.

“Hyun, why did you leave? Are you mad at me?”

“No! I didn’t want to leave. Your father…” Hyun bit his tongue. It didn’t seem right to disrespect Mr. Cheong.

“My father did this?” Joon sounded calmer, but still unhappy. “That’s ridiculous, he can’t kick you out on the street. Come back.”

“I’m not on the street, Joon, don’t worry about me. Are you all right? When did they let you out of the hospital?”

“Yes, this morning. My father wouldn’t let me call anyone or use my computer. He’s ashamed of what happened.”

Hyun thought back to the cabin and repressed a shudder. “But you’re all right now?”

“I still ache sometimes but they gave me pills so it’s not so bad. Can I see you?”

“Of course, I can come over right away.”

After saying good-bye, Hyun told Mai the news. She was happy, but her smile dimmed.

“Are you going to move back right away?”

“I’m not moving.” Hyun felt genuinely surprised at his own words. “Joon will understand. He would have been happy to have his own bachelor pad, if he didn’t worry about me.”

“I won’t be pissed if you change your mind. You two are like family.”

“So maybe I should go move in with my mother,” Hyun teased.

Mai laughed and he pulled her close.

“I’m not leaving,” he promised. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

As soon as Hyun was in the door Joon eyed him suspiciously, then grinned.

“You’ve been a bad boy. Who is she?”

“Her name is Mai. You’ll like her.”

“Who cares if I like her?” Joon poked Hyun playfully in the ribs. “Do you like her?”

“Yes. We’re living together.”

“So soon? Ah, you were always the romantic type.”

They sat at the kitchen table and Joon became serious.

“So you’re not moving back in?”

“Does it bother you?”

“Be with your woman.” Joon patted Hyun on the back. “We’re grown men, right?”

Hyun nodded, grateful.

“Is your father still angry at me?”

Joon sighed. “He always likes to blame others.”

“What did you tell him?”

“What could I say? He’d think I was crazy.” Joon took a napkin and began to nervously shred it into tiny pieces. “You saw it too, right? Sometimes I feel like I went insane that night.”

“I saw it. So did Mai.”

“That was Mai?” Joon looked thoughtful. “I remember her, a little. How did she know to come help?”

“I was with her that night.”

“That’s why you didn’t hear the window break.” Joon muttered, more to himself than to Hyun.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, you weren’t doing anything wrong.” Joon chuckled. “Is that why you were in a bathrobe? I thought I imagined that!”

“My clothes were wet from falling in the lake.”

Joon howled with laughter. “You fell into the lake? Oh shit, you have the spend the night. I need to hear everything I missed.”

Hyun agreed and made a quick call to tell Mai. She told him to have fun and say hello to Joon for her. Meanwhile, Joon stood a few feet away and pretended to make out with a pillow. Hyun gave him the finger; it felt like old times. They ordered pizza and beer and spent the night talking about easy topics. A few times Hyun noticed a sense of discomfort on his friends face, but Joon waved off his concern.

“It’s fine, much better than before. When they first took me to the hospital, I couldn’t shit for a week.”

It was the closest he came to talking about the incident again. Once the pizza was finished, Joon put in a “Girls Gone Wild” DVD and they played “real or fake.” With no way to know for sure, it was a silly game, but it was their tradition. If they had eaten take-out Chinese, they would have put in old Kung Fu movies on mute and made up their own dialogue. Around midnight, both Hyun and Joon were starting to nod off, despite the barrage of “barely legal” Spring Break breasts on the wide-screen TV.

“I think I’m going to call it a night,” Hyun said.

“OK, but where are you going to sleep? My douchebag father took your bed.”

“The couch is fine.”

“The couch is shit. Come on, my bed is big enough so that we can sleep without bothering each other.”

Hyun shrugged. As kids, they had sleep-overs all the time. It wouldn’t be the first time they shared a bed.

“All right, but don’t hog the covers.”

“Right,” Joon winked, “you need your beauty sleep for your woman.”

Because it was a pleasantly warm night, both men stripped down to their boxers before getting under the sheets. Hyun noticed that Joon’s abdomen was swollen and bruised. He quickly flipped over, so Joon wouldn’t catch him staring and become self-conscious. He was asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.

At first, Hyun thought the hot breath in his ear was Mai. When his eyes opened to Joon’s bedroom, he jolted awake. A strong arm pushed him back down on the mattress.

“I’m sorry Hyun.”

Joon’s voice was ragged and trembled over the words. His hands grasped the edges of Hyun’s boxers and pulled them down.

“What are you doing?”

Joon put his hand over Hyun’s mouth.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “But I need it out of me.”

Hyun struggled but Joon took his arm and contorted it painfully behind his back. Hyun yelped against his friend’s hand.

“Don’t fight,” Joon hissed. “It hurts more if you fight.”

The skin of Joon’s stomach burned the small of Hyun’s back.

“Raise your hips up. I’ll be was quick as I can.”

When Hyun shook his head, Joon wrenched his arm harder.

“I can hurt you, Hyun! Do you want that?”

Hyun jerked his head back, sending his skull squarely into Joon’s nose. Joon fell back and Hyun flipped around to punch him in the stomach. His hand sunk in up to the wrist, and white hot pain lanced the sides of Hyun’s palm. As Joon tumbled off the bed, Hyun pulled his fist back to find two puncture wounds weeping blood.

Down on the floor, a pair of black glistening eyes peered out of Joon’s abdominal cavity. A spasm shook his body, sending the giant larvae out in a swirl of intestines.

“Hyun?”

Joon’s voice was dreamlike. Hyun went to his side, careful to avoid the squirming maggot on the floor.

“Is it gone?” He smiled and Hyun forced back his bile.

“Yes, yes Joon. It’s gone.”

He took Joon’s hand and told him to hold on, that he needed to call for help. Joon was dead before he even finished the sentence. Unable to let go, Hyun wept.

TO SURVIVE THE BEGINNING

Gina Ranalli

The gods were angry.

The man and the boy were in the forest, just past the clearing of the burial ground, when the sky grew dark and the first stone fell from the heavens and shattered against the earth a mere twelve feet in front of them.

The boy looked at his father, eyes wide with fright, spear hanging loosely at his side instead of firmly in his fist and raised to the height of his shoulder. Under normal circumstances, this lack of preparation and grace would have earned him a scolding, but now his father gazed skyward, head craned back as though searching for predators. When he glanced down at his son, his own eyes were more confused than frightened. He opened his mouth to speak as a tremendous crash shook the ground beneath their feet, causing them both to stumble and turn in the direction of the explosion, crouching low, unconsciously covering their heads with their hands.

This time an even larger stone had fallen behind them, directly into the clearing where so many of their family had been laid to rest. Generations of dead, including the father’s father, mother, several siblings and other children he had spawned. His clan had lived in this area a long time—an area lush with vegetation and brimming with wildlife. There had never been a reason to move on. Starvation had not been the cause of any of the deaths. Sickness, accidents, animal attacks, murder. But never starvation.

A deafening crack that the father and son recognized: the sound of a tree snapping, and a moment later, more cracks as it took other trees down with it, then finally the thuds as they struck the forest floor.

The smell of smoke was on the air and the father shouted at the boy, pointed, and then the two of them were running back the way they’d come, shoulders hunched forward, chins tucked down against their chests, sprinting through the burial ground as more rocks fell all around them.

Most of the stones were small enough not to cause serious injury but the two fleeing figures cried out whenever struck by one of them. Not only were they falling at a great velocity, but they were also hot. Hot enough to burn, and strangely shaped, not smooth like most rocks, but jagged in places, bumpy and rough around the edges. Their color was odd as well—not black or gray or even white, but more of a deep dark purple with veins of yellow striping their hides.

By the time they reached the mouth of the cave that was their home, both man and boy were covered with welts, lumps and blisters of various size and severity. The boy wept freely, gingerly touching a bloody gash atop his head, though it was not the pain that caused him to weep: he was terrified.

Just outside the cave stood the women, clutching each other, their eyes wide with fright as they watched the man and the boy approach. The woman—mother of the boy and mate to the man—used both her voice and hand gestures to hurry them on, while her two daughters whimpered beside her.

“Run!” she urged. “Run or be killed!”

She needn’t have shouted because both her son and her mate were already running as fast as they could, spears dropped somewhere along the way, completely forgotten.

They bowled into the cluster of females, nearly knocking them over in their attempt to get inside to safety.

“What’s happening?” Teva cried, grabbing her son by the shoulders to examine his wounds. The boy, whose name was Gel, rubbed the snot from his upper lip with the heel of his hand, trying mightily to hide his tear-streaked face from his sisters. The lip, just beginning to show the first wisps of facial hair, trembled despite his efforts to still it.

Napro stood just inside the cave, looking out, absently rubbing a blister on his forearm. Outside, the stones continued to rain down, some of them still smoking and fire-red. He was amazed that both he and his son had made it through with no more than superficial wounds.

“What does it mean?” Rani, his eldest daughter asked, stepping up beside him.

He shook his head, hands moving slowly, reluctantly. “Maybe the end of the world.”

Rani’s eyes narrowed as she raised her chin in defiance of the situation, though she made no reply.

A shuffling sound from behind caused them both to turn and see Fee, the old medicine man who had joined their clan less than a season past. Napro and Gel had found the old man near the lean-to that had been his home. Fee was maimed after a battle with a wolf, close to death and had not the man and the boy happened upon the scene and frightened away the beast, Fee would certainly have been killed and eaten by the wolf.

Together, father and son had carried the old man back to their cave where Teva had patched his wounds, fed him animal lard and broth and kept his temperature as low as possible. By the time Fee was well enough to return to his lean-to, the clan had discouraged it greatly, insisting that he was far too old to live out in the wild without the protection of stone walls to shield him from future animal attacks and inclement weather.

At first Fee had been stubborn—he had many seasons left, he argued, though that was clearly not the case. He had already seen his fortieth winter come and go and no one had ever heard of anyone living to be as old as he now was.

Fee insisted it was the herbs and roots he made into a thick tea and drank nearly every day that had kept him alive long after the times his own clan had perished.

Now the old man peered over Napro’s shoulder at the falling stones and grunted. Both Napro and Rani stared at him and he signed, “The gods are angry.”

Napro nodded grimly. It was the very same thing he’d been thinking but hadn’t wished to say aloud. “What have we done to anger them so?”

Fee shook his head, his eyes more sad than frightened. Behind them came the sound of Zic, the youngest child, weeping. Zic, unlike her older sister, was sensitive and wept easily. Only nine, she spoke of wanting to leave this place, go somewhere “without so many spirits.” She was convinced the land around them was haunted with the ghosts of the dead and often spoke of seeing specters while out gathering berries near the burial ground.

For the most part, her clan let her speak of such things without much protesting. In fact, they barely listened to the child’s senseless rambling when she went on about such things. Only Fee paid what the child said any mind at all, for he had seen many things in his lifetime that could not be explained away. Sometimes, he suspected the child might be right. Perhaps humans weren’t the only ones sharing the land with animal, plant and insect life.

The next hours were spent with Teva attending to Gel and Napro’s injuries, Zic’s constant sniffling as she clung to Rani’s side and Fee watching glumly as the outside world grew dark.

The stones continued to fall, but only sporadically now. An occasional thump from a far distance and, even rarer, the cracking sound of rock on rock when one clattered against the roof of their cave. They could tell by the thuds that the stones were growing smaller as the night wore on, until finally it sounded as though nothing more threatening than hail was falling from the sky.

Still, no one slept that night, wondering what it could all mean.

The following morning, they were all up before the sun rose, as was their custom, though none of them dared venture beyond the perimeters of the cave until the sun was up and peeking over the horizon.

Without any sleep or their evening meal, everyone now suffered from grumbling bellies and short tempers. Napro finally raised the courage to poke around outside and check to see if all was safe. If so, he and Gel would pick up where they left off the previous afternoon, retrieving their spears and hunting for game.

What he found scattered around the area near their cave was just what he’d expected to find: stones, of various shapes and sizes, some of the larger ones having shattered like shale upon their impact with the hard earth.

Napro crouched, examining one of these split open stones. It appeared as though the rock had been more than just a rock; more like an egg of some sort. The inside of the stone sparkled wetly in the sun, a thin sheen of something almost gelatinous coating the hollowed out insides of the rock.

Frowning, Napro found a nearby twig and poked at the slime. The tip of the twig dripped thick, snot-like fluid and, disgusted, Napro tossed it away before rising to his feet once more.

He picked his way carefully around the fallen stones, giving an especially wide berth to those which had cracked apart. He had never seen anything like them and the sight of that snotty liquid made him wary and nervous.

When he was convinced that there was no immediate danger lurking about, he went back to the cave to summon Gel. Finding breakfast might prove to be more difficult than usual, however, as he suspected the animals had also been terrified of last night’s bizarre storm and had most likely gone into hiding. As it was, Napro heard no rustling within the forest, heard no birdsong, not even the buzzing of insects.

Spooked, he thought. Even more spooked than we humans had been.

But, as far as he could tell, there was no immediate danger and therefore felt it was time to summon the clan and get everyone busy, either hunting or gathering. He dismissed last night’s storm as just a freak of nature, after all. Not the act of an angry god. If it had been so, he suspected none of them would have been alive come morning.

He made his way back to the cave and told the others that it was safe and they could now go about their daily routines. Fee stayed behind with Zic, as his legs ached with the fierceness of fire and he was no good at hunting since he’d been attacked by the wolf.

Teva and Rani disappeared into the woods to search for firewood, berries, roots and later, if Napro and Gel managed to kill anything, the woman and her teenage daughter would skin the animal and cook the meat, salvaging the bones to make tools, weapons and sometimes jewelry.

The man and the boy ventured forth, towards the area they were in when the rain of stones had first begun. As they approached the burial ground, Gel kept his eyes downcast, staring at the fallen rocks with trepidation. Like his father before him, he saw what appeared to be a thick clear slime oozing out from the inside of the larger stones, and, also like his father, he paused, bending down to examine one. “What is this?” he asked.

Napro turned back. “I don’t know, but don’t touch it. It could be poisonous.”

“Maybe Fee could use it in his secret teas,” Gel laughed. “Maybe he already does, considering how awful they taste. Like animal urine.”

Facing forward again, Napro said, “Come, Gel. We must find our spears.” He began walking, but instantly sensed that his son had not obeyed him. Once more, he turned to look at Gel who remained stooped, staring at the rock, all amusement vanished from his face and replaced by something resembling fear.

“What is it, boy?” Napro asked.

“It’s moving,” Gel replied, his voice low. “Whatever is inside these rocks, it moves on its own.”

Napro groaned, walking back to where his son was. “Perhaps your empty belly is causing you to see things.” He stopped, looked down at where his son was staring, frowned and bent over for a better view.

Indeed, the slime was moving of its own volition, slithering over the edge of the rock, down its side to pool on the ground beside it. Napro and Gel exchanged shocked expressions. When Gel looked down once more, he shouted “Look!”

The slime was not just pooling on the ground; it was burrowing into it. Not simply being absorbed, but forcing its way in the same manner an earth worm would.

In fact, though it was clearly liquid, the slime moved very much like a worm; slowly, deliberately, inching its way down into the earth. It moved with purpose.

“It’s alive,” Napro whispered. “Some kind of creature.”

Gel could only nod, staring down at the wriggling slime with something bordering between disgust and fascination.

Napro straightened up once more. “Come! We must find our spears and warn the others.”

Again, Gel nodded, but made no indication that he intended to move from that spot, his eyes glued to what remained of the vanishing slime. Napro grabbed him by the shoulder, shook him hard. “Now!”

Shaken from his trance, Gel stood and then chased his running father back to the place they were the previous day when the stones had begun to fall, loping through the woods with an animal-like grace.

When they arrived at the edge of the burial ground, Napro stopped abruptly, causing Gel to bump into his back. “What it is?” Gel asked, vaguely annoyed.

But before Napro could reply, Gel saw for himself why his father had halted: there were people in the burial ground, though to call them people was not exactly accurate. They had once been people. It was completely obvious what they were now: corpses.

Gel’s eyes quickly took in the surroundings, the holes in the ground, all of them near the biggest of the shattered stones. About fourteen of them, all told. Holes which had just yesterday been covered graves.

Napro made a squeaking sound in his throat, backed up a step so that he was standing side by side with his son.

The zombies shuffled around in circles, seemingly unsure of what to do with themselves. Some of them were more decomposed than others. Most of them, however, the father and son could easily recognize. Family members, one of which—a little girl—had only been buried for a season. She had been Zic’s twin and had died after diving from a tree branch and into a river’s shallows. Her neck had snapped like a dry twig and now her head rested at an odd angle, her right cheek touching her right shoulder. She was naked, as were all the others. The clan did not dress their dead, it would never have occurred to them to waste animal skins on people who would no longer be needing them.

The squeaking noise came again and Gel glanced quickly at Napro. Tears streamed down the man’s cheeks, his eyes wide as he slowly shook his head as though he couldn’t possibly be seeing what his vision was showing him.

The corpses took notice of the man and the boy and instantly reversed direction and started towards the two, Zic’s twin leading the pack, dead eyes staring directly into her father’s without showing the slightest recognition. She made a low guttural sound in her throat—a long miserable wail—and then the others followed suit, all of them groaning and screeching as they staggered forward, arms outstretched.

One of the dead dragged a badly broken leg behind himself and Napro could see the dull white of ribs poking out from the thing’s side. Half the creature’s face had rotted away, exposing teeth that were black with decay.

Napro found himself trying to remember who this person might have been, but nothing came to him. He wondered if his mind had frozen in fear, halted any rational thought. He looked from face to face, searching for any indication of familiarity.

Gel grabbed his arm, tugged it. “We have to go, Father,” he said, his voice much calmer than he had imagined it would be.

The distance between them and the zombies was closing, despite the living dead’s painfully slow movements.

“Father!”

Napro looked at his son, blinking in surprise as though just woken from a deep dream. Together, they turned and fled, Gel stopping only long enough to scoop up his spear as they passed it hidden in a patch of tall grass.

Racing back to the cave, it occurred to Napro that Fee must have been right when he proclaimed anger from the gods. Though this seemed more than just anger; this was flat-out vengeance. But for what?

They reached the cave even faster than they had the previous day when they’d been dodging those strange rocks falling from the sky. Bent over, hands on knees and panting, they did not immediately notice the alarmed looks on both Fee’s and Zic’s faces.

When Napro finally looked up at them, he suspected the worst. “Teva and Rani?” he said.

“Gathering,” Zic replied with a frown. Of course her father should know where her mother and sister were. After all, he had been the one to send them to their morning tasks.

Before Napro could reply, Gel was already running back out into the day, his spear at the ready. Napro screamed at him to stop, but the boy ignored the command and disappeared behind a stand of thick pines.

Fee came to stand beside Napro. “What is happening?”

“The gods,” Napro said. “They have cursed us and this place.”

Puzzled, Fee asked, “What do you mean?”

“The dead have been brought back to life. I saw… I saw my daughter.”

“You saw Arbu?” Zic asked, her voice more excited than frightened. “Where?”

Napro glanced down at his little one, his eyes full of pain. Then, to Fee: “Keep her here.”

“Of course, but—”

“I have to find my children,” Napro said. He began searching the cave frantically for another spear. He knew they had several, but most had broken during one hunt or another. But a broken spear would be better than no weapon at all.

He chose what appeared to be the sturdiest, handing another to Fee. “Protect my child,” he said and raced out of the cave in pursuit his family.

Legs pumping, his long tangles of hair blowing wildly, he flew over downed trees while simultaneously dodging others. He knew his forest, his land. He had lived here his entire life, as had his father before him had. He didn’t remember seeing his father among the dead, but the man had been gone from this world for so long that identifying him now would have been impossible.

A woman screamed and he altered his direction just slightly, aiming in the direction the scream had come from. He heard Gel yell and increased his pace. He was running at his top speed when he tripped over one of the angry gods stones and, for a moment, was airborne before he came crashing back down to earth, landing hard on his chest. He felt the air whoosh out of his lungs and thought he heard a crack as well.

No matter.

He scrambled to his feet and continued on, his pace only slightly slowed.

The screaming came again—almost there. Just through that next wall of underbrush…

He burst through it, not feeling the thorns and branches that raked his skin, drawing thin lines of blood over several parts of his legs, face, arms and chest.

Gel stood in front of the female members of his clan, jabbing his spear at what seemed to be the most aggressive of the walking dead: a man, judging by his build, but there was no genitalia to tell for certain. Instead there was only a gray-black pit between the things legs. It lunged towards Gel who quickly stabbed it in the shoulder, a warning shot, perfectly executed and Napro felt a sense of pride. His son was a fine hunter, brave and strong, quick of mind and body, though he knew Gel shouldn’t have been wasting his time with warning shots. These were not some vicious animals protecting their young, a den or a kill. Napro didn’t know what they were exactly, but he did know one thing: they meant to kill his clan. A quick stabbing was not going to deter them. They had risen from their graves in order to end Napro’s bloodline. There was no mistaking their purpose in this—the living—world. And judging by the creature’s reaction to being stabbed, they didn’t feel pain anyway. The spear had succeeded in knocking it off balance momentarily, but then it was facing Gel again and letting loose a garbled roar.

Napro sprang forward to stand side by side with his son, the females behind them, quivering with fright but not crying. Napro felt the pride return; despite being females, both Teva and Rani had more courage than some men he had known. That was good. He had a feeling they would need every reserve of bravery they possessed before this thing ended for good.

Thrusting his spear, Napro aimed at the belly of the creature Gel had just stabbed, thrusting the weapon deep, all the way to its hilt, before yanking it back out with a twisting motion. The creature stumbled, but did not fall. From the wound made by Napro’s spear came a trickling flow of black blood. The wound should have gushed, would have gushed if it had been on anything alive. Anything alive would have been downed easily; Napro knew a killing shot when he made one.

But the monster only looked down at its stomach, then back up at Napro, screeching at him, its mouth open wide enough to show that its tongue, along with its genitals, had long ago rotted away or been eaten by insects. Insects always consume the soft spots first.

Napro stabbed at it again, once more aiming for the stomach. Still, though he drove the spear with all his might, twisting and jerking it back and forth, the creature did not fall. Beside him, Gel had turned away to face another monster that was approaching from the right. It seemed that the surrounding creatures were growing braver once they saw that the humans could not hurt them.

Pulling his spear free of the monster’s belly, Napro groaned when the thing’s rotted intestines spilled from the ragged hole he’d created. Behind him, one of the females screamed. The dead man didn’t even glance down at his own entrails, but marched forward, fingers gray with decay wiggling as he reached for Napro.

“Run!” Napro yelled at the others, thrusting his spear at the zombie’s face. He didn’t understand how the thing could even see out of its milky white eyes, but some how it could. Unless it was relying on scent…

He dared a quick glance behind him and repeated his command, louder, with more authority. “I said, run!”

His wife and daughter did just that, giving a wide berth to the group of zombies Napro and Gel were trying to fight off. A few of the monsters lurched in the direction the females had run, two actually giving pursuit, but they were slow and clumsy and Teva and Rani easily outpaced them.

Napro raised his spear over his head, both hands gripping it tight enough to make his fingers ache. He darted to the left, as though to follow the women and as the zombie turned towards him, Napro sprang back to his original position, slamming the spear downward at the creatures face. His aim was true, the spear impaling itself in the zombie’s right eye socket.

The thing screamed, tried briefly to grapple with the weapon, yanking on it at the same time Napro twisted, its good eye rolling skyward, and then it crumpled to the ground. Napro kept hold of the spear and grimaced at the slippery wet sound it made as it withdrew from the thing’s skull.

