On the good news side – there may be something wonderful in store for Rotten Leaves.

It sounds like “sprint”, especially if you remove the first letter.

But more on that either in August or September. In the meantime, ya’ll have a fantastic summer, filled with sun and drinks and good fiction.

Bored and anxious, you leaf through the e-chure.  You’ve read it a hundred times.  The slogan: “After Life, Live it Up!”  The pitch: “Achieve Immortality!  Become a Name!”  The pristine bodies cavorting in select pleasure locales: Aruba, Montana, the Outer Banks.  Their forms glide with the assurance of youth as they bodysurf, sun, track big game.  The crystalline coral gardens, the battlements of red rock bathe in an unearthly glow.  Shimmering, that’s the word for it.  Everything shimmers.  The choral voices on the edge of hearing tantalize.  If you stare too long you feel your body drop into the surround, weightless, floating.  The illusion of being there is dangerously convincing.

You tap the screen, scrolling pages.  More images surface, hover, dissipate into mist.  For those with aspirations to culture, the deluxe package promises nirvana as living canvas, dabs and whorls of pigment, a swirling mindscape worthy of Monet.  For the young or chronically immature, the clichés of pop cult beguile: a Star Wars space station, a medieval fortress à la Tolkien.  For the more traditionally pious, bright light and ethereal music, a hint of vestments, maybe robes or wings.  Limits exist, though, to the architects’ imagination, limits placed by design.  Except for the very wealthy, those who can upload their most private fantasy to the graphical interface, one must be content with the company’s simulacra, and these incline toward the generic.  An afterlife too closely patterned on a particular belief system may prove unacceptable to another.  Offense may be taken.  You’ve been told this commercial tact is the origin of “Names,” a term non-denominational to the point of insipidity.  (You’ve also heard it’s an anagram of the pagan “Manes,” shades or spirits of the dead.)  The noun has yielded some arresting street lingo, including “Taking Names” (the recording process), “Name Recognition” (the meeting of acquaintances in the beyond), “Name Dropping” (the erasure of corrupt files.)  For obvious reasons the company chooses not to publicize that last possibility, though the fine print does spell it out.  Legal boilerplate, but still, it gives you pause