He stared at his kill for a brief moment, amazed that the zombie lay unmoving and seemingly dead. He felt a pang of pride, having defeated what surely must be a servant of demons, if not a demon itself.

“FATHER!”

Napro’s spun towards his son’s voice and saw him struggling with four zombies, his spear lying uselessly at his feet. Two of the things had him by the arms, while the others clawed at his face and chest. Gel tried to twist out of the grasp of the monsters, but they held him fast and seemed to be—Napro could not believe his eyes—they seemed to be trying to bite him.

Crossing the distance between them, Napro charged forward, his spear pointed towards the one who held his son by his left arm. With all his strength, he plowed his weapon forward, straight into the monster’s ear, hard enough to cause the lance to snap in half.

The zombie howled, immediately releasing its grip on Gel, and fell first to its knees before flopping onto its side, dead.

One of the zombies clawing at Gel’s chest turned to face Napro, Gel forgotten. It clambered forward, thrashing its arms at Napro. Napro ducked, tossing away the useless stick he now held and bending for his son’s spear. Grabbing it, he shoved upward, catching the thing in the neck, just beneath its Adam’s apple. Dark blood oozed from the wound sluggishly, thick as animal lard, but the creature did not stop fighting.

Gel screamed and when Napro turned, he saw one of the dead things ripping into his son’s throat with its teeth, pulling out a chunk of flesh, blood spurting across its face as it reared back, chewing.

The man felt his soul collapse as he watched the life fade from Gel’s eyes and the boy drifted like a feather to the ground. No longer able to scream, Napro did the screaming for him, shoving past the zombies to kneel beside his son. His cupped Gel’s head in his hand, yelling, trying to get the boy to focus, and then he was being yanked away, pulled by countless hands, heads bending towards him with gnashing teeth.

“No!” Napro wanted to remain with his dying boy, did his best to jerk free from the gripping hands, but there were too many of them. He felt teeth sink into his shoulder, his forearm, his cheek. The pain was searing and Napro’s vision grayed around the edges. He wanted to give up, let the monsters take him. It would be easy. Just relax, lie beside his son and close his eyes. He knew it would be quick.

But still he fought. Not for Gel, who was already gone, two zombies shredding his body, tearing the skin from his bones with a fierceness and glee that Napro had never seen before, not even in the most frightened and starving of animals.

He fought for his mate and the rest of their offspring. He knew if he died, they would have no chance.

Crawling now, he managed to shove one of the zombies back with a quick jab of his elbow into its face, but even as he did so, he felt more teeth clamp onto the back of his calf. Fumbling, he searched for the fallen lance, found it, kicking frantically to get the monster off his leg. He rolled to his back, spear pointing upward, stabbing at the decayed faces while tears trickled from his eyes and into the wound on his cheek. The stinging barely registered. He knew now to aim at the faces, the eyes. Get the spear to penetrate the skull and he might survive long enough to warn the rest of his clan.

Zombies blocked out the sky.

Napro stabbed when and where he could, but quickly realized he was vastly outnumbered. It seemed more of the monsters had gathered for the slaughter—the feast—and Napro was destined to die this way. Eaten alive, just as his son had been.

He wanted to take out as many as he could while he lived and continued to thrash, thrust and kick, his scream a constant now, like his agony, like his spilling blood…

Closing his eyes against those rotted faces, he prayed to all the gods in heaven, prayed for his family and for—

A deafening high pitched whine drowned out all other sounds and he opened his eyes, amazed to see the zombie straddling his legs on fire and screaming. Napro craned his neck, saw a flash of brown skin and dark tangled hair: Teva.

She had come back with the only weapon she could find—a torch—and now was systematically touching the flame to all of the zombies heads, what little hair they had left the only thing on their bodies that would easily catch fire.

The monsters rose up, making sounds neither Napro nor Teva had ever heard before. No living creature could have shrieked the way these things were shrieking now. It was a sound exclusive to the dead, dying once again.

Napro was finally able to struggle to his feet, though he immediately sank to his knees again. He cried out in pain and used his spear as leverage to help him stand once more.

Teva kept the zombies at bay. The ones who were not already burning were clearly frightened of the flames and Napro thought he could see a war between fear and hunger raging in their eyes. Teva rushed to him, scanning his body with her gaze and he saw her wince at the sight of his injuries. Their eyes met knowingly and Napro said, “The cave. Help me back.”

Teva nodded, her wild hair framing her face as she wrapped her free arm around Napro’s waist and waved the flame at the zombies who dared to get too close for her liking.

Walking backwards, they moved slowly in the direction of their home, Teva constantly whipping her head around to be certain no zombies approached from any side. Whether or not she’d seen Gel’s body, Napro didn’t know. If so, she’d made no reaction. She was concentrating on the task at hand, battling the undead and half-dragging her mate to safety. Napro was certain that if she had seen their son, the sight had not completely registered with her and when it finally did, all the fight would leave her body, as it had almost done to him.

The closer they came to the patch of land where they lived, the thinner the forest became, the rockier the terrain and there were several times when Teva tripped, unable to pay full attention to her footing, and almost brought them both down.

The zombies continued to shuffle along after them, grunting and groaning their displeasure at the dangerous fire she threatened them with when they dared to try to close the distance between them.

Although Teva was strong for a woman, her muscles firm against his body, Napro felt them tighten even further when another scream reached them. Their eyes met, bright with terror. There was no mistaking the screamer: Rani.

Together, they tried to move faster.

When they reached the cave area, the first thing they saw was a dead zombie near the spot where Napro had hung animal skins to dry. The monster was burned black, barely recognizable as human.

“Rani had a torch,” Teva said. “I told her to protect Zic.”

But the girls were nowhere to be found. Perhaps they were huddled and hiding deep within the cave? Maybe buried beneath bedding and skins? Or had they run back into the forest?

Their questions were answered when Rani screamed once more and they hurried in the direction of the scream, around the far side of the cave where the stream gently gurgled.

What they found made Teva gasp and forget her mate, rushing towards their daughter and letting him fall to the ground. He shrieked in agony, but his eyes never left Rani, perched in a tree and brandishing her torch at the zombie beneath her. Terror and anguish seized his heart when he saw that the zombie was the old medicine man they had taken in.

Fee clawed at the tree in an attempt to reach Rani, his fingernails ripping off his fingertips as they scratched down the bark. He didn’t seem to notice, but continued to howl in frustration, his prey just out of reach.

Napro saw the old man’s throat had been chewed open, a ragged red hole gaped on the left side, just beneath his jaw. He must have bled out quickly but then what? It was the first time it had occurred to Napro that they were in danger of turning into one of the undead themselves. His thoughts turned to Gel, back there in the woods. Would he come shambling out, torn to shreds but still filled with bloodlust? Napro didn’t understand how this could happen, but clearly it could. The evidence stood before him, trying feebly to climb a tree and devour his middle offspring.

Teva raced towards Fee, jabbing her own torch at him. He caught fire easier than the others had, his scraps of clothing and long, greasy hair bursting into flame instantly. The zombie that had been their friend careened around, almost as if he were engaged in some ancient tribal dance, slapping at his head and then his face, as his beard also began to burn.

Sobbing, Rani clung to the trunk of the tree, her eyes wider than Napro had ever seen them, sitting on a thick branch that was several heads taller than Napro himself.

The three of them watched Fee prance, screaming unintelligible words, until at last he fell forward on his face, knocking his head hard against a jutting rock.

The flaming zombie’s screeching had encouraged the other zombies to keep their distance from the family but now they found their bravery again, venturing forth from the edge of the forest, rounding the side of the cave and moving forward as though of the same mind.

They seemed to be focused on Teva—perhaps the one they perceived to be the biggest threat. She shouted, wielding the torch once more, demanding they stay back, but the torch’s flame was not as strong as it had been, and continued to weaken by the second.

The monsters also seemed to notice this and advanced on her the way Napro had seen packs of wolves advance on a lone bear. The wolves had known there would be injuries or even loss of life, but that had not dissuaded them in the slightest. They would have their prey regardless.

From his vantage point on the ground, Napro watched the zombies surround Teva, just as they had surrounded Gel and when she began to scream, he began to scream right along with her, oblivious to the fact that Rani was also screaming.

It was when her mother’s head was separated from her body that Rani lost consciousness and fell from the high branch directly into the mass of feasting undead below. If she awoke at all when the first set of teeth sunk into the soft flesh of her young throat, she made no sound to indicate it.

Napro, his own vision beginning to fail, finally stopped screaming, noticing for the first time how cold he’d become. He shivered against the ground and did his best to ignore the wet tearing sounds coming from the circle of zombies that enclosed the remains of his clan.

Eventually, the sounds stopped and he was grateful that it would now be his turn to die. The only thing he regretted was not knowing what had happened to his youngest daughter, little Zic, and what it was that had made the gods so angry to befall such a punishment on them.

To his astonishment, he awoke briefly to get at least one of his answers.

Perhaps the zombies had assumed he was already dead and went in search of fresh meat. All he knew was that the world was quiet for a time. He gazed up at the blue, blue sky for he didn’t know how long, until the sound of shuffling feet tore his attention away from all that gorgeous empty space.

He turned his head a fraction and saw Zic’s twin approaching him, so small and fragile looking. And so very dead. Letting out a long heavy sigh, he waited for her to reach him, giving thanks to all the gods that it would be she who finally finished him.

Barely able to hold his eyes open, he was uncertain when he saw movement behind the dead child. He blinked several times before he became convinced that what he saw was real and he knew that it would be the last thing he ever laid eyes on: tiny Zic, her own eyes dark and feral, sneaking up behind her dead twin, an impossibly huge stone clutched in her little hands and held high above her head for a fraction of a second before coming down fast, instantly crushing a tiny skull the same size as her own.

HIT THE WALL

David Dunwoody

“We’re under attack.”

Brautigan looked up from his lap. He’d been smoothing and re-smoothing creases in search of substance, thinking about the days when there was no question about it, the days when his light-headed haze was the result of something other than lack of sleep. An uninterrupted nap would, at this point, be as good as any vacation. And he’d almost been lulled to sleep by the jostling of the airport shuttle when Pearce said those words. Then the bassist said them again. “We’re under attack.”

Pearce was looking at his phone, reading from some news app. “Cessna flew right into downtown Shawburg. We’re like thirty minutes away, brother. We’re driving right into it.”

“A prop plane?” Brautigan cleared his throat and rubbed his eyes. “Could be an accident, buddy—remember that one in Manhattan, I think it was, few years back—same thing.” He glanced toward the front, at the young Middle Eastern driver, and hoped Pearce wouldn’t raise his voice in argument. Naturally, he did.

“It was going to happen sooner or later,” Pearce intoned, pointing the phone at Brautigan like an accusing finger. “And of course it’s gonna be a little private plane. Hell, it could be loaded up with anthrax or something.” He consulted the app and muttered, “We’re driving right into it…”

No way the driver hadn’t overheard by now. And knowing Pearce, it was only a matter of time before he started speculating about which sand-race had carried out this supposed attack. What a fucking gig, Brautigan thought. What a rock band. A gaggle of paranoid old men, looking to blame someone for everything. They belonged on covered porches with wicker chairs and sun teas. Brautigan was pushing six-oh, and Pearce, who always lied about his age, was certainly not far behind. Same for their drummer and keyboardist, likely snoring away in the other shuttle with the rest of the gear. No roadies for these never-weres. No groupies either. While it was true that Brautigan’s silver ponytail and hawkish gaze still attracted a certain breed of young female, they all reminded him too much of his own daughter.

And, though neither Pearce nor anyone else knew it, she was the real reason for the Shawburg bookings, for this miserable sleepless caravan. At the thought of Lacey, the first twinge of anxiety struck Brautigan, and he thought, I hope to God she was nowhere near that plane crash.

He glanced toward the front and saw the driver eyeing them in the rearview mirror. Pearce began to speak again, and Brautigan nudged his shin with the tip of a snakeskin boot. Pearce looked from him to the driver and rolled his eyes. “Seth Brautigan, the politically-correct headbanger.”

“Frankly, that makes more sense than you—” Brautigan began, and then the shuttle veered sharply and crossed the expressway into the path of a bus.

Maybe Pearce has a point.

Last week, when the Iranian youths started lighting themselves on fire, we thought it was a political protest, the birth of a revolution. Then it happened in Toronto, and Mexico City—kids setting themselves aflame and others rushing into the burning pillars and embracing their own deaths. The media went nuts about the so-called mass hysteria, which they had apparently fomented by airing the Iranian suicides, which they then aired again and again.

And now this. So maybe Pearce is right. Maybe it’s a religious thing, a network of apocalyptic extremists. Maybe that’s why the Cessna went down. Why our driver just plowed us into a bus. Why I’m upside-down and can’t feel my face or my legs.

Brautigan slipped out of his seat belt a little. His head settled on the roof of the shuttle, tiny glass jags biting into his scalp. He fumbled across his waist and unbuckled himself, slumping down. His ears were ringing and he couldn’t see a thing. Didn’t smell smoke, or gas… Jesus, am I blind?

“Pearce,” he croaked. There was no reply. He lay there, upside-down and bent, while his eyes adjusted to the blackness. No, he wasn’t blind. He could clearly see his thirty-year sparring partner hanging dead from his seat, arms draped over his cruelly dented head.

Brautigan wormed his way toward the front of the vehicle. Now he could see that the shuttle was lying in the shadow of the overturned bus, and he could hear moans and cries and the tinkling of glass. He grabbed the front seats and pulled himself up beside the crumpled form of the driver. It looked as if his face had bounced off the windshield. Killed instantly, no doubt. The feeling was returning to Brautigan’s legs. He got on his elbows and knees and crawled through the shattered windshield, and then he was right up against the bus and its sideshow of broken faces within broken windows. He heard pleas for assistance. Couldn’t they see the state he was in?

He thought of Lacey again. Of course those people saw him, but they didn’t care. They had daughters they needed to reach. He understood that. He hoped they would understand as he continued on.

He moved out of the bus’ shadow and into the sunlight, facing four lanes of stalled traffic, a few bloodied passengers stumbling about, motorists rushing to their aid and screaming into phones. A chopper passed by and swung around; Brautigan felt that the camera inside was focused on him, staggering to the shoulder, ignoring the onlookers as he headed into the city.

In a new haze, he wandered into concrete canyons. He stopped at the first intersection to get his bearings. It had to be around 10 AM and traffic was surprisingly light. As he stared at the street signs and waited for his eyes to focus, he heard the first sirens. An ambulance tore past, running the red light. It was followed by a Volkswagen Beetle. Why in the hell…? His question was answered as the Beetle rolled up the curb, inches from his leg, and smashed into the side of the building at his back. He watched numbly as a teenage girl hurtled through the windshield and rolled down the sidewalk.

Another crash. Brautigan turned and saw a minivan folding around a traffic pole. Most cars had come to an abrupt stop. The minivan went over on its side and came to a stop in the middle of the intersection. And then, as if in some obscene dance, a brown sedan from the east and a blue sedan from the west wove around the van and met head-on.

They’re all killing themselves. Everyone is killing themselves.

The world is ending.

Lacey!

Brautigan broke into a run, and for the first time he felt pain. It radiated through his back, thighs and ankles with every footfall, but the sensation only spurred him forth. He’d seen the dead-eyed gaze of the young man in the blue sedan. They were all young, weren’t they? Kids. He ran faster.

He knew where he was now, and knew how to get to the club where Lacey was scheduled to play that night. Neither she nor his band had known that they shared a double bill. Brautigan’s ensemble Hell Roof was supposed to make a surprise appearance alongside Lacey’s Sīth. In his mind he’d thought that maybe, at first, she’d be thrown. She’d stand silent, as she saw him for the first time in eleven years, as he walked onto the stage during her set with guitar in hand. And maybe, just maybe, instead of walking off, she’d play along for the audience and riff with him like it was a natural thing. And maybe somewhere in there, in that performance, they’d get past the awkward angry shit and then they could just talk like he always wanted. It was a mean trick, he knew, but it was the last trick he had up his sleeve.

He probably looked like a relapsed junkie as he shambled into Cori’s. Lacey’s band played there most weekends, and there was a chance she might be around this early. And she was.

Back to him, hair dyed shocking red, but undeniably his Lacey, staring intently at a TV above the bar with her knuckles pressed against her lips. He was afraid to come any closer, to make himself known. So he watched the TV with her. A passenger plane had gone down in Texas. In his last transmission, the pilot had reportedly told the tower that “kids” were trying to storm the cockpit.

Brautigan and Lacey both nearly jumped out of their snakeskin boots as two cars collided right outside. She spun, and saw him. “Dad.”

He stepped into the light separating them. She recoiled at his appearance, then said, “What happened?”

“Fucking shuttle drove right into… Pearce is dead. I don’t even know about the others. I just came here. It’s happening everywhere, Lacey.”

“I know.” She took a tentative step toward him, hazel eyes flashing. “Why are you here?”

“Came to see you.”

She sighed. “Because of what’s happening?”

“No, it was planned…”

She turned slowly to the pair behind the bar, two men with their arms linked. They looked from the television to her. “He called me last week,” one of them said to her. “It was a surprise.”

“Surprise.” She laughed bitterly. “Dad—Seth—I’ve got enough to deal with right now. My best friend OD’d this morning. And don’t try to play Father Knows Best and lecture me, you know I stay away from users. She’d never touched the shit before.”

“Young people are killing themselves,” Brautigan said.

“It’s people between fourteen and twenty-four so far,” Lacey replied. “Like my friend. I’m twenty-six.” She said it as if he might not know.

“So terrible,” one of the men whispered. Another breaking item appeared on the TV, this one about the streets; streets worldwide turning into a gory spectacle by suicidal drivers. A scene in Atlanta, an intersection in flames. First responders simply throwing themselves onto the pyre.

Lacey started toward the exit. Brautigan caught her arm. “You’re safer here than out there.”

“Let go of me,” she snapped, and wrenched herself free. He nearly fell over.

“Lacey!”

She looked back. “You need to get to a hospital.”

“Won’t be safe there either,” he said. “The panic’s going to be worse than the catalyst. We’ll just stay here.”

A gunshot rang out in the street. “Please!” Brautigan cried. “Don’t be stubborn now.”

“You should get out of the city,” one of the club owners called. “We have to stay,” said the other. “But you better get the hell out of here.”

Lacey nodded. To her father, she said, “You can stay, or you can come.”

Every bit of logic, every scrap of instinct, told him it was wrong. But she’d just extended an olive branch, thin and brittle as it was, and he took it.

Her car was parked in the back. Brautigan stared at her as she fished through the pockets of her jeans for the keys. “What?” she demanded.

“Can’t use the roads,” he said. “The only way out is on foot.”

She swore softly. “You’re right.” At the sound of another gunshot, she glanced worriedly at Brautigan, and for a moment she was the little girl he’d walked out on. God, it was that same face, that same exact face, silently begging him to make it better.

“We ought to stick to the back streets,” he advised. She nodded, and they began their slow, uncertain jog. Glimpses of the main thoroughfares yielded only sheets of flame. The city’s arteries were clogged with the ruin of smashed cars and mangled bodies. There was the occasional gunshot, and a recurrent thump that might have been distant explosions. Other than that, it was oddly silent. No sirens, no choppers, no chatter. How quickly it had all happened.

“We have to cross 35th to reach the expressway,” Lacey told him. “Then it’s not far to the suburbs. I know people there.”

People my age, Brautigan hoped, and wondered why this epidemic of suicides was confined to that particular age group. Couldn’t be a virus, could it? Some neurological agent targeting the brain chemistry of developing youths, maybe? But how could something like that strike simultaneously worldwide? He wouldn’t even consider the metaphysical. Besides, there wasn’t any scripture on Earth that laid out the end in this manner.

Father and daughter stepped out onto 35th Street. A utility worker’s blackened corpse swung nearby, hands fused to a severed power line. The street itself was a maze of compacted wreckage. That thumping noise was close. Any one of these twisted and bleeding vehicles could explode at any moment. “We’ve gotta move fast,” he said to Lacey. “Now.”

They ran into the street, weaving around columns of hot metal, ignoring the sounds of scratching and what could have been moaning from within the steel. Brautigan wanted to clap his hands over Lacey’s eyes and ears, if only he could still wrap her up in his arms.

A muffled thump came from the right. Brautigan threw himself at Lacey, driving her to the sidewalk on the other side of the street. “What is it?” she screamed.

“I don’t know.” It definitely hadn’t been any sort of explosion. He looked to his right then, and saw what it had been, what all those noises had been.

A boy of about fifteen lay crumpled in the center of a cratered Mazda. He’d jumped. Most of the cars along the curb, Brautigan now saw, were littered with bodies shattered by freefall.

A wail sounded overhead. He looked up and saw an open window several stories up. The boy’s mother was there. Her hands clutched at the air.

Brautigan turned Lacey’s face away from the sight and ushered her toward the expressway ramp. She winced as he urged her along, and he saw that his fingers were digging into the flesh of her arms. Pulling his hands away, he saw there the mother’s mad, grasping claws.

“I know where we should go,” Lacey said, and pointed east toward a horizon of sloping hills.

The sky had turned gray and the air cloyingly damp. It would rain soon, and wash the blood from the expressway. Brautigan forced his focus from the ruddy asphalt to the hills and said, “Where?”

“It’s the hospital where I was. Last year.”

“No, I said hospitals are no good.”

“It’s not that kind of hospital.” Lacey lowered her eyes . “I had a breakdown. I spent two months there.”

“Months… why? Drugs?” He immediately regretted saying it.

She glared at him. “No, not fucking drugs. I just lost it. I was fucking miserable.”

“I never knew. Your mother never told me.”

“I didn’t want her to.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not any of your business.” She stopped there on the roadside and shouted over the crackling of flames. “I’m not your business. You shouldn’t have come here! You unloaded me eleven years ago, remember? What brought you back? Ditching the wife and kid didn’t turn you into a rock star?” She spat at his feet and started off at a brisk pace. “You know what, Dad? Fuck you! Just go save yourself like you always do!”

“I know I can’t fix anything!” Brautigan yelled after her. “I can’t go back, I know…”

She turned and stared icily at him. “You were going to get up on stage with me, weren’t you? In front of everyone. Fucking coward.”

He stood there and watched her walk away; gave her a generous berth before starting after her. She glanced back a few times, but didn’t say anything else. Kept up her pace, arms swinging. Pulled off her boots and hurled them skyward and then went off-road into the grass. He followed suit. The rain began to come down.

She pulled away when his jacket fell over her shoulders, but didn’t shrug it off entirely, and said nothing as he adjusted it. “Where are we going?” he asked quietly.

Her hair was dark red now, plastered to her face like blood. Despite that, he thought he probably looked worse. “Gallows Hill,” she said. “Doctor Lundgren.”

“She took care of you?”

“He — and he did. I still see him from time to time. He might even know what’s going on.”

Brautigan doubted that, but said nothing.

Gallows Hill was a Victorian manse rising from a wooded summit. Rain ran down the barred windows and cobbled walkways to the gate, where a guard stood with shoulders slumped. Brautigan offered a wave. “We’re here to see Doctor Lundgren.”

“I know him,” Lacey said, and called, “Marc?”

The guard didn’t move. As they drew closer, they saw why. He had wrapped an extension cord around his neck and tied it off at the top of the gate. His face was blue and bloated. Brautigan placed a hand of Lacey’s shoulder, but she only said, “That’s not Marc.”

The gate swung open without resistance. They walked to the entrance and pushed open the double doors.

The interior had a more modern feel, despite the fact that the lights were out, and everything was cloistered in shadow. Brautigan’s socked feet slapped against the tile floor of the lobby. “Anyone here?”

“Lacey?” A haggard-looking man in a white coat emerged from the darkness. He was about Brautigan’s age, and kneaded his hands as he slowly crossed the room. “What brought you here?”

“I didn’t know where else to go,” Lacey said.

Doctor Lundgren nodded. “We went into lockdown two days ago. Patients were throwing themselves at the windows, beating their heads against the walls… then the staff as well.” He mopped sweat from his brow with a kerchief. “Those who are still alive are under restraint. But they won’t eat.”

He glanced past them, through the open doors and the storm, and frowned at the dead guard. “He was thirty.”

“What?” Brautigan’s heart leapt into his throat.

“It’s happening to older people now,” Lundgren muttered.

“Why?” Lacey asked. And Lundgren actually had an answer.

“The only thing I can think of—although it doesn’t entirely bear out under scrutiny—is a dormant gene. Activated first in pubescent youths, which has somehow triggered a systemic response in older generations. I’m still trying to work out the mechanics of it.” He wiped his forehead again. “But I can almost certainly tell you why it’s happening now.”

This time it was Brautigan who pressed him .”Why?”

“I’ve studied the human condition my entire adult life,” Lundgren said. His hands went back to kneading one another. “We’re the most evolved, the most aware—and the most irrational, the most self-destructive. I’m hardly the first to point that out, but few have advanced the theory that we’ve hit an evolutionary wall—that Nature, of which we are part, will not only turn in on and consume us, but cause us to consume ourselves.” He looked hard at Brautigan. “Do you understand? I don’t mean that the external, Mother Earth, is attacking us. Our own genes are rebelling against the mind, the ego, some might even call it the soul.

“Come with me,” the doctor said then, and led them through a door into a long hallway. It was lined with doors containing caged portholes, and Lundgren glanced through each as he led Lacey and Brautigan deeper into darkness.

“Oh, God! Mister Gray!” Lundgren fumbled through a collection of keys and unlocked one of the doors. Brautigan stepped into the room after him and saw that it was padded floor to ceiling—and that the straitjacketed patient within had crammed his head into the corner and suffocated himself.

“How old was he?” Brautigan cried. “How old?”

“Fifty-two,” Lundgren breathed. “I don’t know, he might have done it on his own. I don’t know…” He stared oddly at Lacey. “Doctor Wolfe.”

The girl gasped. Brautigan whirled and saw her in the grip of a female doctor, who had planted a hypo in the base of Lacey’s neck.

The world fell into slow motion. Brautigan started forward, throwing his hands out. Lundgren caught one. The other closed into a fist, and Brautigan spun to throw all his weight into Lundgren’s jaw; but then the needle struck his neck and warmth radiated through his head. He stumbled sideways, hit the padded wall, rebounded and collapsed at Mister Gray’s feet. “Lacey!” he groaned. Her name echoed through his head, then receded into darkness.

“Do you want to see her?”

He was vaguely aware of having been conscious, and in conversation—then Lundgren’s face came into focus. Brautigan tried to say something, but it only came out as a low growl.

“You’re in a straitjacket right now,” the doctor told him calmly. “In a bed next door to your daughter. I’ve taken the same precautions for her. We’re going to get an IV line going to keep each of you nourished. I don’t want to fail Lacey, you understand. I’m taking these measures to keep you both alive.”

Lundgren rummaged through a sheaf of papers lying on Brautigan’s stomach. “You might go through the change at any moment. We’ll observe you both closely—having subjects of your disparate ages, related at that, might lead to a breakthrough.”

He glanced toward a window at the foot of the bed. The sky outside was still a murky gray. “We won’t be observing you, I will be. Doctor Wolfe drowned herself in the shower. I’ve tried to contact the local authorities, but there’s no answer. I don’t know that they could do much better than I, anyway. All I can do is keep you safe while I look for answers.”

Brautigan worked his tongue around his mouth, trying to moisten it so he could speak. Once again he was lost in a haze. All he could manage to grumble was, “Lacey.”

“Yes, I’ll take you to her,” Lundgren said. “Of course.” He got up and walked out of the room.

“LUNDGREN!” Brautigan screamed. No reply.

Tears rolled down the sides of Brautigan’s face. He tried to thrash his limbs, to toss his head, but he could do nothing but weep. He cried Lacey’s name. There was no response from her, either. Maybe the doctor had lied. Maybe he was alone in here.

But was Lundgren right? Would, eventually, inevitably, the suicidal urge take hold of him? And would being strapped down in this bed drive him madder still?

Lundgren came back in. He had a pair of syringes in his hand, a small bottle tucked into the crook of his arm.

He sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at the needles. Slowly, methodically, he stabbed one into one of the tiny bottles and began to fill it with a urine-colored fluid.

“What…” Brautigan pleaded.

“It’s not for you,” Lundgren said. He lifted the hypo to his eyes and studied the poison inside. Then he looked at Brautigan. “It’s not bad. I’m not afraid. I almost don’t remember what it was like before… it’s like waking up.”

The doctor and Brautigan both glanced down. Lundgren had begun sawing at his wrist with the needle. He watched idly as crimson spread along the hem of his coat. “Hmm.” Then he inserted the needle into his forearm.

“Where is my daughter?” Brautigan sobbed.

Lundgren sat erect, and for a second Brautigan thought, hoped, prayed that the man was lucid—but he was dead, and he slipped off the bed and onto the floor.

The room was quiet. The world was quiet.

Brautigan didn’t want to cry any more.

He only wanted to die.

FROM THE BOWELS

Benjamin Kane Ethridge

His scream was an outflow of bubbles.

He sat in an underwater silo, glowing blue fish swimming in cycles high above, radioactive halos in a murky universe. Something took the oxygen from the water and delivered it into his lungs, helping him breathe without reassurance or explanation. An aquatic plant with purple fronds clutched his arms and stroked his body with gentle kisses. His buttocks hung down inside the prickly oval cup of the plant’s flower.

He tried to speak but a hand reached through the ambling silt and placed something cool on his tongue, halting his words. It felt like a pile of broken straight razors. Their flavor made him hungry, so he rolled them around his mouth, ignoring the way they cut into his flesh. The blood made them taste even better.

A voice squeezed through the pressure of the deep: “They are the seeds. They are the brood.”

His esophagus felt like a split bamboo shaft and his stomach divided in wobbling partitions. The digestive acid cooked his lower organs.

Yes! The hand in the watery dark that grazed his cheek had slender, female fingers. He swallowed more razors and had his fill. He squirmed inside the flower as the strain built at his sides. Bubbles poured from his mouth as he screamed at the possibility of the pressure never stopping.

Sam woke up to a fading pain in his gut. Barbara was pounding the bathroom door with her puny wrist. Slowly, he realized he was on the toilet, just like every other day this week.

Barbara’d been talking, but he only noticed her just now. “Hold your horses,” he said. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

Disgust touched her voice. “Yeah? You gonna go all the way this time?”

“Shut up.”

“I’m leaving, Sam.” Her voice held no conviction.

“You’ll just come back like they all do. Stop pulling my dick.”

“Creep!”

“Yeah, maybe I am.” Sam grabbed some toilet paper, wiped himself and pulled up his boxers. When he turned to flush, he saw something that alarmed him more than the dream. Past the toilet seat, he saw a scarlet stew of shit and blood.

He flushed. The sludge coiled into a gory cyclone and burped up clear—thankfully clear—water. It might not mean a thing. Sitting on his ass and writing nine hours a day could have baked up a nice batch of hemorrhoids, but that didn’t make him feel any better.

He went back and turned Barbara on her stomach. She didn’t look happy at all, but she also didn’t object.

Ten minutes later, he’d sweated away his frustration, but, just like earlier, there’d been no climax. He hadn’t had one since he’d written that damned story.

Barbara soon drifted off and he lay beside her, not daring to shut his eyes. An hour later he heard something outside. The noise had made his teeth click. A hollow, booming sound, loud and heavy.

Like something massive striking down on the ocean floor.

The B-porn on cable had too much plot and Sam’s legs started twitching. He thought about writing but gave up the notion for fear of more delusions. Constance hadn’t called in two weeks now. But calling her, or calling Barbara, that was showing weakness.

His hardness eventually got the better of him, so he punched in Constance’s number. She was the freakiest of his steadies: nipple-biting, hair-pulling, and an occasional finger up his asshole. He never felt right with her, never felt right without her. It was an old feeling.

He was twelve. Driving to the theater. Upholstery smelled of sex and malt liquor. Pat Benatar sang on the radio. The greatest moment of his life had been a blink before the Cadillac wrapped around the telephone pole and everything tore away. But as his mother sucked on her boyfriend, Sam saw something vital in her eyes; she was content, at ease with her pains. Had her mouth not been occupied, it may have worked up a smile.

Later, watching the sheeted bodies roll away on their gurneys and listening to a stammering, although well-meaning, police officer, Sam Ruthers decided to find that happiness his mother had. Maybe he’d have it longer than the single moment she’d be given.

Call him sick, but remembering his mother blowing a guy was a fond memory, the greatest memory.

The phone rang for a fifth time.

Another ring, but this one cut short as a watery recording played. He slammed down the phone.

Constance called around lunch time the next day. Hearing her voice almost made him choke on his cheeseburger. He was too tired to deal with freaks this early. Hot freak, but freak nonetheless.

“You called yesterday?”

“Your voice’s echoing.”

She hesitated. “Parking structure outside the library.”

“You haven’t called in like two weeks.”

“Sorry.” It was a small sounding word. “Want some company this weekend?”

Weekend? He couldn’t sound desperate and ask why she didn’t come over sooner. Weak.

“Maybe I will, but I have to finish some editing. I’ll give you a call later. I gotta run.”

“I do love you. You love me, right?”

The words tickled his lips. “Yes, of course I do.”

And an hour later he told Barbara: “Are you nuts? I love you more than television. Take some time off and come over tonight.”

“It’s been a shitty day,” Barbara answered, too languidly to expect an explanation. “So what about all your other little tramps? They on the disabled list?”

“There’s only one tramp for me. Hey, I gotta run. See you tonight. There’s some kid at my door.”

“Don’t be mean. Love ya.”

“Love ya more.”

A frail kid stood outside, holding a cardboard box full of candy bars. Obviously none of the candy had been filched. “Good afternoon, Sir. I’m selling these delicious treats. They were donated to the South Malden Middle School fundraiser, which helps the—”

“Save it, partner.” Sam took out a loose twenty from his back pocket. “Give them to your friends or something. Better yet, eat ‘em yourself.”

The kid walked off, swinging his box. Sam’s eyes darted out to the street. Something moved. The manhole cover had lowered.

“Kid?”

The boy turned with a frown.

“Is there something out in the street?”

The middle-schooler examined the street with more attention than it warranted. The boy shrugged. “There’s a smashed paper cup.”

Sam closed the door.

He might still be tired from all the tossing and turning last night. But the manhole moved. Two or three times, he crept to the window for another look. In between those times he lounged, watching TV, eating cold mushroom pizza.

When night fell, the neighborhood became a collection of floating rooftops. Sam had to convince himself bubbles weren’t wandering skyward in the racing blue shadows. His uneasiness was chased off when Barbara’s corvette bumped into the driveway. The brake lights flowed out behind like iodine wash.

He waved. She didn’t see him. God, she was gorgeous. Not as smoking-hot as Constance, but few were. He waved harder to get her attention, then froze.

Out in the street, in the iodine sea, a face peered from under the manhole lid. Long webbed fingers wrapped around the lid and its iridescent knuckles bent in a rancorous rainbow. The Nightlid had no hair on its head or face. When Barbara turned off the ignition, the red color drained from the creature’s skin, leaving behind flesh the color of marrow.

Sam leaned closer to the window, trembling. The Nightlid’s eyes were diamond-shaped stones, black as the emotionless gelatin orbs of a shark. It looked just like what he’d written.

He tried to open the window. Barbara bent inside to retrieve her purse. The manhole lifted higher and fog blanketed the street. Sam wrenched at the latch, pulling with both hands. What the hell was wrong with it? He shoved with his entire body. The window slid over.

Another arm came out from under the lid.

“Barbara!” he shouted.

“Hey babe.”

The manhole lid dropped; the sound was so loud Sam flinched but Barbara acted as though she’d heard nothing.

“Is the front door unlocked?”

Sam tried to speak, but could only nod. The world grew calm and quiet, only darkness and clicking stiletto heels.

Unbuttoning his shirt so fast his fingers stung, Sam rounded the bed and approached Barbara. He briefly thought of the thing he’d seen in the street, but it was pleasantly distant in his tangled thoughts. He peeled off his jeans in a single swipe that brought them down to his ankles. His hand went to his boxer shorts, but Barbara’s deft fingers caught him.

“Let me,” she said and kneeled. His boxers went down. Her lips parted in a wet ruby ring. She squeezed him. He put his palm on the back of her head, drawing that ruby circle closer.”You make me feel so good. I love you.”

Her gray eyes hovering before his erection were not convinced, but she began pleasuring him nonetheless. Her teeth felt coarse around the ends, almost the texture of bristle. She’d never performed so poorly before. What was wrong? He wanted to yell, to tell her to go brush her teeth, or see a fucking dentist. But Sam Ruther knew where his dick was buttered. “I want you!” he cried instead.

Barbara pulled back. She was gummy-lipped and breathless, but still lovely. “Harder than before,” she said. “Give it to me hard!”

She was no Constance, but he entered her with relish anyway, in one great rush. “Harder!” she cried.

Sam quivered. Could it be? Was he to orgasm? But not already, he despaired. Don’t you dare! He closed his eyes and concentrated. Something uncoiled, ready to blast free, but then sucked back inside, cold in his chest. His pleasure disappeared.

Sam opened his eyes to a synergy of light and shadow breaking through liquid heavens, to rolling dunes on the ocean floor and finned forms gliding in the distant haze, and to blood. Lots of blood.

He was kneeling on a stone dais in the sand. The water did not bring his body upwards. There was a strange gravity in this ocean. His groin and hips wore shattered guts, bone fragments and blood like fragile underwear. This too did not seem to wash away.

A gray coral reef curled up a slope to the left of the dais. Computer monitor, keyboard and mouse had been integrated inside the rough gray husk. Sam drifted through walls of sparkling sediment. He walked in the throes of the abnormal pull and hunkered down next to the monitor.

It was his computer. All of his programs and story files were there, even the Nightlid story, but he bypassed looking at any of them. All the disgusting pornography he’d been too scared to download was now open for examination. He gleefully masturbated. The jism hit the water and parted in loops of white silk. Still, there was no pleasure with the coming. The ecstasy was taken from him, even in his dream.

The thing in the street, he thought. That goddamn Nightlid! He wrote about one stealing a sailor’s lust—only a story, only a story, only the truth. No! He began to stroke himself again.

A burning sword crashed through his skull, pulling him from the dream. He shrieked, made a move to reach up, but pitched over. Reality returned. Barbara held the broken neck of a vase—his favorite imitation Ming—its jagged white edges like a hundred chalky knives.

“You filthy shit!” Her dress hung from her shoulder in a slant, as though she’d hastily pulled it on.

Blood sheeted into his eyes. He put his palm there to stop the rush.

“I told you it hurt! You made me bleed, you rapist!”

“Barbara I was dreaming—”

“I almost let it go.” A disgusted sob caught her words for a moment. “But you go over and start jerking off to that!”

Sam looked at his monitor. Five opened windows showed a variety of graphic car wrecks. For a moment, one of the photographs looked like his mother, smashed between a telephone pole and three feet of Cadillac steel, in her mouth a penis torn from its scrotum. Sam’s stomach pitched. “I don’t know what’s wrong,” he struggled to find his breath. “With me, I mean.”

He tried to stand but Barbara stabbed at him with the ceramic shard.

“Don’t follow me or I’m calling the police!”

Barbara grabbed her purse. He didn’t watch her go.

It took a long time to get to sleep. Around 2 AM, Sam slipped into a deep, meaningful slumber and dreamed of a woman using him. He prayed it was Constance, but never had the chance to see the woman’s face.

The next morning the toilet was red and overflowing.

There was a diving supply store just north of the Sports complex. If he was going down into the sewers, he wasn’t risking noxious gases. Three hours and four thousand dollars later, he returned home with a trunk full of diving equipment, everything from fins to tanks.

He’d considered bringing a gun, but he had no idea if there were flammables in the sewers, and he didn’t feel like testing the theory out. Instead, when he got home he retrieved an aluminum bat and a flashlight from the back seat of his car. There wasn’t time to think up something better.

Dressed in his SCUBA gear, he walked out into the street. With each step, the world around him changed, the air deepened with bubbles and trees became swaying bands of green in a rocking sea. A yellow sandbar led to a sunken cruise ship that had landed on its side like a gunshot victim.

He climbed the side of the indistinct deck, bat and flashlight held tightly under arm. On top he found a large porthole and took a few minutes twisting off the glass before lowering himself into a corridor.

He thumbed on the flashlight, casting an indolent crescent of light ahead of him. Fish floated through the space, red and black starfish hugged the walls, plankton drifted through the thick ether. This place, this dreamland, was home to the Nightlids.

Sam saw a pair of tits poking through a nest of starfish and a series of smiling vaginas along the walls. He wanted to fully explore the wall-vaginas, but what might they be in the real world? Sewer laterals?

Instead of probing, he continued on.

The corridor opened to a wide, oaken ballroom. Torches lined the walls of massive wooden stairwells that slipped inside dark hallways.

His eyes found the bodies and he could hear his breathing intensify behind his mask. The nightmare wasn’t truth, but the bodies looked real. Two lay draped across the stairs, ripped open east to west, flesh and bone raked into the stone. Another had fallen sideways against the wall, her head split all over in a savage highway.

Sam knew her. He knew all these women. His ex Trixie, and Barbara, and a city hooker from last month. He could tell each woman from her nude signature. These bodies were not dream-induced.

His body shook and his heart blasted in and out. “What did I do?”

The hallways scraped with invisible claws. Slim figures seeped out of dark spaces, their surreal, gleaming white bodies touching the torchlight. First it was ten, then fifteen, and then dozens more. The Nightlids grouped at the top of the stairs like a welcome party.

Sam’s knuckles cracked as he gripped the aluminum bat. It felt light and inadequate. All of those solemn, black diamond eyes were on him, but none made a move. They stared—and he stared back. “Well come on!” he yelled. “I’m through with this, so come on!”

Only stares. Several flicked eager smiles, showing no teeth in their lipless mouths.

He grimaced at them. “What the hell are you?”

“Our children, Sam.”

He felt faint at her voice.

Constance stepped out of the shadows, wearing a sequined, royal blue gown that flowed back into the watery corridor behind her. It looked like the sea had lovingly dressed itself around her tender body. “It’s nice to see you where you belong, Sam.”

He stood there, the unspoken question too apparent.

Constance favored him with a dainty smile. “You never finished the story, so I chose to find the source of all sources. You’re a bottomless well of creation and your ideas will offer many more children before we’re through.”

“Children?” Sam pointed his bat at the group. “Those things?”

The half-smile came to her face again. He wanted to bash her head in with the bat, but he waited. “Why did you kill the other girls?”

“Your energy belongs to us,” she said. “Your toys always sought to take it away. Besides which, you don’t need them any longer.” A malicious twinkle caught in her eyes.

He could hear the steps of the Nightlids coming down the stairs. Constance laid a hand on his shoulder and with the other she held out her index finger. “Come on Sam, you’ve let me stick it up your ass before.”

From tiny holes in her finger seeped a pale blue fluid. “Let’s fuck one more time.” A thrill went through her glazed eyes.

Sam swung the bat hard. A clawed hand caught the end and tore it from his grasp. Slithering forms fell upon him. The Nightlid children ripped his clothes from his body as he struggled to break free.

In his mind Sam saw a bloody toilet bowl and understood the truth. Those painful bowel movements had been deliveries. All the unseen eggs floating on the vermillion surface, waiting for him to send them to their new home.

He lashed out, but his hands were cinched. He snarled at Constance, “I’ll die before you put those things in me!”

“The eggs have always been inside you, dear,” she said. “I’m just fertilizing them.”

“No!” Sam got a hand loose. He reached up and ripped off his rebreather. His lungs took in the heavy, rotten atmosphere of the sewer. Everything melted in his vision. Clarity returned through a series of whistles. The sound rose on the air from the gaping mouths of the Nightlids.

“The children will breathe for you,” said Constance. Her voice purred in his ear. He felt clean air push into his lungs from out of nowhere.

Constance had lost her gown—she looked like the others now, only bigger—braided muscles running from neck to slimy arms. She stroked his face and moved behind him. The porous index finger slid easily into his asshole and began to saturate his colon with her vile seed. Sam moaned as the pressure built in his abdomen and the taste of shit layered his mouth. The torches guttered and the temple darkened. He sobbed in the failing light and finally, wretchedly, came to grips with love.

It was his first time.

THE DUBIOUS MAGIC OF ELLIOT PRINCE

KV Taylor

Elliot found his prey—or rather, his project partner—under the brightest lamp. Tim leaned against the wrought iron gate, reading a thin paperback in a puddle of light. The guy always had some esoteric little tome; kept one carefully askew on his desk during lectures and sticking out of the pocket of his backpack on the quad, like he was waiting for someone to notice.

Elliot had done that too, back in high school. No wonder freshmen were like babes to the slaughter.

Still, he was feeling charitable tonight. He might ask about the book; it’d probably make Tim’s night. Maybe he’d even let the guy show him painstakingly underlined passages and tell him why they were brilliant.

He sauntered into the light, strangling the knowing smile on his face. Dropped his cigarette, jammed his hands deep into his leather jacket and toyed with the camera in the right pocket. He let his eyes dart to Tim’s book to create some initial goodwill.

Tim shifted his weight from one foot to the other and stuffed his book into his backpack. His face seemed flushed, but it was cold outside, and Tim was always faintly freckled and pink. Maybe he wasn’t blushing, but he looked fucking awkward, either way.

Definitely a passage under-liner. Perfect.

“Cold tonight, man,” Elliot said.

Tim shrugged, hiking his pack onto narrow shoulders. “I’m used to it.”

Elliot noticed, upon closer inspection, that Tim wore only a thin Adidas track jacket. Right, he was from… Boston or something. Somewhere they couldn’t pronounce the letter ‘r,’ anyhow.

But back to business. “Best place to jump the fence is around the side here.”

Tim looked up at him through a fringe of dark bangs. “That’s how I did it last night.”

Elliot tried to stop his face from falling, but didn’t quite make it. “Why’d you come then?”

“Scouting. The groundskeeper came around once or twice…”

When Tim trailed off, Elliot smirked. “Can’t outrun a 75 year-old, shovel-wielding hunchback?”

Tim set his jaw, stood a little straighter.

“Come on, man. This place is amazing. You go in far enough, you’ll come out a changed man.”

Clever little joke. Too bad Tim can’t appreciate it. Yet.

Tim screwed up his face, a comical determination taking over, ending with his eyes. He almost looked angry, and it suited him. Made him less little-boyish.

Elliot just kept smiling. This might be his easiest one yet.

You go in far enough, you’ll come out a changed man.

Tim had used all his self-control in the split second after Elliot said it. Watching the back of that pretty blonde head retreat around the corner, he felt like he’d been rubbed all over with sandpaper on the inside.

Funny to think how a few days ago, he’d been happy about this assignment. Fate handing him the answers, the chance he’d half wanted, half hoped wouldn’t come. Timothy Maclaren and Elliot Prince, slips of paper drawn at the same time. And then, just when it couldn’t get any better, Elliot told him he wanted to start their project with a long night in a dark, secluded spot.

Sure, it was illegal. But Tim didn’t mind unexpected luck, as a general rule. Now he had warring urges to laugh and cry. Cold dread seeped into him, nothing to do with the weather.

He’d do what he had to do, though.

Half a league, half a league

Half a league onward

Right?

Elliot reached through the fence for Tim’s pack, while Tim hauled himself up the wall behind the caretaker’s house and disappeared into the foliage of the nearby oak tree. Elliot peeked at the title of the book in the outer mesh pocket.

101 Great Poems

Huh. He’d expected Kerouac or Hesse or something else that seems brilliant in high school. Something a pseudo-intellectual like Tim would think made him look smart and deep. He had carried Shakespeare himself, back in the day. Fucking embarrassing.

Elliot was about to extract the book for a closer look when a blinding halogen glow cut the night, the spotlight in the caretaker’s yard. He froze for a stuttering second.

The branches of the oak rustled, emitted an audible “Hell!”

The sound startled him into action; he shouldered the pack and raced for the nearest patch of darkness against the wall. When he slammed his back to the bricks, Tim dropped out of the tree in front of him, landing in an awkward pile on the long grass.

Elliot barely suppressed a laugh.

Tim launched himself toward the safety of the wall. When he got there, he was biting at the inside of his cheek, and he had a leaf stuck in his hair.

Elliot couldn’t stop himself, he picked it out and waved it in Tim’s face, laughing silently.

Tim’s cheeks puffed out; he looked away, obviously trying to quiet his own laughter.

A door slammed on the other side of the wall.

Right, better get moving. Elliot dropped the leaf and whacked Tim’s arm to get his attention, then nodded to the nearest mausoleum rising from the sea of gaudy grave-markers.

Tim, still looking torn between abject horror and laughter, nodded.

They heard slow footsteps beyond the wall, and ran as fast as they could.

Tim tried to concentrate on the sensations; long grass swishing against his ankles, cold air heavy with the smell of rotting leaves crushing into his lungs. But there was Elliot just ahead of him, running too fast, too effortlessly, to remind him what was wrong with tonight.

All so easy for a guy like him, isn’t it?

That made Tim feel a little better. And if Elliot thought it was the groundskeeper that scared him, that made it better too. But now it was close, and they were only running closer. Closer and colder with every step.

He didn’t know if he was happy or sad, but he hoped Elliot wouldn’t make him laugh again.

Elliot swung around the mausoleum and reached out, grabbing Tim’s arm.

Tim practically screeched to a stop, panting, “Jesus.”

Elliot tried to calm his own breathing, but even magic couldn’t argue with a pack-a-day habit. He grinned anyhow, enjoying his heart thudding hard against his ribcage.

A lot of life in the middle of a silent necropolis. He congratulated himself on the artistic sensibilities he displayed by appreciating the contrast. Fuck you all—I’m glad you’re dead. Won’t catch me underground.

Not if he kept this scheme running, anyhow. There were a lot of magics available to people willing to do what was necessary. Death magic just happened to be Elliot’s personal choice. He was young and good-looking; he had too much to lose to choose any other.

“What if he follows?” Tim was still panting. “He might tell the school—”

“What if he does? Dr. Kline would just pat us on the back for being so hands-on—hell, he’s an old hippy. We’ll probably run into him getting high behind a mausoleum.”

Tim cracked a smile, which, in the moonlight, made him appear ten years younger.

“Anyhow, the best part is the old graveyard.” Elliot shot his companion a sideways glance. “You go there last night?”

Tim hesitated.

Elliot narrowed his eyes.

Another moment of silence. Finally, Tim said, “I don’t think so. I’m not sure where anything is.”

Elliot tried to back off. There was no way Tim had found out; if he had, he wouldn’t be here now. “It’s cool. I know this place inside out.”

“You can give me my stuff back.”

Right, the backpack. Elliot held it out. “What’s up with the poems?”

Huh. He hadn’t meant to ask so quickly. Well, whatever.

Tim slung the pack over one shoulder. “Dunno. I like something different every day.”

Elliot surprised himself. Not only had he not regretted losing five seconds of his life listening to that answer, but he actually asked, “For what?”

Tim paused, looked him in the eye for a minute and seemed to consider whether or not he should answer truthfully.

Elliot surprised himself again by waiting for the answer patiently, leaning against the cold stone of the mausoleum and sinking into the comfortable feeling of the place.

Even before he’d discovered their uses, he’d always liked cemeteries—this one in particular. Liked that they were quiet and empty, but he never felt all that alone in them.

Eventually, Tim spoke again. “You know that thing where you open the refrigerator and stare inside, but you don’t know what you want exactly? You’re just hungry for something?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s like that. I want something, but I don’t know what. I stare at my book shelf and wait for it to tell me.”

“Does it?”

“No. That’s what I get for buying furniture at Wal-Mart, I guess.”

Elliot snorted. “I’m disturbed that I get that.”

Tim grinned—possibly the first unselfconscious face he’d made in the three days since their assignment. “So I pick random stuff up every day and see where it takes me. This seemed like a good graveyard book. Been reading it all day.”

Elliot let himself appear interested. Tim was sold on him, he was sure. It couldn’t get any easier.

Too bad the guy’s kind of smart, though. Maybe he could hold a real conversation, even.

No time to find out. They’d know he was here, by now. They’d be expecting him.

Tim knew right away he shouldn’t have given a straight answer. He’d thought of it as a safe confession—the kind you give when you know you won’t have to see someone again. Like saying “I’ve always loved you, goodbye” or “That was me that ran over your dog last summer, goodbye” or “I used to watch the back of your head in class and wonder if you’d talk to me like this if we were stuck on a deserted island. But goodbye, you horrible motherfucker.”

He’d liked it more than that, and it left a hollow feeling in his guts.

Tim made himself think about Benny. The blank expression behind his eyes. The paleness of his lips. The look on his mother’s face when she’d come to take him home, for good. Hard to imagine he’d ever be coming back to school when he’d lost his mind.

Or his soul, as it turns out. But Tim hadn’t known that until last night.

Elliot lit a cigarette, then held up his lighter for Tim. “So you’re not always reading to try and pick up chicks?”

Tim leaned forward and took the first drag to get the cherry going. He smoked like someone who never smoked; awkward fingering, lips too pursed, but at least he didn’t choke. Then he let out a long breath and said, “That’s not really on my list of things to do.”

Elliot looked at him sideways, but Tim looked straight ahead.

Elliot smirked; he supposed he’d seen Tim with Benny once or twice, come to think of it. Now he wondered if they’d been fucking, or just friends. It would be more poetic if they’d been fucking.

He bit back the smirk, watching Tim try to hide himself in the cigarette. They were coming up on the old section; the paved walkways thinner, the markers less gaudy—fewer giant angels and replicas of the Washington Monument over grandma’s grave. Overgrown trees and shrubs and jagged broken stones were more in order, a place where the Earth was in the process of taking back its own.

He felt himself tightening inside, his senses sharpening, but he forced himself to slow down in light of this new and interesting information about his companion.

They’d wait for a few minutes. They had with Benny, after all.

Tim pointed to his right. “Look at that one. That’d work.”

When Elliot saw the massive menhir of a gravestone, he remembered with a stupid shock why Tim thought they were here—local history. Tim dropped his cigarette, took his pack off, produced an ancient Nikon and a flashlight, then handed the latter to Elliot.

Elliot produced his own slick digital as they approached the marker. The thing was maybe five feet tall, smooth and oblong and alien among the tiny square jobs favored in the late 1800s. The writing was still obvious, and Tim crouched in front of it, producing a smaller light from his own pocket. The inscription was pocked with bits of scruffy green and yellow moss.

She was loved. And we were lost.

Not fucking bad, really. But Elliot could feel Them calling, hungry, distracting him. He took a final drag and flicked the butt away. “It’s mostly impressive because of the context. There’s not much interesting in the form on its own.”

Tim looked up. “Well, there’s not much interesting in any of the forms in this part. They’re all too old and plain. Might get some interesting rubbings but…”

Elliot arched an eyebrow. That was entirely too astute, and he didn’t like the feeling it gave him. Nor did he care for the sudden flicker in Tim’s eyes.

He decided to change the subject. “Got a poem for this one?”

“The Night Has a Thousand Eyes,” Tim mumbled, looking back down.

Elliot got a swaying sensation, as if he’d gone off-balance. He needed to think. He crouched next to Tim, set his camera and flashlight on the grass, and extracted the book from his pack.

“It doesn’t matter,” Tim said.

Elliot raised his eyes from the book. “What, you don’t want me to see which passages you underlined?”

Tim snorted and looked away. “What am I, twelve?”

Elliot flinched.

Tim knew they were both stalling, now.

It was hard though, with Elliot murmuring over Bourdillion and discussing what lighting would give the best contrast for their purpose. Hard not to admire his dedication to making an ordinary history project something beautiful, but even harder not to admire how calm he was about his thin excuses. It made Tim wonder if he had his facts straight, if he really knew what Elliot had planned for him.

Elliot went on and on. Of course, these were just source photos to help them with the certain atmosphere they required in the finished project. Just wanted a certain depth of shadow unavailable during daylight hours—

Excuses that might’ve held up if they’d stayed where the interesting gravestones were. Last night Tim had found a magnificent angel with crumbling wings, and a pathetically weathered rocking horse from 1964. On the other side of the graveyard.

Tim felt it, felt Them calling, waiting, starving. Second thoughts gnawed at his insides now that they were so near the source. He knew if he didn’t move soon, Elliot would.

It had to be him. For Benny. Not even half a league. Time for the charge.

Elliot struggled to regain his mental equilibrium while they lit, photographed, and took a rubbing; he talked pointlessly, soothingly.

At first it was difficult. Fucking smart ass Tim and his useless rock. Why was he bothering if he knew damn well nothing here was going to make the project? Why was he humoring him?

Of course, it could be a good sign. Could mean Elliot would have a chance to get a little something extra out of the bargain, like with Benny. He was only human, after all.

Sometimes.

He had that awful cold feeling creeping over him like a slow winter frost. Tim might’ve been lying. Might’ve come over here last night. Might’ve found Them. The thought made him afraid for a split second before the adrenaline started to get him high. The more he thought about it, the bigger the rush. The bigger the rush, the less angry he felt.

That made it easy to regain his control.

What if Tim does know? It wasn’t as if he could escape, now. Hell, that might make it even more fun. Clever little prick.

Elliot tucked his camera back into his pocket. “Maybe the mausoleum over there will make for some decent imagery.”

Just a casual suggestion. Cool-headed. Collected.

Tim stuffed his camera into his pack, then stood and faced him. Elliot smiled, feeding off the rush again, off the look in Tim’s eyes. He thought it might be fear, even. His heart soared.

They got louder under the mausoleum. The air grew colder, slow but obvious. Elliot took a step closer and composed his face into something meant to be concern. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “You okay?”

Tim’s chest rose and fell with a hard breath, a little ragged.

Elliot’s heart convulsed joyfully.

“No.” Tim looked down, then to the mausoleum in question. Then finally met Elliot’s eyes again.

It was fear, but something else, too. Elliot didn’t know what, but it got his blood up. It practically screamed in his ears.

He wanted to ask. He knew it was stupid, but he also knew it was too late to turn back.

If he’d known Tim this well before, he might not have done this; not right away, anyhow. But how often would he find himself in this position? With someone who may or may not have him figured out?

This wasn’t going to be like it had been with Benny at all. It might be better. He asked, “Do you know why I brought you here?”

Tim chewed at the inside of his cheek, nodding once, causing his bangs to flop into his eyes.

Elliot swallowed his elation. “Do you really?”

“Same reason you brought Benny.”

It meant he did know more—but it didn’t tell Elliot how much. For all he knew, Tim thought of it as a perfectly innocent midnight rendezvous.

Which it had been, depending on one’s definition of innocent, for the first half hour or so. “Did he tell you we were going to meet here?”

Tim nodded again.

“I’m sorry,” Elliot tried to sound sincere. “You two weren’t…?”

“No. He’s—he was my friend.”

Elliot smiled, even though it ruined his poetic little notion. He could try a couple some other time, maybe. Next time. He stepped closer still, reached upward.

Tim flinched.

Elliot felt a tiny surge of vindication, and brushed Tim’s bangs out of his eyes. Used every bit of intensity he could muster, leaned forward to push it into him. “Shame about what happened.” The rush made him want to jump and scream for joy, like dancing along the edge of a very high ravine. Tim’s reply would tell him everything.

“Yeah. It was.” Tim smiled, but it was a twisted thing, an out of place expression on a sweet face. “Let’s look at the mausoleum.”

All the air rushed out of Elliot. His heart still thudded, but his blood seemed quieter in his head. That was a fucking disappointment.

Silly fantasy, anyhow. Tim didn’t understand—no one did. And that was why they were all so very, very expendable.

Elliot let the act drop and turned on his heel. He started toward the mausoleum. He was getting tired, anyhow, and he needed a fucking cigarette.

Tim’s stomach rested in his shoes as he followed. A million words rushed through his brain, but nothing that could stop things now.

He didn’t really understand what had just happened, but he knew that he’d almost given in, almost told Elliot everything. He wondered if Benny had known everything he knew, if he would’ve given in anyhow, or if it would’ve made him stronger.

Tim wasn’t made for this any more than Benny had been. He was made for a lot of things—art and people and poetry and sunshine. This wasn’t his world.

It was awfully seductive, though. He could still hear Elliot murmuring over his book, feel him touching his hair, his face.

Tim could have it, if he wanted, when it was done.

The thought made acid rise in the back of his throat.

The massive stone construction loomed before them—the end of the world. The graveyard, its silence loud in his head, its sudden cold pricking his skin, came to life around them. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel it.

He wasn’t sure he could do it, he’d give almost anything not to—but there was no one else.

Elliot planted his feet in an overgrown patch of ivy and called out in his head. He felt Their cold cackle in response, that one high thin voice that slipped inside him, like poison in his ear.

Hungry. He would get what had been arranged. He would get what he deserved.

He looked upward, admiring the knotwork tooled into chipped granite. Really, this might not be bad for the project. Maybe he’d get a few shots after it was over; he had to do the project whether his partner turned into a zombie or not, after all.

How sad, everyone will say. Poor Tim Maclaren, remember him? Another victim of academic stress at the university.

Elliot’s skin pricked, but he didn’t feel as excited as he should. Disappointment was a bitch. “What do you think?” he asked, to lure Tim closer. He didn’t feel like struggling.

Tim stepped up beside him. No hesitation. Mundane bastard.

“I have to ask you one question,” Tim said.

Elliot looked at him, taking his hands out of his pockets, ready.

“Did you fuck him before or after you sold his soul?”

A tsunami of consciousness—starting in his brain and falling to his feet. His heart stalled.

Tim met his eyes—there was no fear in him.

God. He knew all along, and he came here anyhow. Elliot tried to mentally drag himself back into submission, under control. “Before,” he admitted, though he didn’t know why. He only knew that it felt good to say it. That he was, in some overwhelming, black way, thrilled.

Tim blinked at him. His eyes were wet, like some fucking sweet little hero in a romance novel. They practically glowed. “Why bother?”

Elliot smiled. “It’s important to have standards.”

Tim smiled back; that ugly, twisted smile.

Elliot knew he should do it now; reach out, shove Tim into the wall, watch him disappear, listen to them have their little feast. Get what he’d come for—another twenty or so years of perfection.

But he wanted something else, something more, now.

“You never feel bad about this, do you?” Tim asked.

Elliot couldn’t answer that; he couldn’t recall feeling bad about anything, ever. So he answered with someone else’s words: “Conscience is but a word that cowards use, devised at first to keep the strong in awe.”

Tim chewed at his lower lip. “Who said that?”

“It’s from Richard III.”

“You have that underlined?”

Elliot barely kept from flinching that time. “Yeah.”

“Think you missed the point. But that’s all I needed to hear,” Tim said, moving suddenly—too suddenly —for Elliot to realize what was happening.

A rough hand on his shoulder, something knocking hard against his knees in the back, buckling them. He pitched forward, and the wall rushed to meet him.

It was like belly-flopping into a pool, but instead of cold and wet, it was cold and stale. A thick clinging sense of nothing all over him. He spun, though he didn’t know if it was head-over-feet or the other way around.

An invisible hand stopped him, shoved him hard against an equally invisible wall. His head slammed off it; a deafening crack inside his skull, lights behind his eyes the only thing he could see. That cackle, a hundred cackles, shuddered not just through his head, but through his veins.

“You can’t take me,” he mumbled through the confusion. Something wet dripping down his neck, in his hair. It was hard to concentrate on anything else. He shivered, and the icy hand—three times the size of a normal one—pressed harder against his chest. His lungs groaned under the pressure. “We have a deal.”

Stale autumn wind on his cheek: We have a new deal. We take back what we gave you. We give it to the new boy.

Tim’s awful fucking smile.

A cracking in his chest, but not of bones. An invisible barrier gave way, a shock to his soul that wracked his body. The hand pushed through, grabbed at him inside, then drew out his self.

He saw his body in the dark as it dropped to its knees, then fell. He couldn’t even scream.

Tim curled around himself, leaned against a ramshackle stone. The air wasn’t as cold anymore, but he still shivered. He could hear Them inside, eating, still hungry. There was no enjoyment in Them, just ravenous emptiness.

He should have left, but he was frozen. His face felt wet, but he didn’t think he was crying. He just sat, staring at the picturesque mausoleum in the dark and hugging his knees to his chest, reciting snatches of things he’d read over the last week in his head, trying to find the one that would save him. Tennyson was no good anymore, but neither was anything else. And then there was the shuddering feeling he got every time Shakespeare appeared.

When they were done, he heard that voice in his head—the one from last night, cold and silver. You may take him back. We are finished.

The wall before him shimmered, knotwork blurring. Elliot stepped through, looked right through him with electric eyes. Something dark and viscous trickled down his forehead, from his shining hair. His fine, full lips were an appalling shade of gray, chalky skin stretched too tight over high cheekbones and forehead.

Tim’s vision blurred.

Would you like some of what we took from him, or something else? Charm magic, perhaps, to counteract your… defects?

Tim choked a little. “I don’t want anything.”

A moment of silence, a ripple through the air. Confusion.

Tim forced himself to his feet, retrieved his pack. Movements stiff, body numb. He avoided looking at the still-beautiful thing that used to be Elliot. “And I don’t want him back. He’s yours.”

It was important to have standards.

The first few steps were the hardest. Past the oblong stone they’d photographed, past the cigarette butts they’d pressed into the ground. Toward the angel with the crumbling wings and the weathered rocking horse, the weight of his camera bouncing reassuringly against his back.

HUNGER PAINS

Myrrym Davies

Early evening sunlight filtered through slatted ceiling vents, highlighting the cobwebbed rafters with a dim, orange glow. The rest of the attic lay shrouded in shadows; moldering boxes and cast off furniture lining the walls like cloth-draped sentinels, guarding the room’s hidden secrets. Sarah ran the beam of her Barbie flashlight over stacks of dusty crates and discarded sundries, a satisfied grin creeping onto her face.

There was bound to be some cool stuff buried there. It was just a matter of finding a way past those bulky boxes and boring old furniture.

She swung the flashlight in a slow sweep and spied a couple of crates she felt she could squeeze between. Her grin widened to a smile of anticipation as she headed towards the back of the room. Today, she would find something really special.

She could feel it.

Sarah might have missed the box had the beam of her flashlight not glinted off its latches. It lay in the farthest corner of the attic, half hidden behind a stack of brittle newspapers, its leather top coated in a thin layer of dust. Sarah blew a stray lock of dirty, blonde hair out of her face and aimed the light at the box, a grin dimpling her cheek as she inspected its cracked, brown casing and tarnished hinges.

Treasure!

Setting the flashlight on the floor, she grabbed the handle with both hands and pulled. Excitement bubbled in her belly as she dragged the trunk from behind the papers, revealing a row of discolored catches along the front. Images of possible treasures flitted through her mind: photographs, curling and yellow with age; clothes from a forgotten era; colorful costume jewelry. The box could contain anything. She would not know until she cracked the lid and peeked inside.

Sarah released her grip on the handle and circled to the front of the trunk, examining the pitted catches. Four simple lever clasps—easy enough to open, provided they had not rusted shut. She lifted the first three with no trouble and gazed at the fourth, a grin spreading across her dust-covered face. This was the part Sarah loved most: the moment of discovery. She loosened the final clasp, reached for her flashlight and raised the lid.

A cracked, wooden face surrounded by blonde curls gazed up at her from a bed of black velvet.

Cool…a doll!

Sarah shone the light over her newest find. It was a pretty thing, with golden hair and a pink satin dress, and much larger than most of the dolls she owned—about the size of a two-year-old child. It looks really old, she thought, reaching in to prop the toy up. She repositioned the flashlight and studied the wooden face. Cracked and flaking shellac marred the doll’s features, giving it an almost diseased look. The retractable eyelids appeared glued in a half-lidded state, adding to the toy’s sickly appearance. Twin lines ran from the corners of the Cupid’s bow mouth, curving to meet underneath the chin.

Maybe the mouth opens and closes, she thought, brushing a renegade curl from the doll’s face. Like those dummies the ventriloquist guys use. Sarah pressed a finger against the doll’s lower lip, but the lacquered teeth remained firmly clenched. She reached around to the back, feeling for some kind of lever or button that might operate the jaw.

The doll’s eyes clicked open.

Sarah jerked her hand away and giggled, silently chiding herself for being such a scaredy-cat. She shone the flashlight at the doll’s face, taking in its glassy, green eyes. “Cool,” Sarah said, leaning in for a closer look. The eyes were intricately detailed—from the golden flecks in its glass irises to the delicate lashes on the lids.

They almost look real…

“Sarah? Where are you, hon?”

Sarah flinched and craned her head over her shoulder. “Coming, Momma,” she said, scrambling to stand up. A chill washed over her as she considered what Momma would say when she learned of Sarah’s whereabouts. Technically, she was not allowed to play in the attic (not until Daddy could inspect it for spiders, rusty nails and anything else he felt little girls should not be exposed to), but Daddy wouldn’t be joining them until the end of the week, and Momma had made it clear Sarah was to stay out of the way while she unpacked…

“Sarah?”

Sarah sighed and cupped her hands around her mouth. “In a minute,” she yelled.

She stooped to retrieve her flashlight when a dull clack snapped in the darkness. Sarah whirled around and aimed the flashlight at the leather box, thinking the doll might have fallen to the floor; but there it sat, propped against the velvet interior just as she had left it. She eyed the toy, a combination of curiosity and unease tickling her mind.

Something’s different, she thought, taking a step towards the box.

Sarah shone the light over the wooden face and frowned. The doll’s mouth hung slack, the glazed teeth glinting white against the dark, rectangular opening. She took a step towards the box and froze, a definite chill creeping down her back.

The doll’s eyes flashed yellow.

“Sarah!”

Sarah jumped, nearly dropping the flashlight. She fumbled for a moment before steadying her hand to cast a beam of light onto the doll’s face. The eyes glittered green. A burst of nervous laughter exploded from her mouth. It’s just your imagination, stupid, she thought, tucking the flashlight into her back pocket.

Still chuckling, she lifted the doll from the box and made her way to the attic door.

Getting the toy down to the main level took a lot longer than Sarah thought it would. The doll’s large size and unbending limbs made navigating the stairs difficult. Sarah reached the landing between the second and first floors, hitched the doll to her hip, and cautiously made her way down the remaining flight of stairs.

“Sarah? Where is that child…”

Her momma’s diminutive figure appeared in the kitchen door just as Sarah rounded the balustrade, her foot tapping a short-tempered rhythm on the hardwood floor. Behind her, Sarah’s little sister Laurie squirmed in her highchair, chunky fingers gripping a two-handled sippy cup. The baby banged the cup against the tray a few times, then tossed it onto the floor.

“Where have you been, girl?” Momma said, a taut scowl darkening her normally cheerful face.

Sarah had seen that expression a lot since the move.

“Huntin’ treasure,” she said, turning the doll about and holding it up for inspection. “I found a doll. Cool, huh?”

Momma gave the proffered toy a cursory glance and turned to retrieve Laurie’s sippy cup from the floor. “Looks kind of like that old Suzie Sez doll I had as a kid,” she said, placing the cup on the child’s tray. “Only mine was made of plastic, not wood. Where’d you find it?”

“In the attic,” Sarah said, returning the doll to her hip.

Momma crossed her arms over her chest and frowned. “What were you doing in the attic?”

Sarah shrugged and looked at the floor, her toe tracing an invisible pattern on the polished oak planks. “Staying out of the way?”

Momma closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose with a thumb and forefinger. “Look, hon, I’m too tired to argue with you right now, so I’m gonna let it slide this time,”—she shot Sarah an I’m-not-messing-around look—“but you can’t go back up there until Daddy does his ‘safety inspection.’ You know how he is about stuff like that.”

Sarah nodded. “Okay.”

“Good. Now go put that doll in your room and wash up. I’ll make us a couple of sandwiches for dinner.”

Sarah’s stomach grumbled at the mention of food. “Can I have peanut butter and jelly?”

“Sure. Grape jelly okay?”

“Yeah.”

Sarah shifted the doll to the other hip and mounted the steps. She reached the landing at the top of the staircase and turned left, heading for her room. The doll’s wooden cheek rested against her shoulder, its glassy gaze seeming to bore into the side of her neck. Sarah’s scalp began to prickle, as if she really was being watched…

A sharp, stinging pain flared in her shoulder. Sarah grimaced and slapped at her arm, but the doll’s head seemed to be resting on the very spot that hurt most. She pushed at the toy, trying to move it away from the tender spot, and the pain intensified. Sarah twisted her head to the side and gasped.

The doll’s teeth were embedded in the sleeve of her shirt, pinching the skin of her shoulder between its gradually tightening jaws.

Sarah grabbed the doll’s hair and yanked, whimpering as the lacquered teeth scraped across her flesh. Her arm freed, she released the handful of hair and let the doll drop. It hit the floor with a clatter, a faint, yellow gleam shimmering in its eyes, and the mouth snapped shut with an audible click.

Sarah’s legs buckled. Leaning against the wall for support, she peeled back the sleeve of her shirt and prodded the abraded shoulder with the tips of her fingers. The skin hadn’t been broken, but she could see the indention of the doll’s teeth outlining the beginnings of what was sure to be a spectacular bruise come morning-time.

She turned her attention to the doll, eyeing it with a mixture of curiosity and dread. She nudged the doll’s arm with the tip of her sneaker and quickly drew her foot back, half expecting the wooden hand to reach out and grab her. The doll rocked slightly, its eyelids fluttering with the motion. With a shuddering sigh, Sarah picked the doll up and—keeping it at arm’s length—made her way to the bedroom at the end of the hall.

Her mood lightened tremendously the moment she crossed the threshold. Sarah loved her new room. The rose-colored walls and white wicker furniture made her feel like she had just stepped into Malibu Barbie’s beach house. A Disney Princess poster and perfect attendance award hung on the wall, the only adornments she had found time to hang up. White lace curtains framed a large picture window, the gauzy material fluttering lazily in the evening breeze.

Sarah sat the doll in the white rocking chair and knelt down, studying the cracked, round face. Hazy sunlight trickled through the curtains, staining the doll’s teeth a dingy orange. Sarah leaned forward and looked closer, inspecting the lines running from the sides of the mouth. She brushed a tentative finger across the lower lip, as if expecting the mouth to snap open at the slightest touch. Maybe the mouth part is broken, she thought, applying some force to the doll’s bottom lip.

The teeth remained firmly clenched.

Momma’s voice drifted to her from downstairs. “Sarah? You gonna eat this sandwich sometime tonight?”

Sarah rose to her feet. “Coming, Momma,” she said, dusting off the knees of her pants. She glanced over at the rocking chair and froze.

The doll’s eyes flickered yellow and blinked.

Sarah stepped away from the rocker, a rash of goose bumps puckering the skin of her arms. She backed across the room, her gaze never leaving the wooden face. The doll’s eyes—now back to their customary shade of green—seemed to follow her as she moved. Unease settled around Sarah, filling her with a sudden urge to bolt from the room. Turning her back on the doll, she hurried to the door.

A soft click echoed through the room. Sarah paused at the threshold, gripping the doorframe tightly enough for her fingernails to indent the molding. She swallowed hard and craned her head over her shoulder.

The doll’s mouth hung open.

Sarah jerked awake and sat up, a ragged gasp catching in the back of her throat. Groggy, she blinked away the remnants of a nightmare and squinted at the glowing hands of the Barbie clock hanging above the dresser. Quarter past five.

She groaned and flopped back against the pillows. She had not had more than an hour of uninterrupted sleep all night.

A shiver coursed through her body as she recalled the nightmare that had woken her this time—one in which some shadowy predator stalked her through an endless maze of cloth-draped furniture and dusty crates. Sarah was not sure which part was scarier: being lost in the maze or being chased by something she could not see. She shuddered and patted the pillow next to hers, seeking Mr. Roar, the ratty stuffed lion she had slept with since the day she was born. Lions were supposed to be brave, and holding Mr. Roar made Sarah feel more secure.

Where is he?

A soft creak startled Sarah from her search. She sat up and pulled the covers to her chest, her head turning in a slow sweep. The creak came again and Sarah froze, her heartbeat pounding triple-time in her ears. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glint of silver, like moonbeams reflecting off a mirror. Sarah’s head whipped around, eyes widening as they locked on the rocker in the corner of the room.

A girl no older than ten sat in the chair, an oversized doll in her lap and a silver hairbrush in her right hand. Soft moonlight slipped through the window, ebbing and flowing over the girl’s form as she rocked to and fro. Long, blonde curls hung around her face, shadowing her features to an indistinct blur. Seemingly oblivious to Sarah, the girl moved the brush over the doll’s locks, her foot occasionally kicking at the floor to set the rocker in motion.

Sarah cocked her head. “Who’re you?” she asked, her tone more curious than frightened.

The girl paused her brushing. A pair of green eyes shone briefly from behind the wall of curls, disappearing as the girl turned her attention back to the doll. “Amanda," she said, resuming the steady pass of brush over hair. “Amanda Stilton.”

Sarah scoured her memories for a connection and frowned. She didn’t know anyone named Amanda. “Um, I’m Sarah Wilkes. We just moved in yesterday.”

“I know.”

“Oh.” Sarah’s fingers twisted nervously in the hem of the bedspread. “So, do you live around here or something?”

Amanda shrugged, seemingly too absorbed in her grooming duties to respond. Sarah turned her attention to the doll in the girl’s lap. It looked a lot like the one she’d found in the attic. “I like your doll,” she said, more to break the silence than out of any real admiration. “What’s her name?”

Amanda flinched, nearly dropping the silver brush. “Her name’s Beatrice.”

“Cool. Where’d you get her?”

“I found her in the attic.”

Sarah sat up straighter. “Really? That’s weird. I found a doll in the attic too. She’s—” Sarah’s words drifted off, her brow furrowing in confusion. She distinctly remembered setting the doll in the rocking chair when she brought it upstairs. Her eyes narrowed to a squint, trying to see through the wash of shadows hovering around the girl.

“Hey, where’s my doll?”

Amanda either did not hear the question or chose to ignore it. She sighed and held the doll up by its arms. “I hate her, you know,” she said, giving the toy a good shake.

Sarah blinked, confused by the sudden shift in topics. “Hate who?”

“Beatrice,” Amanda snarled, returning the doll to her lap. “She’s mean.”

Sarah’s brow shot up. “She’s just a doll. How can she be mean?”

Amanda tossed the hairbrush to the floor and shook her head, the curtain of blonde locks swaying with the movement. “You don’t believe me, either,” she said, sliding from her seat. “Nobody does.” She walked to the foot of the bed and bent over, disappearing from view behind the wicker footboard.

Sarah pushed the covers off and crawled towards the foot of the bed. “I didn’t say that,” she said, peering over the footboard.

A cold knot of dread twisted Sarah’s stomach as she watched the girl settle, cross-legged, onto the floor. Pale light poured through the window, highlighting the black welts covering Amanda’s arms from wrist to shoulder. A tattered hole in the girl’s sleeveless smock revealed a gaping wound in her belly, her insides bulging through the gash, glittering sickly in the moonlight. Amanda looked up at Sarah and smiled, black ochre oozing from the ragged holes in her face and neck.

Sarah gagged and slapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, my God,” she gasped, her nose crinkling in disgust. “What happened to you?”

Amanda shrugged her shoulders and looked away. “She got hungry,” she said, her voice sounding hushed, as if she were telling a dirty secret.

Hungry? Sarah gulped and gripped the footboard a little tighter. “Who got hungry?”

Amanda picked the doll up and extended it to Sarah. “Beatrice.”

Sarah recoiled as the doll’s eyes rolled in their wooden sockets and locked on her, the irises flaring an incandescent yellow. The mouth snapped open, vomiting chunks of grey, maggot-riddled meat. Sarah shoved away from the footboard, a garbled scream bursting from her lips.

Amanda dropped the doll and stood up. “I told you she was mean,” she said, hoisting herself onto the bed. She crawled towards Sarah, her mouth twisting into a smug sneer. “Now do you believe me?”

Sarah bolted upright in the bed, her bleary-eyed gaze flitting from one shadowed corner of the room to another, seeking any sign of Amanda and her deadly doll. The tick of the Barbie wall clock clicked loudly in her ears, keeping time with the ragged in and out of her breath. She rubbed her eyes and peered at the wicker chair.

The rocker was empty.

Sarah released her grip on the comforter and sighed. Just another nightmare, she thought, settling back against her pillow. Closing her eyes, she rolled onto her side and pulled the covers over her shoulder, trying to shake the nagging sense of alarm growing in the back of her mind.

It felt like she’d missed something—something important.

The rocker.

Goose bumps prickled her arms. She had left the doll in the rocker when she went to bed, and now it was empty. Sarah’s eyes popped open, a gasp hitching in her throat.

The doll stared back at her, its head resting on the pillow next to hers. Sarah yelped and scrambled to sit up, shoving the doll away with as much force as her terrified muscles could muster. The toy slid across the satiny covers and fell to the floor with a thud.

Sarah kicked the covers off her legs and reached for the bedside lamp, her fingers fumbling for the switch. The light clicked on, bathing the room in a soothing glow. Sarah glanced around the room, taking comfort in the light’s revealing glare. Her gaze swung from the walls to the mattress, eyes narrowing as they settled on a handful of fluffy, white scraps.

What is that?

She plucked a piece from the mattress and held it up. It looked like the stuff Momma kept in her sewing box—the stuff she used to fill Mr. Roar when his padding got too squishy…

A giggle stole the moisture from Sarah’s mouth. She froze, the scrap of fluff falling from her hand. The click of wood striking wood sounded from beside the bed and then stopped. Swallowing hard, Sarah crawled to the edge of the bed and peered over the side.

The doll was nowhere to be seen.

A tangle of brown yarn peeked out from under the dust ruffle. Sarah glanced up and down the length of the bed, looking for any sign of the doll. Seeing none, she reached out and snagged the knotted mass from the floor. Tears pricked the corner of her eyes as she held it up.

Mr. Roar’s mane.

Sarah dropped the tattered mane, clambered to the other side of the bed and looked over the edge, searching for the doll. Nothing there. She moved to the end of the bed and peeked around the footboard. The floor was bare.

Where is she?

Sarah shifted uncomfortably, the cold knot in the pit of her stomach twisting even tighter as her brain began to draw the obvious conclusion.

She’s under the bed.

Sarah’s imagination kicked into overdrive, envisioning a pair of wooden hands reaching from beneath the dust ruffle to clamp tightly around her ankle the moment her foot touched the floor. She shuddered, skin crawling at the thought of the doll’s touch.

What am I gonna do?

Sarah gulped and turned to look at the door. If she could get out of the room, she could curl up with Momma until morning. Momma would be more than a match for some old doll.

She squinted at the door, trying to discern the distance between the bed and salvation. One good jump from the edge of the mattress would land her halfway. A few more steps and she would be out the door. Sarah stood up and stepped to the edge of the bed, hands shaking as she hiked the long nightshirt up to her knees. She looked at the door and took a deep breath. Just get out and go to Momma’s room, she thought. Ready? One… two…

Sarah leapt from the bed and ran for the exit, her bare feet slapping against the hardwood floor. The whisper of rustling fabric sighed through the room, spurring her on. She reached for the doorknob, gave it a twist and pulled.

The door would not open.

A scrabbling sound sent a cold shot of adrenaline surging through Sarah’s veins. She glanced over her shoulder, throat constricting as a pair of yellow eyes glared at her from under the bed. Biting back a shriek, Sarah grabbed for the doorknob and pulled as hard as she could. “Please open,” she whimpered, hazarding another glance at the bed.

The doll clambered from beneath the dust ruffle and scuttled across the room like some misshapen crab.

The door popped open with a grating screech. Sarah flung the door aside, stumbled into the hallway and skidded to a stop. She whirled around, jaw dropping at the sight of the ravenous toy tottering towards her, and lunged for the door, pulling it shut. With a soft sob, she backed away, her shoulders bumping into the wall behind her.

Can it open doors? Sarah did not think so, but then she hadn’t thought dolls could eat stuffed animals, either. She tilted her head, listening for footsteps, expecting to hear the rattle of the doorknob any second.

Minutes passed with no sound of pursuit. Sarah stepped away from the wall and tiptoed to the door, pressing her ear against it. A sharp snap followed by a grinding crunch reverberated through the wood panel.

Sarah dropped to her knees and peered through the keyhole, a disgusted frown forming on her face. The doll sat on the floor at the foot of the bed, a length of flesh-colored plastic clamped between its teeth. A shudder rippled down her back.

The doll was eating her Malibu Barbie.

Sarah scrambled to her feet and bolted for the safety of her mother’s room.

A tinny-sounding wail pulled Sarah from a restless sleep. She sat up and blinked at her surroundings, disoriented by the sight of the pale green comforter and bamboo blinds. Across the room a door stood open, revealing a beige countertop littered with an assortment of shampoo bottles and shower gels. The splash of running water burbled from the room.

Oh, I’m in Momma’s room.

The water shut off and Momma exited the bathroom, drying her hands on the hem of her tee shirt. She switched the baby monitor off and sat down at the edge of the bed. “Mornin’, Sarah,” she said, leaning over to pull on her shoes.

Sarah ground a knuckle against her eye and yawned. “Mornin’, Momma.”

Momma finished tying her shoes and stood up. “Wasn’t sure if I was sharing a bed with my daughter or a mule; you kicked me pretty hard a couple of times, there.”

Sarah yawned again and frowned, trying to recall how she came to be in her parents’ bedroom to begin with. She remembered the Amanda dream and some of the scarier parts of the other nightmares she had suffered, but there was something else. Something to do with…

The doll.

The doll had devoured Mr. Roar and her favorite Barbie. It wanted to eat her. Sarah glanced up at her mother, debating whether to tell her about the doll’s carnivorous intentions. She wanted to tell her, but…

An angry wail cut through the walls. Momma sighed and regarded Sarah with a weary frown. “Your sister’s teething again,” she said, wincing at a particularly ear-splitting shriek. “Between her crying and your kicking, I barely got any sleep at all.”

Sarah bit her lip and looked at the comforter. She knew how Momma felt. “Sorry, Momma.”

“S’okay,” Momma said through a yawn. She reached out and brushed a tangled lock of hair from Sarah’s face. “I’m not mad at you, sweetheart. Just tired is all. I don’t mean to be so cranky.”

Momma patted Sarah’s cheek and turned towards the door. “You want some breakfast?”

Sarah slumped against the pillows. “I guess so. Can I have waffles?”

“Sure. Go get dressed and brush your hair. Waffles should be ready by the time you get done.”

“Okay.”

Sarah slipped the covers off and got out of bed. Still dazed, she shuffled out of her mother’s room and headed for the stairs, the tatters of last night’s events flittering through her mind. Maybe I just dreamed all that stuff, she mused, wrapping her fingers around the handrail. She supposed it was possible. Momma always said she had a ‘vivid imagination’. Sarah was not sure what ‘vivid’ meant, but figured it had something to do with the way things always seemed so real to her, even when they weren’t.

She reached the landing and turned to the left, staring at the door to her room.

But what if I wasn’t dreaming? Sarah did not want to risk going in there until she knew for certain. She sidled up to the door, knelt down and peered through the keyhole.

The doll sat in the rocking chair, looking much as it had when Sarah went to bed. Its golden curls gleamed in the early morning sunshine, not a lock out of place to indicate it had even moved, much less eaten her toys. Sarah sighed and stood up.

See? You just dreamed it, she thought, reaching for the doorknob and giving it a twist. The door creaked open. Sarah pushed it wide and stepped into the room. The dresser stood by the opposite wall, next to the window over the rocking chair. She glanced at the doll out of the corner of her eye, and then marched across the room.

The hairs on the back of her neck prickled as she neared the rocker. Don’t look at it, she thought, just get your clothes. You can get dressed in the bathroom. Eyes on the floor, Sarah continued past the chair and opened the bottom drawer of the dresser. She pulled out a pink tee shirt and a pair of shorts, and turned to leave.

A silvery glint caught her eye as she hurried past the rocker. Sarah paused and looked directly at the doll for the first time since she entered the room. The shimmer seemed to be coming from somewhere near the doll’s right side, peeking out from between the satiny folds of the dress. Sarah took a step back and tilted her head.

There appeared to be something in the doll’s grasp.

Chills snaked across Sarah’s shoulders. With a quivering hand, she reached down and quickly flipped back a fold of pink material. The shorts and tee shirt fell from her grasp, forgotten, her eyes widening as she gazed at the object clasped in the doll’s fist.

Amanda’s hairbrush.

The doll’s mouth clacked open. Sarah jumped, her wild-eyed gaze swinging from the brush to the cracked, wooden face. Bits of cotton batting and flesh-colored plastic spilled over the doll’s lower lip and rolled down the front of the satin dress.

Sarah backed away from the rocker, the tightening of her throat reducing her shriek to an inaudible gasp. Not waiting to see if the doll would move again, she turned on her heels and ran out the door.

“Momma!”

Sarah barreled into the kitchen and threw her arms around her mother’s waist, nearly knocking the woman over. The plate of waffles fell from Momma’s hand, crashing to the floor and startling the toddler in the highchair. The baby jumped and began to whimper.

“Sarah! What the hell is wrong with you, child? I—”

Sarah began to babble, the words tumbling from her lips in an incoherent stream of sobs and sniffles. Trembling, she told Momma everything: about the Amanda dream and the doll’s glowing eyes; about Mr. Roar and the silver hairbrush. All of it.

Momma pried Sarah’s arms from around her waist and held her by the shoulders. “Calm down,” she snapped, giving her a little shake. “I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”

Sarah sniffled and explained it again, trying to keep the hiccups and hitches out of her voice with little success. Momma’s brow arched higher and higher as Sarah went on, the look on her face shifting from concern, to incredulity, to one of annoyance. With an upraised hand, Momma cut her off. “Okay, Sarah, that’s enough,” she said, her tone as grim as her expression. She gestured at the teary-eyed baby and the stacks of boxes strewn about the room. “I have a lot of work to do today. I don’t have time to play games right now.”

“It’s not a game!”

Momma sighed and buried her face in her hands. “Look, hon,” she said, massaging her forehead with the tips of her fingers, “I know things have been crazy with Daddy’s new job and the move and all, but you can’t act out like this. I—”

Sarah shook her head, her blonde hair whipping about her face. “I’m not making it up,” she shouted, stomping her foot. She hitched the sleeve of her nightshirt up, revealing the purple bruise on her shoulder. “See? That’s where she bit me!”

Momma peered at the bruise and dismissed it with a wave of her hand. “It looks like a normal bruise, hon. You were digging around the attic all day yesterday. You probably just bumped into something and—”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Sarah—”

“Go upstairs and look if you don’t believe me!” Sarah yelled, slamming a clenched fist against her thigh.

Momma gaped at her, as if shocked by the vehemence of her outburst. Sarah wiped at the tears spilling down her cheeks and fixed her mother with a pleading look. “Please, just go look.”

Laurie shrieked and slammed her fists against the tray. Momma turned and pulled the baby from the highchair, shushing the child with a series of half-hearted coos. She turned back to Sarah and scowled. “Alright,” she said, settling the baby on her hip. “Show me the doll.”

Sarah sighed with relief and led the way up the stairs. Momma would see she was not lying once she saw Mr. Roar’s tattered mane and the chewed bits of Barbie doll. She bounded up the last few steps and opened the door to her room.

“Over there,” Sarah said, pointing to the rocker.

Momma brushed past her and strode across the room. She stopped in front of the rocking chair and looked down at the doll, a confused frown creasing her haggard face. She turned to Sarah and crooked a finger at her. “Come here.”

Sarah hesitated. Even with Momma at her side, she didn’t want to go in there.

“Now, Sarah.”

Sarah gulped and took a tentative step into the room.

Momma’s patience must have reached its limit for she stalked across the room, grabbed Sarah by the upper arm and marched her to the rocker. With a small shove, Momma released her and pointed to the doll. “What am I supposed to be looking at, exactly?”

Sarah looked at the doll and blanched. Its mouth was closed, the plastic fragments and bits of fluff nowhere to be found. She flipped the pink material covering the doll’s hand.

The hairbrush was gone.

“Well?”

Tears welled in Sarah’s eyes. “I… it was just here,” she said, dropping to her hands and knees. She tilted her head and peered beneath the rocker, her hand sweeping the floor under the seat.

Nothing there.

Standing up, she plucked the toy from the chair and shook it, half-expecting the evidence to fall from the folds of the satin dress. Setting the doll back in the chair, Sarah looked up at her mother, her expression pleading for the woman to understand.

Momma sighed and swung Laurie around to her other hip. “Sarah, you’ve got a wonderful imagination—and that’s a good thing to have—but you’re really taking it too far this time. Honestly, girl. A doll that eats toys?” Momma shook her head.

“It’s not my imagination!”

“Look, sweetheart, I’ve really got to get those boxes unpacked,” Momma said, turning to leave. She paused at the threshold and fixed Sarah with a stern look. “No more games.”

Sarah did not trust herself to answer, so she said nothing. She looked at the floor, tears of frustration coursing down her face.

“I’ll call you when lunch is ready, okay?”

Sarah cast a sullen glance in her mother’s direction and nodded.

Momma turned and exited the room, her footsteps growing fainter as she made her way down the staircase. Sarah sniffled and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “I’m not making it up,” she grumbled, crossing her arms over her chest. She turned her head and glared at the doll.

“I hate you,” Sarah spat, her eyes narrowing with revulsion. “I wish I’d never found that stupid box. I….”

Her words drifted off as an idea began to form in her mind. The box still sat in the attic. She could put the doll back inside, lock it up tight and tuck it away behind the stack of newspapers, just like she’d found it. Surely the latches would hold the doll in place until Daddy got around to discarding all the stuff up there.

She would just have to make sure the box made it to Daddy’s junk pile.

Yeah.

A grin found its way onto Sarah’s face. She looked at the doll and, for once, didn’t feel quite so afraid. She scooped up the pants and shirt she had dropped earlier and quickly changed into them. If she hurried, she could…

“Sarah?”

Momma’s voice startled her. She flinched and turned towards the door. “What?”

“Come here.”

Sarah groaned and trudged across the room. She peeked around the doorframe to find Momma standing in the hallway, a stack of boxes balanced in her hands.

“What is it, Momma?”

Momma set the boxes on the floor and turned to Sarah. “I need to put the blankets up,” she said, opening the door to the linen closet. “Laurie’s downstairs in her swing. Keep an eye on her ‘til I’m done, okay?”

Sarah twiddled her fingers. Now that she had a plan, she was anxious to get started, but she couldn’t very well sneak into the attic with Momma standing within easy view of the staircase. “Okay,” she sighed.

“Thanks, hon.”

Sarah headed down the stairs and into the living room. The baby swing sat in the corner of the room, Rock-a-bye Baby chiming from the mobile mounted to the top of the frame. Laurie appeared to be dozing. Her eyes fluttered open as Sarah passed and then drifted closed again.

“Aw, she don’t even need watchin’,” Sarah muttered. She moved a box of Momma’s romance books from the couch and flopped onto the cushions. Tucking a throw pillow behind her head, she leaned back and waited. The minutes crept by. Sarah’s eyes began to droop.

I hope she hurries.

Sarah had not realized how tired she really was until she sat down. She sat up a little straighter, stifling a yawn with the back of her hand and trying to blink the creeping lassitude from her eyes. Sarah did not like taking naps, and she certainly didn’t want to fall asleep before taking care of that doll.

The rhythmic click of the swing seemed to keep time with the lullaby’s tinkling refrain. Sarah leaned against the pillow and yawned again. Her eyes drifted shut even as she warned herself not to fall asleep, too tired to protest when Momma lifted her from the couch and carried her up to her room.

Sarah could not breathe. She struggled against the pressing mass on her chest, her lungs burning with the need for oxygen. The weight shifted, allowing her to suck in a couple of wheezing breaths before settling painfully against her sternum. Her eyes cracked open, widening at the sight of Amanda Stilton’s bruised and bitten face.

“I wish you hadn’t opened the box,” Amanda said, her voice tinged with regret.

Sarah arched her back, trying to shift the girl’s knee from her chest. Amanda clamped her hands around Sarah’s upper arms and pushed herself up, dropping her other knee into Sarah’s stomach. “I didn’t wanna hurt anybody,” the girl said, her blackened mouth twisting into a macabre frown. “I wanted to stay asleep. But then you woke me up and—.”

Sarah tried rolling over, hoping to dislodge the girl, but Amanda’s grip held fast. Gasping for air, Sarah’s eyes rolled in her head.

“—and I’m so very hungry,” Amanda said, leaning forward.

Sarah’s eyes bulged as Amanda’s teeth locked onto her throat, tearing through skin and cartilage with the ferocity of a starving jackal. Pain rippled through her body as the girl jerked her head to the side and ripped a chunk of flesh free. Sarah’s arms flailed—more out of instinct than any conscious effort on her part—and landed a blow to Amanda’s ribs. The girl toppled from her perch and rolled onto the bed. Sarah wheezed through lungs filling fast with blood and tilted her head towards her attacker.

The wooden doll stared back at her, a bloody hunk of meat clenched between its jaws.

Sarah’s vision narrowed as the doll began to chew. In a bemused haze, she watched the stilted limbs bend and flex. The doll’s little hand clamped onto the comforter and pulled, awkwardly hauling itself across the bed, its eyes blazing yellow.

The cupid’s-bow mouth clacked open, and Sarah’s world went dark.

The grating creak of metal on metal pulled Sarah from an endless sleep. Her eyes snapped open, perceived nothing but an impenetrable blackness, and drifted closed again. She hoped the noise would stop soon. She wanted to rest, to return to the peaceful, dreamless nothing of eternal slumber. The alternative was pain.

Pain, and a feral hunger that burned from the inside out.

Another metallic screech pierced the inky confines of Sarah’s mind, followed by a muted pop. Brilliant, white light punched through the darkness, stinging her eyes behind the slumber-laden lids. In the pit of her stomach, the hunger—so long-repressed by the cold comfort of sleep—stirred to life, burning through her limbs like battery acid.

“Wow, what a cool doll!”

Sarah’s eyes cracked open, her half-lidded gaze staring into the freckled face of a chubby red-haired girl. The girl reached into the velvet lined box, propped Sarah up and shined a flashlight in her face. “I think I’ll call you Casey,” she said, running a stubby finger down Sarah’s cracked cheek. “Do ya like that name?”

Sarah’s vision blurred and then snapped into focus, the glassy blue eyes burning yellow with hunger. Her mouth sprang open, the ache in her stomach blossoming into a relentless desire to consume. Only one thing could quell her appetite and stop the searing pain…

Flesh.

…And the red-haired girl seemed to have plenty of it.

FETCHING NARISSA

David Chrisom

Narissa had no idea that her campus was a hunting ground.

Even if she had been warned, she would have called the students’ rumors of “hauntings” mere fantasy. She did not believe in ghosts. Quite the contrary, the halls of Boston’s Mass College of Art were infested by cunning creatures so ordinary in daily appearance that one might have passed one by and never given it a second look.

Certainly, the odds are great that you yourself have looked a Fetch in its face at one time or another. You would remember the honeyed smell of almonds that pervades its breath.

Narissa simply had no idea. Her head was lost in the clouds before she ever learned of such abhorrent creatures as the Fetch.

She was a success in her first year, passing with honors in every class. During her second semester, on the last Monday in January, Narissa decided to skip art history class. This led to missing her English class the same afternoon and ditching an anatomy class every art major was expected to take.

The girl rose each morning that week, dressed in drab clothes to keep the cold off her skin, slipped her backpack through her arms and walked from her cramped sublet to the subway. Instead of riding the T to her stop on Huntington Avenue, which dropped her off at the front steps of the school, she calmly exited the train at the Copley shops station.

By the time the train moved on to Huntington, Narissa stood at a counter in the food court. She ordered a low-fat cranberry-nut muffin and a hot chocolate. She ate her breakfast, wandering past the colossal window displays for Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior. How exciting it must be on the photo shoots with the exotic models in Morocco and Aruba, she imagined.

Narissa longed to be anyplace but dreary Boston on a frigid day.

After she finished the muffin and chocolate, she strolled through Borders bookstore. She would live in a bookstore if it were legal; she experienced an innate tranquility when she surrounded herself with stacks of books. The anticipation of reading a new novel was sometimes better than the actual story that leapt off the page.

Most often, she purchased a new thriller and got back on the train. Reading while she rode the T all the way out to Braintree, she would turn around and shoot back into Boston. Sometimes, she spent the entire day riding the train and reading.

That was before she learned of creatures called the Fetch.

One lazy afternoon, loafing in bed engrossed in a new Dean Koontz novel, a beep from her computer indicated she had received an email:

Hey Narissa. I looked for U after art history let out.

Where are U? Do U have a cold? Can I come by?

I’ll bring the soup this time.

She smiled; the message was sent from her current flame, Noel Berman, a sweet-faced, tawny boy who worked out every morning, perfecting his biceps. He often baited her, playfully quipping, “Do you want tickets to the gun show later?”

Since the first year, they spent most Friday and Saturday nights together. Lately though, she’d found excuses to avoid him.

Narissa had fallen for Noel after they met. He told her he loved her name, because no one else had a name like it. He said, “You’re one of a kind.”

At that time in her life, Narissa had no reason to think otherwise.

She was nineteen years young and careless about almost all things. If funds were low and she ran out of toilet paper, she would snatch a few rolls from the pizza joint restroom behind her apartment. She often forgot to replace detergent in the basement of the sublet and would find nasty, handwritten notes from other students who could not wash their laundry. Your mother doesn’t live here! was her favorite retort.

After Narissa resolved to blow off classes, she also began to withdraw from Noel. She knew he wanted to do something special for Valentine’s Day; she hated that holiday most of all, and she did not want her boyfriend wasting his money on overpriced, dried out roses or an expensive meal in the North End. When she did answer his calls or text messages, she lied, told him it was a flu bug, and promised to see him the following week. She rode the trains all day, reading more books or staring silently at the landscapes whizzing past the windows, wondering where do I go from here? How can anybody feel so alone in a city full of people?

She received an e-mail from Noel:

Glad you’re feeling better. I would love to see you.

Meet me at our bench in the park tomorrow. 6pm.

I’ll bring the guns. XOXO.

Narissa had not contacted him for a week by this point. She missed him, sometimes; the smell of musk that clung to him, his warmth when he held her tight. She assumed that he was being playful, trying to pull her out of her doldrums, in a backhanded, charming way. It was in Noel’s nature that if he ignored an issue, then it really was not a problem for him at all.

It never occurred to her until much later, that Noel might have written in response to someone else’s message.

At the time, she still believed she was one of a kind.

Friday night, Narissa called her Mom. She asked for some money and a care package of dry soups and pasta to be mailed. She sent her love to Dad and their pet terrier, Bugga. Mom begged her to keep warm and come visit soon.

Narissa spent her entire day at the bookstore and came home to read volume one in a fantasy series about a young wizard, apprentice to a dark and powerful warlock. She envied characters in books that could wave their hands and have something magical happen.

Around 6 PM, she remembered Noel’s e-mail inviting her to the park. Tired of reading and with nothing to eat in the apartment besides tasteless crackers, she shrugged her jacket on and bolted from the building so fast, she forgot her cell phone. She’d meant to call or text Noel and alert him that she was running late. He loved her so much, it seemed he would forgive almost anything. Narissa ran a couple of blocks, the cold air slapping at her scarf and made it to the park only fifteen minutes late. She lost steam and halted near the water fountain.

Noel was not alone.

Narissa hid herself in a shadow cast by the stone structure. From this angle, she could easily see Noel seated on a park bench beside a petite figure with black hair, like her own loose, carefree curls.

The stranger was facing Narissa, but her face was cast in darkness. Noel laughed at something the other girl said and the sound of it, the joy of it, cut into Narissa’s heart like a knife. Noel handed the stranger a pink rose, put his arms out and cocooned her against him. Her free hand slithered against his back and squeezed him.

Narissa choked, expelled plumes of icy air. She turned away and put a hand to her stomach. She thought she might be sick, but her belly was empty. It tangled in knots. She felt dizzy and her legs trembled.

A homeless man, reeking of urine, brushed past her and grumbled insane nonsense at her.

She turned, reaching for the fountain, needing to balance herself. Pushing her hair out of her eyes, she looked back towards the bench.

Noel and the other girl had left their seat and were walking away. They still had their arms around each other.

Narissa looked away, eyes blurry with stinging tears, and stumbled back to her sublet.

There was a note taped to her door.

She’d forgotten to buy detergent yet again. Damn it.

That Saturday, Narissa never left her bed. Rain stroked the window overhead and made murky reflections shimmy across her body as she tangled in the covers.

She tried to ignore the next text message from Noel:

Y did U leave before I got up? Next time, wake me up. I miss U.

Narissa’s temples thundered. Her bloodshot eyes burned. She could not escape the pain pounding in her head.

When Noel showed up an hour later, rapping at her door, she opened it. Before he could ask her what was wrong, Narissa’s hand darted out like an irate asp, and struck his cheek so hard the sound echoed in the tiny hall. “Hey,” he cried and pulled away from her.

“Don’t ever talk to me again,” she screamed and slammed the door so hard it rattled.

Noel wrestled with the knob, swung the door open and tried to follow her. Narissa picked up a plate from the pile in the sink and hurled it straight at him. It ricocheted off his face and his body bounced back against the doorframe.

Noel swore at her and put his hands to his nose as the plate clattered to the floor. His brow creased in pain, and his eyes glimmered with anguish as he stared at her. He mumbled something that sounded like “Grow up!” and walked away. Narissa heard him pound down the stairs and the front door slam behind him.

She picked up the plate, pressed it against her chest and wept until she felt empty.

The second week in February, she received an e-mail from Professor Kehoe:

Narissa, your essay mirroring the careers of Claude Monet and Edgar Degas is glorious.

If you don’t mind I’d like to read it aloud to the class this week. I think your clever insight should be shared with the other students.

I’d like to recommend you for a semester abroad at Parsons Paris School of Art.

She stared a moment, nibbled a fingernail, and wrote back:

What the heck? Go for it!

She had no clue what her art history teacher was referring to. She had not written an essay and had been ditching his class for three weeks.

That morning, Narissa dressed and took the train straight to Huntington Avenue. She arrived in the Mass Art Building and took the elevator to the seventh floor, where the class was held in an auditorium with stadium seating.

She took a seat at the very back. None of the other students seemed to care. Noel did not come to the lecture.

Professor Kehoe—a bookish man with a squirrel face—stood at the front of the room and read the essay off his laptop. He pointed out Narissa as the author but instead of looking at her seat in the back of the gallery, he singled out a raven-haired girl seated in the front row. He even had the audacity to call her by the same name.

Her duplicate in the front row chuckled with friends on either side who praised the imposter for her sly opinions of Impressionists.

As Narissa in the back of the gallery stared down at her twin, it seemed to her that insects, like angry gnats, darted and flew around the imposter’s head. They mingled in the locks of her hair as if they nested there. No one else seemed aware of it.

Narrisa, the real Narissa stayed calm and quiet. When the class finally let out, the imposter was rushed away by the wave of student bodies; Narissa tagged behind the group, catching glimpses of the other girl.

The imposter swept past an elderly man who was cleaning the floor, and stumbled over his mop. She turned to fix him with a wicked glare, but as in the park, her hair made her face appear murky, though her eyes glinted with hellfire.

“Der Teufel,” the janitor gasped as the bizarre girl slunk onto an elevator and vanished. He rocked back and turned, his gaze fastening upon Narissa’s distressed eyes. His eyes bulged as she approached him.

She heard him whimper, “Not another one.”

“What did you say?” she asked, as she approached.

“Look at you,” he said. “So young. So weary.”

“I feel fine.”

“So much potential. That’s why it chose you.”

“What? It what?”

“You followed it. It must not have seen you yet. Never look directly in its eyes.”

Narissa took the man by the arm and steered him into a doorway, out of the hall. The janitor had a hearty German accent and she wanted to be sure she understood every word.

“Who was that girl? The one that looked like me?”

“She… it was… a Fetch,” he stammered.

“A what?”

“A copy. Um…have you ever heard of a doppelgänger?”

“A clone?”

“Yes, like that. The Fetch are primeval, restless. They are legends from my homeland. My Oma told stories about them, when I grew up in the Black Forest near Freiburg. She scolded my siblings that if we did not apply ourselves and make something better of our lives, if we wasted our days at play, then a cunning Fetch would step into our shoes and steal our lives away.

“Oma told us they are envious creatures who crave a living, breathing body.”

“That’s crap,” Narissa spat.

“I’ve no doubt that was a Fetch, who dressed like you and wore her hair like you.”

“Bullshit!”

“It walks in your own image.”

“Did you leave Germany to be janitor here in Boston? Is that what your Gramma would consider a better life?”

The old man jammed his lips together and looked pitiful. “When I came to this country I had a career as a broker-dealer. When I was young and carefree. Do you think you are the first student to be singled out by a Fetch? I assure you, Miss, you are not. I have seen them before. I’ve seen the damage they cause.”

He straightened up and stood taller than her now. He grumbled, “Sometimes I wonder if the Fetch followed me here, from the Black Forest. I think… I am to blame.”

“What should I do?”

“The apparition doesn’t need your soul. There are two worlds of life and death. There’s the one we see and know, and the other beneath the grave.” He looked at her intently. “It will want to unite with your body… in death.”

“Screw that.”

“The creature will insinuate itself within your circle of friends. It will revel in your life, be successful, and gain the admiration of others. Its weakness is its vanity.”

“How did this happen to me?”

The janitor turned his back on her. “Take care, Miss.”

The girl suddenly thought of Noel, his nose red from a flying plate. “I have to make amends.”

“You don’t have much time left,” The old man said. “You are already becoming dim.”

A chill crept over her, even though she had no idea what he meant.

The girl tapped at Noel’s door until he opened it.

“What?” He was dressed in the T-shirt she had given him last Christmas and his favorite grungy gym shorts.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I should never have hit you. I’ll never do it again. Please, forgive me.”

“Sweet, but not necessary.”

“Your nose looks okay.”

“And yours is running.”

“Smart ass. Aren’t you going to let me in?”

Noel raised his eyebrows. “Bossy, aren’t you?”

“Hey.”

“Do I know you? Are we in Kehoe’s class together?”

“Noel,” she said quietly, “…it’s me.”

“Hi, you,” he said as he looked her up and down.

“Stop it and let me in.”

“Thanks, but I already have a girlfriend. She gets very jealous.”

Her smirk withered.

“Look, I don’t want any trouble,” he said.

The way he looked at her, she knew it, her boyfriend did not recognize her.

“Go away.”

“I… must be… mistaken,” she muttered bleakly.

“Look, go pester Mike next door. He needs a new girl.”

“I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

Noel shut his door. She heard him turn the lock.

The girl went silent as a mouse, although she ached to bang on that door until it split in two. Something went soft inside her. Her head had been pounding all day and she was exhausted.

She did not want to fight with anyone again.

It walks in your own image, she remembered and shivered.

She turned away and drifted back to her sublet.

She slept for two whole days. On Thursday, she woke at dawn, packed a bag and took the train back to Braintree. She hopped on a bus headed home to Plymouth.

From the bus stop, she walked the four blocks to the neighborhood she grew up in. The Colonial-style homes looked warm and inviting. A heart-shaped wreath still clung to the front door of her house, and she breathed a sigh of relief as she stepped onto the porch.

The door was locked, so she rang the bell. Her mother answered, looking dazed and ill. There was no sign of her terrier, Bugga. He should have been barking his head off in the entryway. Her mother’s eyes were bloodshot and a scarlet wound bloomed on her neck. She stared blankly at the girl and asked, “Can I help you?”

“I’ve got it, Mutter,” a peculiar voice said from the hall. An ashen hand slithered across her mother’s shoulder and pulled her away. The fingers were spindly, its overgrown nails yellowed.

A sparkling engagement diamond adorned its ring finger.

The girl on the porch took a step back as she locked eyes with the Fetch who stood in her home.

“Happy Valentine’ssss Day,” Narissa-the-Fetch sneered. Its voice was sibilant, the breath smelling of rancid almonds. Its skin was parched and torn, sloughing off the cheekbones and neck. The slimy hair was infested with fluttering insects. Both eyes were like orbs chipped from coal. It grinned broadly, and bared fangs filed thin, sharp as nails. A trickle of blood speckled its chin.

In the hallway behind the intruder, the girl spotted her mom and dad standing with Noel. All three of them swayed to some hypnotic tune buzzing in their minds and they all looked pale and sickly. None of them recognized her.

The girl backed away from the door, from her own family.

Narissa-the-Fetch seemed delighted. Its torso undulated as it shut the door and bolted the lock.

The true Narissa did not know what to do next. She looked down and a small sound escaped her parched lips.

Her hand had gone transparent. She could see the boards of the porch clearly through the hollow of her vanishing skin.

The following Monday, a ghostly girl watched Narissa as she left her apartment, running to catch the subway to Huntington.

Narissa looked rapturous in the early morning sun; her skin rejuvenated and lice-filled hair gleaming. Her smile spread wide and her fangs were clenched. Not one person she passed on the street seemed to see her as anything but beautiful, happy, one-of-a-kind Narissa.

She seemed full of life.

But the girl, a shadow now, watched the Fetch and saw through its glamour. The girl lived with eternal, wintry chill now, and regrets for the life she so carelessly let slip away.

A life that might have been hers.

The girl dimmed to a wispy apparition. She shimmered and billowed away, across a crowd of students rushing to class at various colleges in Boston.

Floating along until she was no more.

BEAUTY RITUAL

John Grover

It was after 2 AM. when the chill slithered into Chad’s bedroom and woke him out of a dead sleep. Gooseflesh broke out over his arms and chest as he sat up in bed, his eyes adjusting to the inky darkness.

Chad’s gaze searched the clutter of his room. Something wasn’t right. Simple cold shouldn’t have woken him, especially after all the mixed drinks he’d downed at the Paradise club that night. He turned to the window behind him. The streetlight outside illuminated the glass in amber, revealing a layer of glittering frost.

Frost? In June?

He was almost out of bed when the tap on the wall stopped him. Chad forgot the window as the tap grew louder. His bed was pushed up against the wall, insuring he would never wake up on the wrong side, or so he liked to think.

The strange thing was his apartment was a corner unit and there was no one on the other side of that wall, nothing but the outside of course.

Chad placed his ear to the wall, listening attentively. A smirk formed on his lips as he figured he was probably just suffering from the effects of a hangover that would undoubtedly render him useless when the sun came up.

Suddenly, the wall shook violently. Chad fell back, stunned, his mouth agape. A fissure formed, shooting right down the length of the wall, splintering like a spider web. Debris shot over the bed and Chad leapt to the floor.

A roar pealed through the room as the wall crumbled, and a creature hurled itself to the floor in a giant ball. It rose slowly to a towering height, its body covered in razor-sharp quills.

Azure eyes pierced the gloom and focused on the terrified Chad, who refused to believe what he was seeing. A scream died in his throat, but his legs sprang into action and he dashed for the bedroom door.

The creature howled and he could see it writhing out of the corner of his eye. Intense pain washed over his back and he fell to the floor, his skin ripe with the quills that lanced his back and buttocks like acupuncture needles.

To his horror, Chad realized he couldn’t move as a poison pumped into his flesh. The pain diminished as his entire body went numb.

He heard the creature scale the nearest wall, then drop to the floor beside him with a thud. It turned the helpless Chad over with spindly claws, leaned its grotesque face into him, and thrust a blunt, wet snout towards him. In the meager light, he could see a lipless mouth open, revealing massive tusks and rows of tiny teeth covered in black foam. The creature took hold of his shoulders and climbed atop him.

Unable to move, Chad watched as hundreds of teeth sank into his chest. Not a sound escaped him, but inside he prayed for death and shut his eyes as the beast ate him alive.

Daniel’s eyes popped open and he reached for Jeremy’s side of the bed. “Jeremy?” Where’s he gone to now? He rose from the bed and stepped into the small bathroom just outside the door. After relieving himself, he downed a glass of water and headed down the stairs.

The dining room and kitchen were dark, so Daniel strolled through the living room and stepped into the narrow back hallway. A single door to his right was closed. It was never closed. The room behind it was a small, oddly shaped room that Jeremy used as an office. A lot of these old two or three story houses had whacky little rooms that could barely serve a purpose.

Dim light flickered under the door and Daniel heard a groan on the other side. “Jeremy?” he called, thinking his boyfriend was in some sort of distress until he heard a giggle.

He pushed the door open in time to see Jeremy extinguish a candle and close the glossy cover of a rather large book. “Jeremy, is everything alright?” The faint scent of sulfur wafted past his nostrils.

“Everything’s good, Danny.” Jeremy turned and smiled. He held out his arms and Daniel went willingly into them, the embrace warm and comforting. Over his lover’s shoulder he spotted the book, the title read: Queer Magick. There was a subtitle but Daniel couldn’t make it out.

“Where did you get that book?” Daniel asked with a chuckle. He thought the title was absurd and knew it had to be some kind of joke Jeremy was conjuring up.

“On the internet,” Jeremy replied. “I thought it was very fascinating. I didn’t even know we had our own magic,” he laughed out loud.

Daniel returned his playful mood with his own. “Sounds really hokey to me.”

“Well, it’s just for fun. You know how I like weird and mysterious things.” He tussled Daniel’s hair.

“Cut it out and come back to bed.”

Jeremy ran his fingers down Daniel’s cheeks and stared into his eyes intensely. “You are so beautiful, Danny. I wish I was too.”

“Don’t be silly,” Daniel kissed Jeremy on the cheek. “You are beautiful to me.” He really did believe that. For an older man, Jeremy was in very good shape. So what if his skin was beginning to show signs of aging with a few stress lines? So his chestnut hair had more strands of gray than any gay man he knew. It didn’t matter. He only cared about what was inside, having something real and lasting. That’s why he gave up the scene and the parties to move in with Jeremy six months ago.

“You’re sweet, my love.” Jeremy pulled Daniel to him again and they kissed, deeply. “Okay, let’s go back to bed.”

The morning sun was rejuvenating. Daniel basked in it momentarily before fetching the newspaper off the front stairs and heading back up to their second floor apartment.

He straddled a stool at the kitchen countertop as Jeremy poured himself some coffee, who planted a peck on his cheek before searching for something to eat.

Daniel unfolded the paper and his eyes widened. A flood of emotions rushed through him. His heart fluttered. “Oh my God…” the words tumbled out of him.

“What, sweetie,” Jeremy stopped what he was doing and turned to Daniel. “Danny, what is it?”

“It’s your ex… Chad, he’s… he’s been murdered.”

“Good riddance I say.”

Daniel’s heart dropped, shock nearly crippling him. The newspaper slipped from his hands and for a moment he stared speechless at Jeremy. “How can you say that? Chad was one of my best friends. We were so close before I started dating you. For God sakes he introduced us.”

Jeremy slammed the refrigerator shut. “You have no idea how hurtful he was to me. How he treated me. He told me I was ugly. He left me because he didn’t find me attractive anymore. How do you think that made me feel?”

“I know he hurt you, babe, but Chad wasn’t a horrible person. He didn’t deserve this. No one does.” Daniel’s bottom lip trembled as he finished the sentence.

An awkward silence swallowed the room until Daniel felt his lover’s hands ease gently around his shoulders. “You’re right,” Jeremy whispered in his ear. “That was a bit cold. Sorry, sweetie.”

“It’s okay.” He glanced up at Jeremy noticing how deep the bags under his eyes suddenly appeared. It’s like I don’t know him sometimes.

“I’m going to eat out for breakfast,” Jeremy said. “And do our food shopping. I’ll catch up with you later.” He tussled Daniel’s hair and headed for the front door.

Daniel got up and shuffled over to the living room window. He watched Jeremy get into his car and check his face in the rear view mirror, running his hands over his cheeks again and again as if he was trying to smooth the skin. He ran his hands through his hair a few times then started the car.

What is he doing? A chill slithered up Daniel’s spine despite the growing humidity. A creak caught his attention and he turned to see the office door slightly ajar.

Daniel took the orange line subway to Chad’s neighborhood, where rows of brownstones loomed over him like ruined castles. They all looked the same, silently guarding their secrets. He stopped in front of Chad’s building and took a deep breath before entering.

“I’m not supposed to be doing this,” the elderly landlady said. “The police told me not to let anyone in but I know you and he were so close. Chad adored you. The two of you were inseparable. How could I not let you have one last moment here?”

“I really appreciate this Mrs. Bennington. You don’t know how much this means to me.”

The landlady unlocked the door to Chad’s apartment. Daniel ducked under the yellow crime scene tape and slipped into the room, but as soon as he was in the apartment he wanted to leave. An overwhelming feeling of dread filled him.

Everything looked in its place. Daniel could find no signs of a break-in or violence of any kind. He moved his way to the bedroom and immediately saw the remains of the crime scene. They’d done their best to clean up all the blood but the faded image of crimson still marred the hardwood.

He wanted to vomit, but fought the feeling off as he looked around. Everything looked just as he remembered it. He wandered over to Chad’s dresser and stared at pictures, keepsakes, the retro lava lamp and the baseball cap Chad wore every time he went to the local clubs.

Daniel reached down and touched the cap. “Oh Chad…” his eyes welled up and before he knew it, tears stream his cheeks. He recalled all the nights they spent drinking and dancing until dawn. God, if it wasn’t for Chad, Daniel would have never survived his coming out.

He knew he had to go, he couldn’t stay in the apartment any longer; the feelings came like a tidal wave. He turned to leave and spotted something strange behind the bedroom door.

He closed it and set eyes on what looked like three or four porcupine needles. Daniel bent to his knees for a closer look. They were long quills, impaling the wall and doorframe. What the Christ is this? He tried to pull one out but it wouldn’t budge.

Danny…

Chad’s voice called his name and he gasped, jumping to his feet and looking around the room. There was no one there.

Dusk painted the sky in shades of umber and red. Morgan entered his studio apartment overlooking Tremont Street just as the sun died. In his arms he carried a huge bouquet of flowers he’d bought himself at the corner market.

His breath formed frosty puffs in the air. “Damn, did I turn the AC up too high?” He started over to the air conditioner when the flowers wilted in his hands. “What the…?”

A rattling noise caught Morgan’s attention. Behind him the coat closet door shook. “Okay, is this some kind of joke?” He dropped his bouquet to the floor and stomped to the closet, throwing its door open.

Two azure pinpoints glowed in the darkness. A low growl rose and Morgan’s heart slammed against his chest, his pulse raced and his feet froze. A roar reverberated as a cluster of quills shot out of the closet.

They caught Morgan in the face and he stumbled against the wall. Another bunch soared across the room, pinning him in place. The creature lurched from the closet in a fury and the last thing Morgan saw before his world went black were those azure blue eyes.

Daniel reached the top of the stairs, digging out his key for the front door. As he entered the apartment, he saw Jeremy come out of the office in the back hall and run up the stairs to the bedroom.

Daniel eased the door closed and crept into the living room, and through to the back hallway. He noticed the office door was half closed. He peered upstairs—the bathroom light was on, but everything was quiet. He slipped into the office and saw the book on the computer desk across the room. He shivered as he made his way to the desk; the room seemed colder than the rest of the house.

One of the pages in the book was dog-eared so he flipped to it immediately, the section titled The Darg. He read on: Patron of jilted gay men. A creature of vengeance. Champion of the shunned.

Daniel couldn’t believe what he was reading. It was ignorant and superstitious, none of it could possibly be real. The page went on to describe a ritual involving a summoning beside a drawing of the creature, a hulking beast with pale skin and a body covered in quills. Daniel thought back to Chad’s apartment and what he’d found there. He looked over his shoulder at the second floor stairs. God, who am I living with? No! Impossible! None of this can be true. It’s insane. He would never…

There was more at the bottom of the page about driving the creature out. If the beast should see its own—

“Danny, is that you sweetie?” Jeremy called downstairs.

“Yes, I just got in,” Daniel called and slammed the book shut. He left the office and started upstairs.

“How was your day?” Jeremy asked.

“Uneventful.” He stopped in the bathroom doorway to see Jeremy slathering his face and neck with skin cream.

“I know you think this is silly but I need to do this. I’ll just get even uglier than I am already. I’m only four years from fifty.”

“Oh, Jeremy stop. You’re not ugly. No one thinks your ugly.”

“You’re sweet to say that love, but it’s not true. They all said I was ugly. All of them.”

“Who?”

“Everyone that left me. They refused to stay with me. Even now they still talk about me behind my back. Like I’m just a year away from being hideous.”

“Jeremy, I think you’re overreacting.” In the light of the bathroom, Daniel thought his lover’s hair was a little grayer than it had been in the morning.

“That’s easy for a twenty-six year old to say.”

“Yes, a twenty-six year old that chose you, Jeremy. So you can’t be all that ugly.”

Jeremy smiled a slightly crooked smile and took his hand. “That’s why I love you so much, Danny. You’re such a good person. Why don’t you get comfortable on the bed, I’ll be right in.”

“Okay.” Daniel went to the bedroom and turned on TV to lighten the mood. “I’m just gonna find something funny to watch.”

“Sure.”

Moments later Jeremy came in and eased Daniel back, onto the bed. They kissed and caressed each other, Daniel slid his hand over Jeremy’s face and paused. His face felt dry and brittle like parchment paper. Even after all that face cream?

An emergency news report broke out on the TV. “Morgan Westlake of Boston has been found murdered in his studio apartment this evening.”

“What?” Daniel stopped Jeremy’s kisses and locked his gaze onto the TV screen. “Morgan is dead? Didn’t you date him too, Jeremy?”

“We had a few dates, so what?”

“So what? Two of your exes have been murdered. Doesn’t that bother you?”

“No, no it doesn’t.” Jeremy’s face flushed red and his eyes bulged. “They all had it coming!”

Daniel’s heartbeat quickened. A panicked feeling swelled inside him. He started to crawl off the bed when his cell phone rang. He answered it as Jeremy steamed, whose patience was obviously growing thin. “Peter, calm down what is it?”

“Someone’s killing all the gay men in the city. Zach’s dead too.”

“God, not Zach.” Daniel’s terror grew, his throat dry and his palms damp.

“I don’t think it’s safe anywhere, Dan. What are we going to do?”

Daniel eyed Jeremy. Images of the creature floated in Daniel’s mind. Jeremy’s face looked strange, aged somehow. “It’s going to be okay. Do you want me to come over?”

“No you don’t!” Jeremy snatched the phone out of Daniel’s hand and switched it off. “You’re not leaving me like all the others!”

“I’m not leaving you,” Daniel tried to sooth him. “He’s afraid and he’s my friend. I’m just going to check on him. I’ll come back.”

“You’re lying.”

“Jeremy, you’re overreacting.” Daniel edged himself to the door.

“You’re just like the rest of them!” Jeremy screamed. “You think I’m ugly! Don’t leave me Danny, you’ll regret it!”

Daniel bolted for the stairs, nearly tumbling down them.

“Don’t you leave me Danny! I showed them all, the whole goddamn gay community—and I’ll show you too! All of you, you are the ugly ones!”

Daniel managed to get to the street and make it to the subway without Jeremy in pursuit, ending up at Peter’s, who was more than grateful to see him. Safety in numbers Pete always said, ever since he, Chad and Daniel had narrowly escaped a gay bashing years ago.

Daniel kept his domestic issues to himself and slept on Peter’s couch. All he could think of was Jeremy and the look on his face—a face that appeared to come apart at the seams.

Daniel woke, suddenly cold. He opened his eyes and caught a whiff of sulfur in the air. Peter, no! He stumbled from the couch and ran to Peter’s bedroom, but it was too late.

The entire room was saturated in dark crimson. The walls were covered in quills. Peter was still in bed, nothing more than a shell now, his desiccated skin stretching from one side to the other. Daniel hung his head low and wept.

He’s not going to stop. Daniel remembered the book, the picture of the creature and knew there was no more doubt. Something needed to be done. I need to go back and do something. He’ll listen to me and if he won’t…

Their house was ominously silent. Daniel didn’t even need his key, the front door was unlocked. He looked around for signs of Jeremy’s presence, but knew he would only be in one place. He made his way slowly to the office door and pushed it open.

“You kept your word,” Jeremy whispered as he knelt naked in front of a lone candle.

“I had to come back. You’d only send it after me next.”

“They got to you too, my love. Turned you against me. I knew they would. You think I’m ugly now.”

“You were never ugly on the outside, Jeremy. Just on the inside, and I wish I’d seen that before.”

“Oh Danny, you don’t have to worry about me sending the Darg after you. The Darg is right here.”

Daniel watched in mute terror as quills burst out of Jeremy’s flesh. His body stretched and muscles cracked. He turned, his nose forming a flaring, wet snout and his eyes a burning azure blue.

Daniel raced out of the room as quills whistled by his head, striking the wall. He scrambled up the stairs as the beast trailed him. As he hit the bathroom, the book’s words flashed past his consciousness… if the beast should see its own reflection…

Just as the Jeremy-Darg burst into the room, Daniel went for the medicine chest’s mirror but the Darg lunged for him and the two collided against it, shattering it in a deafening clatter.

The creature pulled Daniel up and hurled him into the bedroom. A howl echoed. It crawled to him like a panther and climbed on top of his chest. A prickly tongue oozed out of its mouth and caressed Daniel’s cheek.

Turning away, he spotted a shard of the mirror still in his hand. He drew his blood-soaked palm before the beast’s eyes and a shriek rocked the room.

There was a thundering roar of fear and anger as it fell backwards and clawed the floor in a fit. Daniel watched as all of its quills crumbled and the creature soared out of Jeremy’s body, leaving him prone on the floor.

Daniel edged his way over and was aghast to see a now gaunt and shriveled man, his skin wrinkled, and eyes deep sunk. Nearly all of his hair was gone. After all of his fears he had truly become what he feared most. Daniel dropped to his knees and wept, not only for Jeremy but for every gay man who feared growing old.

TERRITORY

Kelly M. Hudson

Travis snapped another photo of the barren woods at the foot of the hill and when he did, he saw something small and black dart in-between the trees. He looked up from his camera and stared into the woods but couldn’t see any more movement.

It was probably a raccoon.

But that didn’t make much sense. He hadn’t seen a living thing all afternoon, not even a bird, so it was puzzling that he’d see something now. The woods were only a hundred yards away and any animal out there would surely smell him and stay away.

Unless it was rabid. Travis laughed at himself. The city boy, hard at work scaring the crap out of himself.

He hadn’t always been a city boy, though. There was a time that he had every nook and cranny of his Grandmother’s land memorized. He used to come out here and play, whenever his Dad brought them to visit. Travis remembered conquering worlds, fighting hordes and finding buried treasures. It was all magic conjured by his child’s mind though, and he was always aware, even back then, that nature was like a pretty cat: it was beautiful, but it also had claws and teeth.

He’d come back here this one last time, on the eve of the developers swooping in and bulldozing the woods, to take pictures and document a lost part of his life; the last time he could truly remember being happy.

What he’d found had surprised him a bit and made him more than a little sad. They’d had an earthquake two days ago, which was pretty unusual for Kentucky, and when Travis had walked around, he saw trees uprooted and a couple of cracks in the earth. He dutifully took pictures to record it all as he walked the old paths, reliving the days of yonder one last time before the blades cut up the earth that the earthquake hadn’t, and new houses dotted the land.

Travis checked the picture on his digital camera but couldn’t make much out of it other than the creature was small and black. He brought the camera up, pointed in the direction where he’d seen it, and sighted it again.

This time, the creature stood on its hind legs and stared at him. Travis stared back, too far away to figure out what the animal was.

Then it hissed at him. He heard it, clear as day, as if the critter was standing right in front of him.

Travis zoomed in with his camera and what his eyes saw his mind could not put a name to. The creature was about the size of a small dog, with black fur. Its head was shaped oddly like a horse, and had no lips, just skin pulled back tight at the gum lines to reveal jagged, sharp teeth. It had a small black nose, wet with snot, which quivered as it sniffed the air. Its eyes, big and white like saucers with pin-prick black irises, stared intently through him. It didn’t blink, just fixed him with its gaze and held him there as if he were hypnotized.

Then it hissed again.

Storm clouds rolled in the sky, making the early afternoon feel like dusk. Travis snapped a few pictures of the creature and decided it was time to go.

The only problem was, to get to his SUV he’d have to walk past the creature. Travis looked at the creature again. It reared back and hissed again.

He pulled out his cell phone and looked at it; he could call for help, but found there was no signal that far out.

Well, I can always go around. Travis walked to his right; the woods were close, and ten yards into them was the mound where the old railroad tracks used to run. He would follow that back to the road.

The creature watched him, wary and angry. It continued to hiss but Travis kept a good distance from it. He watched it as he walked, slowly and surely, like this was his land and he belonged there.

The creature went to all fours and cautiously took a few steps towards Travis. He stopped and stared at the creature. It stopped and stared back.

There was a good hundred yards between them, but for some reason, Travis didn’t feel like that was enough. Chills crept up his spine. There was something unnerving about the creature, the way it stared and didn’t blink, the intense malice in those eyes. Suddenly, he was very afraid; he had been curious, but that melted away as he felt the creature hone in on him, mark him in some strange way, and Travis went from reminiscing photographer to prey.

Screw that thing, Travis thought. I’m a man, something to be feared. No little creepy-looking bastard was going to make him feel uneasy.

Where the bravado came from, Travis couldn’t say. But it made him do something stupid, and he picked up a rock by his feet, chucking it at the creature. Of course the rock missed, but it was enough to infuriate the little thing.

It hissed and dashed at him, its feet clawing at the dirt as it tore through the brown grass. Travis screeched and ran, sprinting into the woods.

The creature gained on him. It had stopped hissing and sped along, sliding over the ground like a bobsled over ice. Travis ran, casting glances over his shoulder, but he knew he wasn’t going to make it to the road before the creature caught up with him. Hell, he wasn’t even going to make it out of the woods.

He found where the railroad tracks had been and ran along them, his mind clamoring for ideas, for something that would help him out. He looked around, his eyes searching for anything that could work as a weapon. All he saw were a few rocks and some branches. They would have to do.

Travis stopped and bent down. He grabbed another rock and threw it at the creature and this time, he hit home. The rock struck the thing in the head with a terrific, hollow thunk and the creature screamed, falling over sideways. Travis wasn’t sure if he’d killed it or not and he didn’t care. He turned and ran as hard as he could through the woods.

Behind him, he heard the most God-awful howl he’d ever heard in his life. He used the sound to spur him on, to run faster, to get to the road and to his truck so he could get the hell out of there. What used to be a land of comfort and fun for him as a child, had turned into a territory of terror.

Through his heavy breathing, through the sounds of his feet thudding through the woods and the cracking of dry branches, Travis heard another sound. Sounds, actually. Despite his fear, he turned to look, and instantly wished he hadn’t.

Dotting the woods were over a dozen of those creatures, same as the first, and they were all hissing at him, now.

Travis screamed. The howl from the thing had brought others to its side and they sprinted, like a wolf pack, after him.

He could hear them, their little feet, scrambling over the dirt and dried grass and small twigs, scampering and clawing and hissing, hungry for his blood. He heard them close the distance in seconds, gaining on him, just as he could see his truck, not more than fifteen feet away, sitting there like a beacon of safety.

Travis dug in and ran harder than he had since he was a kid, literally running for his life. And still they gained.

He could feel the hot, foul breath of two of them as they ran right on his heels, snapping those teeth together. It sounded like green-sticks breaking as they gnashed their teeth, and they hissed, their spit splattering on the back of his pantlegs.

The truck seemed a long way away, like in those dreams, when someone runs from the terrible monster, but they get nowhere as the beast closes the space between them.

And then, suddenly, he was at the door and fumbling for his keys, desperately trying to get inside, to safety. His cell phone tumbled from his pocket and shattered on the road.

One of the creatures bit into his ankle.

Travis screamed as the tiny teeth burrowed into his flesh, tearing it, coming together, and then yanking back, ripping a chunk of sock and meat from just above his ankle bone. He kicked the creature, knocking it squealing to its back, and stuck his keys into the lock.

The other creature leapt, landing on his right thigh, arching its spine, throwing its head back and baring its teeth. It was about to bite him when Travis swung, back-handing the creature like he would a tennis ball, knocking it off before it could sink its teeth. He turned the keys in the lock, threw the door open, tossed himself inside, and slammed the door behind him.

He sat there, panting and sweating, blood pouring from his ankle and pooling onto the floor. All around, outside the truck, Travis could hear them circling, clawing at the metal, shrieking and hissing, looking for a way in.

He laughed to himself. He wasn’t sure what they were, but he’d beaten them here, and he was going to get away. They’d gotten a piece of him, but they wouldn’t get any more. When he got a good distance away, he’d call animal control and report the incident, and then he’d go to an emergency room. The words “rabid squirrels” went through his head and he thought maybe he’d go to the hospital first, instead.

The front of the truck rocked as first one, then two, then three of the creatures leapt onto the hood. They stalked to the windshield, hissing and spitting; one squatted and pissed.

“Screw you!” Travis screamed.

One of the three flung itself forward and slammed into the glass, snapping its neck. Travis laughed and then a second one did the same thing, hitting the same bloodied spot. He stopped laughing when the third broke open its head ramming into the same spot, because when it did, the windshield cracked just a tiny bit.

Four more launched themselves up on the hood and stalked around, staring at their dead brethren and then at Travis, their eyes big and unblinking, full of hatred.

One after another, they charged the windshield, killing themselves as the crack grew wider and longer. They worked together, like a pack, of one mind and purpose. They would do whatever it took, however many had to be sacrificed, to get what they wanted.

And what they wanted was Travis.

He sat up, more terrified than ever, as he heard creatures climbing up the sides of the truck, their nails digging in and scraping the metal. He put the keys into the ignition and cranked the engine.

It didn’t start.

Cursing, he turned the key again. The engine roared but didn’t catch.

“Goddamnit!” Travis shrieked and pounded his fists on the steering wheel. He was trapped in there, miles from any help, and he was going to get torn to bits by these things. All because he threw one rock—one stupid, stupid rock.

He turned the key again and this time, the engine caught, turned over and ran. Travis screamed his triumph and put the gas pedal to the floor. The truck lurched forward and he felt a sick satisfaction as he heard at least three of the creature’s crunch under his tires. The ones on the hood screeched and slid, their claws scratching for purchase. Instead, they slipped, skimmed over the hood and fell off.

Travis looked in his rearview and watched as the survivors, at least half a dozen of the creatures, ran after the truck, trying to keep up. By the time he reached the bend in the road a half a mile away, they had given up and disappeared.

He sighed and relaxed, feeling the breeze from the rear window gently kiss the back of his neck. His ankle throbbed and every muscle in his legs ached, but he’d made it, he was alive, and they hadn’t gotten him.

That wind feels good, he thought, as it cooled the back of his head.

The wind from the open window.

The. Open. Window.

A creature reared up in the back seat, standing on two legs, hissing at him, baring its fangs. Hot, rancid breath came from its mouth, filling the truck with its stench.

He’d left the rear windows cracked open when he left on his hike because it had been warm out. In the mad scramble and panic of being stalked, he’d forgotten all about it.

Travis slammed on his brakes and the creature flew forward, smashing into the back of the seat, bounced off and hit the floor. He hoped beyond hope that it had broken its neck like the others had, against the windshield. Then it hissed again.

His ankle burned. He was alone in his truck with one of those things and he had to do something to kill it. His eyes roved frantically over the front seat, looking for any kind of weapon, but just like in the woods, he was out of luck.

The creature clawed up the back of the seat and hissed right next to Travis’s ear. He screamed as the creature flung itself around, and tried to get to his face.

He fell against the steering wheel as he tried to protect his face from the claws and teeth that were snapping and clacking less than an inch away.

He’d gotten lucky, catching the creature as it hurled itself, but it was close—too close—and its claws were ripping his hands and its teeth were biting, tearing out chunks of flesh around his knuckles.

Travis screamed and squeezed its body, digging in with his own fingers. Travis lifted it, twisted his body, and bashed the creature against his dashboard. He raised it again, and slammed it against the steering wheel, cracking its spine. The creature screeched, spasmed and died. He threw the body to the floorboards on the passenger side.

Dripping with both his blood and that of the creature, he panted as he looked at its corpse. At least now he’d have some proof.

Travis put the car back into gear and drove on. His ankle and hands hurt where he’d been bitten, and he needed immediate help. It started to rain, and he turned on the wipers, the pulsing pain in his ankle and the throbbing in his hands matching their rhythm. At one point, he feared he’d faint so he rolled down the window and stuck his head out for some fresh air. For a second, he feared that more of the creatures had hung on somehow and were waiting to pounce, but nothing happened.

His eyes began to fog over and he felt sick to his stomach. His head grew heavy and lolled on his neck a couple of times as he almost passed out. He rolled down all his windows as the agony of his wounds grew hotter and more painful.

Travis looked down at his hands, seeing they were swollen so bad that he wondered how he was even using them. They were huge, fire ant red and the way his ankle felt, he figured it must look the same.

He grew more and more delirious. He wondered if those creatures had some kind of poison in their bite and he reckoned that they must have, for his body to be reacting like it did.

It took Travis, feverish and confused as he was, more than half an hour to drive to the city, less than twelve miles from where he’d stopped. His truck crawled along as he fought to stay conscious and on the road. Dozens of cars passed him, blaring their horns and cursing him; he didn’t care. I have to keep going, get to the hospital, get some help.

On the outskirts of town, at the beginning of the suburbs that ringed the city, he passed out, steering his truck into a row of cars parked along the side of the road. He didn’t remember sitting up and stumbling from his truck, he just knew that all of the sudden, he was outside and laying on the cold hard ground. It had stopped raining and the day had warmed slightly.

A hundred yards away, Travis heard a sound, like the chattering of squirrels. Travis looked up and saw that he was in the yard of a Day Care Center, and that twenty or so little kids were out in the playground, laughing and swinging and carrying on. None of them noticed him. Travis smiled. He liked kids.

He needed help. He would crawl to the Day Care and get one of the attendants to call an ambulance.

Travis couldn’t feel his legs or his arms anymore. They were numb and swollen and he looked at his hands and couldn’t believe that they used to be hands because now they were useless stumps of red fat. He rolled over and looked down at his bitten ankle. It was nearly the size of a basketball and as he stared at it, the flesh pulsed like a heart was beating underneath it.

Travis laughed, knowing he was going to die. He was out of his mind, giggling hysterically.

He heard a wet rip and looked down at his ankle. The swollen flesh had burst open and gobs of pus and green mucus was pouring from the wound. There was something else in there, too, something small and black moving in the gunk gushing from his leg.

Travis screamed when he realized what it was, what they were, and what the bites had really done to him. He screamed again when his hands burst open and a dozen of those creatures poured out of the slime and spilled onto the ground.

The bites of the creatures hadn’t poisoned him, they’d impregnated him.

Travis watched as the dozen creatures from his ankle squirmed and grew and hissed and joined their brothers, born from his hands. They looked at Travis, those little eyes big and staring and full of malice, and Travis knew what remained of him was their lunch.

The kids in the playground squealed as they played their games and the eyes of the creatures moved from Travis to the kids, a hundred yards away, riveting in with hunger and lust.

Travis screamed one last time as the creatures scrambled across the field towards the Day Care, ready to kill, eat, and impregnate. He coughed blood pouring from his mouth, and then Travis screamed no more.

A LITTLE HELP IN THE KITCHEN

Jeff Parish

Charlie dug through the closet by the front door yet again. None of his previous—and very thorough—searches had borne any fruit, but tonight was bowling night and he knew this was where he’d put his ball after last week’s match. Might have to use one of the lane’s balls tonight. He shuddered at the thought.

“Vera!” he shouted. Charlie scratched his head, careful not to disturb the few tendrils of gray hair he’d coaxed across his bald scalp. He could hear pots and pans rattling in the kitchen, but she didn’t answer. “Hey, Vera!”

Still no answer, although a sudden clatter said the clumsy cow had dropped something. As much as I’ve spent on her stuff in the kitchen, you’d think she’d take better care of it. He scowled and slapped his round gut in agitation. “VERA!”

She finally appeared around the corner, wiping greasy hands on the apron cinched tight around her waist. A few strands of black hair had escaped her bun and patches of flour dotted her forehead and nose.

“What?” his wife said with an exasperated sigh. Dark circles discolored the skin under her eyes; she hadn’t gotten any sleep the night before. Serves her right. She should have gotten started sooner.

“Don’t take that tone with me, woman.” He hitched his pants up. “Where’s my bowling ball?”

“Did you look in the closet?”

“Of course I looked in the closet. You think I’m some kind of moron?”

“I’m sorry, dear. I really don’t know where it is.” She flapped her hands toward the kitchen. “Don’t you think you should stay home, anyway? They’re going to be here tomorrow, and we’ve still got a lot to do to get ready.”

“You’ve got a lot to do, you mean. I’ve got a bowling team counting on me tonight.”

“Come on, Charlie. This is your family we’re talking about. This house is going to be packed. I could use a little help in the kitchen if we’re going to get this turkey done on time.”

Charlie shook his head. “We’ve been over this before, Vera. The kitchen’s your responsibility. I don’t know the first thing about the stuff you do in there. I’ve dropped a lot of bread for appliances and whatnot over the years, how about you show some appreciation and use it?”

Some brief emotion flared across her face. On anyone else, he might have called it rage or even hatred. She’s probably just tired. Then it was gone, swallowed in weariness so quickly he wondered if he’d seen it all. “Alright,” she said and sighed.

Turning back to the closet, Charlie scratched his head again. Where is that thing?

“I think I found your ball,” Vera said behind him.

“Well, let me have it!” He turned just in time to catch a rolling pin between the eyes.

Groaning, Charlie woke to a massive headache and the sound of metal rasping against metal. Every scrape sent another bolt of pain through his head. Even the light filtering through his eyelids hurt. “Vera,” he whispered. “Whatever you’re doing, quit it.” He tried to rub his head, but couldn’t move his arm. He tried wiggling; he couldn’t move anything but his head. Something held him immobilized against a hard surface. He opened his eyes. “What’s going on here?”

“Oh, good. You’re awake.” Vera swam into view. She held a large knife in one hand and a sharpener in the other. She gave the blade a few more licks, set both on the counter and smiled. “I’ve been thinking. It’s all my fault you don’t know how to help out in here. You’ve bought me all these wonderful tools for my kitchen.” She gestured behind her. Charlie tilted his head, but couldn’t see past his gut. “I appreciate all you’ve done for me, I really do, but I guess I’ve never really told you. Time to make that up to you!”

As she talked, Charlie twisted his head. A glance at the windows showed night had fallen. He lay on the dining room table; boards bolted to the sides held his arms out, secured with belts and rope. He figured his legs had been tied down in the same fashion. What is that woman up to? A stinging slap brought his attention back to that woman.

“You’re not listening, Charlie. That is quite rude.” She scowled down at him.

“Sorry,” he muttered, tugging at the restraints. They refused to budge.

“Quite alright.” The bright smile returned. “I was just saying that I thought the best way for me to show my appreciation was to teach you how all these things work. How does that sound to you?”

“Great, great.” He pulled his right leg. Did it give a little?

“Wonderful!” She clapped her hands and walked out of his field of vision. Something slid off a countertop, and she returned carrying what looked like a long metal stem holding a round dial. “This is a meat thermometer. You use it to check the internal temperature of your meat so you can tell if it’s done all the way through.” She smiled at him. “I believe you bought this… three years ago. Thank you!”

Vera jabbed the pointed end deep in his left thigh until it dug into his femur. Charlie screamed and arched his back off the table, he could see the dial wobbling back and forth as he thrashed. Her hand chased it for a moment before catching hold of the stem and yanking it free. Blood dripped from the end. “Clumsy me. I am so sorry about that.”

“What is wrong with you?” Charlie fell back against the table, panting.

“I honestly don’t know. I guess I just got in a rush.” She stabbed his other thigh, and he shrieked. “There. That’s better. You’re not supposed to let it hit bone. You can’t get an accurate reading that way.”

Eyes bulging, he watched his wife lean over and study the dial. “Around ninety-nine degrees. Well, you’re not exactly a pot roast, but at least we know you’re healthy!”

She reached over and grabbed the large knife she’d been sharpening earlier. Charlie tried to shrink back into the table. “A butcher knife? W… wha… what are you going to do…” He cut off, trembling and sweating.

“You really don’t know anything, do you? This is a chef’s knife.” Shaking her head, Vera tsked and set the blade back on the counter. She disappeared for a moment, then returned with one hand at her side. In the other, she carried what looked like some sort of blowtorch, which she set on the table. “This is a butcher knife.” She lifted something that looked more closely related to a hatchet than a kitchen utensil. “They’re really quite different. This one is all about chopping.”

Charlie couldn’t catch his breath or take his eyes off that rectangular blade glittering in the fluorescent lights.

The butcher knife rose overhead. Its blade cut through the air and buried itself in the board supporting his left hand with a solid thunk. Four fingers bounced off the quivering wood and pattered to the floor. Blood spurted across the blade and Vera’s white apron. Charlie screamed and pulled against his bonds.

“Oops,” Vera said. “Missed one.” She wrenched the blade free and chopped his thumb off with two quick swipes. More blood flowed, making her frown. “That’s a big mess you’re making here, Charlie. Just one more thing for me to clean later, I suppose. But for now…”

Retrieving the blowtorch, she clicked a switch, and blue flames jetted from the tip. “I never had much use for this cooking torch, but I got to tell you, I’ve always had a lot of fun playing with it.”

Charlie whimpered and struggled harder. His head whipped from side to side, and his shrieks renewed, louder than before, as she ran the fire across his maimed hand. He gagged at the smell of roasting meat. He barely heard Vera trying to tell him something, but couldn’t make it out past the sound of his own screams and the agony burning up his arm.

The butcher knife hitting the table by his ear caught his attention.

“You are making entirely too much noise, Charlie. I’m glad we live out in the country — I hate to think what our neighbors would say if they could hear you being such a baby. But I am not going to try to talk over you, either.”

He closed his eyes as Vera walked away from the table, breathing in ragged gasps. They opened when a wet, foul-tasting cloth forced itself into his mouth. He tried to spit the dishrag out and gagged when Vera jabbed it back in. A ripping sound came from somewhere over his head and he caught sight of a flash of dull silver as she slapped duct tape over his mouth.

“There. That ought to do it!” She wiped her hands on her apron and picked up the triangular knife. “Now, as I was saying: This is a chef’s knife. This is the sort of thing you use to cut up vegetables, such as celery or carrots.”

She placed the handle in her palm and gripped the rear part of the blade between her thumb and forefinger. Walking around the table to his right side, she placed the tip of the knife on the board and angled the blade above his index finger. Charlie gave a muffled scream and balled the hand into a fist. Vera sighed, reversed the knife and stabbed it through the back of his hand. Blood welled and spilled around the blade as his fingers splayed out.

“This won’t work if you won’t cooperate.” She studied his hand. “You know, that probably wouldn’t have made a very good demonstration, anyway. Those knives aren’t made to cut through bone.” She tapped her chin with one finger, leaving a bloody smear behind. Then her face brightened. “You know, I’m really jumping ahead of myself right now. You need something a little more basic.”

Jerking the butcher knife free of the tabletop, she lopped off his thumb, index, ring and pinky fingers. Tears leaked from Charlie’s eyes as she cauterized the wounds. He tried to move the hand, but the blade of the cooking knife held it in place. Vera reached into her apron and pulled out what he thought was a small knife at first, then she turned it, and he saw the blade was curved rather than flat, and there was a long slot in the center.

“This is a peeler,” she said, twisting the contraption before his eyes. “You use it to scrape the skin off of carrots and potatoes.” She grabbed his remaining middle finger by the first joint. “You’re lucky this is a new one. They get really dull and hard to work with after a while.”

Holding the peeler horizontally, she made a swipe down the length of his finger toward the wrist. A chunk of flesh flew free and hit his cheek. Charlie yelped, the first in a long string of cries as she worked the peeler. Gobbets of meat and blood spattered the board and his arm, as well as Vera’s hair and face. She peeled the finger until all the skin and muscle was gone. Charlie shivered at the feeling of steel scraping along the white bone protruding from what remained of his right hand.

“There you go! All clean.” She pulled the chef’s knife free, dropped the peeler back in her apron and pulled out a smaller knife. “This is called a paring knife. It’s really useful for more delicate situations where a peeler won’t work.”

She walked around to the other end of the table, dragged a chair over and sat down in front of his feet. Her breath tickled his toes as she pulled off his right sock and shoe. He craned his neck, trying to figure out what she was up to, but all he could see was her hair peeking over the swell of his belly. He forgot all about trying to watch at the first prick in the sole of his foot.

A burning line ripped down the middle from the ball of his foot to the backside of his heel, painful even in comparison with the agony throbbing in both hands. Vera’s studious face came into view as she made another cut, this one around the foot just beneath his toes. Tears streaming, he tried to yell through the gag, to beg her to stop. Another slice around his ankle, and then a slit up the top side of his foot. Surely she wouldn’t… Thought fled as he felt fingers hook into the cut in the arch of his foot, ripping skin free with a yank. She peeled his foot like a grape, using the paring knife to separate skin from muscle when it wouldn’t pull off.

Pressure suddenly left the lower half of his legs, and it took Charlie several seconds to realize Vera had untied his shins. He relaxed on the table, weeping, his breath whistling through his nostrils. Thank God it’s over. It had to be. What more could she possibly do to him? Why hasn’t she untied the rest? He heard a slapping sound and craned his neck to look at his wife.

Vera stood by his left knee. She held steel mallet with a spiked head, smacking it into her palm. He recognized that one. What does she want with a meat tenderizer?

“I know you like to think you know how to grill outside, honey, but I’ve got to tell you, you really haven’t been doing a very good job of it. You need to use this thing more often, like this.” She swung the tenderizer like a carpenter driving a nail. Pain bloomed in his knee with the first blow. At the fourth, he felt the joint give way. The other knee only took three strikes to break. Then she disappeared.

Charlie held his breath, afraid to see what she might bring back this time. He started to laugh hysterically with relief at the sight of the small metal tray she carried by its handles. Is she going to bake cookies? His hysteric mirth withered as she angled the tray. The bottom contained a series of scooped holes. A cheese grater, not a tray. She set it on the table and yanked his pants leg up past the knee. He groaned at the pressure in the injured joint. When she placed the grater on his shin, he shook his head side to side.

“Oh, come now, Charlie. In thirty years, I’ve never seen you use one of these things. What kind of teacher would I be if I didn’t show you how?”

Leaning on his leg, she ran the utensil down his shin like a plane. He screamed around the rag in his mouth. He could feel blood running down his leg with every pass. Occasionally, the cheese grater would bind and she would yank it out of his leg and tap it on the side of the table. She worked every side of his leg until the gouges scored along bone. Once she was done, she grabbed the cooking torch and sealed off the edges of the wound.

Charlie couldn’t scream anymore; his voice had long since failed. But he cried when Vera wrenched the leg up and showed him the twin bones gleaming wetly in the kitchen light, the white darkened to black at the ends where she’d cauterized what remained of his leg.

Holding the ankle with one hand, she reached into her apron and pulled out what looked like the world’s biggest, most evil set of nutcrackers. She threaded one of the jaws between the bones in his leg and closed it gently around the smaller of the pair. She looked up at him and giggled.

“I have to be honest — I’ve never used these before. Just haven’t had a chance.” She sighed. “Remember when you gave me these shell crackers? It was what, five years ago, for our anniversary? You promised lobster that night and every night for a week after. I always wondered why you never actually bought any. Oh, well. At least I finally found a use for them.”

She gripped the jaws in both hands and twisted. Charlie watched as the bone bent then splintered with a sound like a green tree branch snapping. Vera wrapped the shell cracker around the other bone. It took more effort. She wrenched it back and forth and leaned on his foot before it crunched. As his shoe-clad foot hit the floor, Charlie found he could scream after all.

He kept right on screaming until he passed out.

Charlie woke up still screaming, the feel of cold steel punching into his gut. Eyes flying open, he found a two-prong carving fork stabbed into his bellybutton. Vera tapped the handle with a carving knife, sending painful shivers into his abdomen.

“I think our lesson’s nearly over, dear. I just wanted to show you a couple more things. First, we’re going to discuss proper carving. If you’re going to assume the job of cutting up the turkey at holidays, you really need to learn how to do it right. The way you’ve been hacking at it is quite embarrassing.”

She laid the knife’s slightly curved edge next to the fork. Blood welled as she made a wide, shallow cut that followed the contours of his stomach. The world went gray once more, but the pain of her carving kept him alert. He watched in horror as she made a ring of slices around the fork. She carefully lay each flap of skin and muscle back before moving on to the next cut.

When she finished and walked off, Charlie found himself staring at loop after loop of exposed intestine. The smell made him gag, but he couldn’t turn away or stop his eyes from following the labyrinth of grayish-pink coils.

Huffing with exertion, Vera returned and dropped something heavy on the table. He yelled in pain as his guts jiggled in response. She wedged something cold under his back that pressed against his side just below the ribcage. Charlie turned his head and found himself looking at a mixer she’d begged him to let her buy last year. A sort of angular hook protruded from the head, which had been tilted back just far enough that it barely missed his intestines.

Vera popped back into view, beaming at him. “You’ve been an excellent student, Charlie. I think you’re ready to learn how to use a mixer.” She tapped the hook. “This is called a dough hook. You use it for making bread. You put all the stuff in a bowl, then lower the head and turn it on.”

The dough hook punched through his guts as she dropped the mixer down, and Charlie writhed in pain. She flipped a switch, and the hook whipped into action, spinning in an elliptical pattern, coiling intestine around itself, then tearing it out. Digested food and flesh flung out of the hole in his belly, spattering everywhere, including over Charlie and Vera.

“The mixer has ten speed settings, but I don’t have time to show you how they all work,” she yelled over the humming mixer and her screaming husband. “Your family’s coming tomorrow, and I’ve still got a lot to do. I’m just going to have to show you the high setting.” She turned to go, then paused and spun back.

“Silly me! I nearly forgot. I found your ball. Turns out it was right here in the kitchen.” She dropped his red monogrammed bowling bag on the table between his legs. Humming to herself, patting a few stray hairs back into their bun, Vera disappeared from Charlie’s sight.

Contributor Biographies

Aaron Polson currently lives in Lawrence, Kansas with his wife, two sons, and a tattooed rabbit. To pay the bills, Aaron attempts to teach high school students the difference between irony and coincidence while cultivating a healthy relationship with the works of William Shakespeare. His stories appear in Necrotic Tissue, Albedo One, Space and Time, and other venues, and have featured magic goldfish, monstrous beetles, and a book of lullabies for baby vampires. You can visit Aaron on the web at aaronpolson.blogspot.com.

Natalie L. Sin is a horror writer living in the Midwest. Her stories have appeared in numerous print and online publications. When not writing Sin enjoys B-horror movies, abusing Youtube, and large amounts of coffee.

Gina Ranalli is a New Englander by birth, and currently resides in the emerald green heart of Washington State, where she enjoys consuming copious amounts of caffeine, playing with her animals and generally acting like a hyper seven-year-old.

David Dunwoody is the author of Empire as well as the collections Unbound & Other Tales and Dark Entities. His zombie tale Nevermore appears alongside Kim Paffenroth’s Orpheus and the Pearl in Belfire’s first “Duel” Novella. Dave currently lives in Utah and can be visited on the Web at daviddunwoody.com.

Benjamin Kane Ethridge’s fiction has appeared in Doorways Magazine, Dark Recesses, FearZone, and others. His dark fantasy novel Black & Orange was released on Halloween 2010 and has gotten an excellent reception. Ben lives in Southern California with his wife and daughter, both adorable and both worthy of better. When he isn’t writing, reading, video-gaming, he’s defending California’s waterways and sewers from industrial waste… and Nightlids.

K.V. Taylor hails from the foothills of West Virginia, but currently lives in the DC Metro area with her husband and mutant cat. Her short fiction can be found at kvtaylor.com, and her first novel, Scripped, is forthcoming from Belfire Press in June 2011. She edits for Morrigan Books and collects The Red Penny Papers in her dining room.

Myrrym Davies is an up-and-coming horror author from northwest Georgia, and serves as the senior editor for Graveside Tales Publishing. Her short fiction has been published in various magazines and anthologies, including Necrotic Tissue, Best New Zombie Tales vol. 2 from Books of the Dead Press, Horrorology from Library of Horror, and Ladies & Gentlemen of Horror, 2010 from Sonar 4. For more information, please visit her website: www.myrrymdavies.com.

David Chrisom never missed Creature Features as a child–even when the Mushroom People or the Giant Leeches attacked. Collecting ghost stories and living in a haunted castle one day are his greatest passions. He is thrilled to be a part of this anthology. He has also written stories about vampires, fetches, banshees and zombies. The first of these, titled So Fair and Foul a Day was published in the 2009 anthology Northern Haunts. He blames the Bigfoot episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man/Bionic Woman for his fear today of the legendary beast.

John Grover is a dark fiction author residing in Massachusetts. He completed a creative writing course at Boston’s Fisher College and is a member of the New England Horror Writers, a chapter of the Horror Writers Association. He is the author of several collections, including the recently released Feminine Wiles, Sixteen Tales of Wicked Women as well as various chapbooks, anthologies, and more. Please visit his website www.shadowtales.com for more information.

Kelly M. Hudson was born in Kentucky and currently resides in California. He loves horror and has over two dozen stories published in various anthologies, as well as a novel called The Turning published by Living Dead Press. If you wish to know more about Kelly, please visit his website www.kellymhudson.com for links to other stories and news.

Jeff Parish is a 30-something native Texan. He and his wife have a girl and two boys. He started writing in middle school, where he concentrated mostly on (bad) fantasy tales and (even worse) poetry. His writing skills developed over time, much to his delight and the relief of everyone he forced to read his work, and he gravitated to prose over poetry.

Jodi Lee is an editor and occasional writer living in her own creation, New Bedlam. She’s often found slicing and dicing prose in her editorial work, or mucking about with book covers, graphics and websites in her design freelancing. She’s currently editor in chief/publisher of Belfire Press, and an associate editor with Necrotic Tissue.

Copyright

Published by Belfire Press

Box 295

Miami, Manitoba

R0G 1H0

Copyright © 2010 Belfire Press & Respective Authors

Cover & Interior design by Jodi Lee © 2010

ISBN: 978-1-926912-23-3

Multi-Format Ebook/Digital Download

Smashwords Edition

A catalogue record for this title is available from the National Library of Canada.

This anthology is a collection of works of fiction. Any resemblance to place, person or event is strictly coincidental.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

Belfire Press — http://www.belfirepress.com

Smashwords – http://www.smashwords.com

Content

ANTE MORTEM
Edited by Jodi Lee

Introduction BACK FROM THE ABYSS Jodi Lee

TINY FINGERS Aaron Polson

THE GOOD FRIEND Natalie L. Sin

TO SURVIVE THE BEGINNING Gina Ranalli

HIT THE WALL David Dunwoody

FROM THE BOWELS Benjamin Kane Ethridge

THE DUBIOUS MAGIC OF ELLIOT PRINCE KV Taylor

HUNGER PAINS Myrrym Davies

FETCHING NARISSA David Chrisom

BEAUTY RITUAL John Grover

TERRITORY Kelly M. Hudson

A LITTLE HELP IN THE KITCHEN Jeff Parish

Contributor Biographies

Copyright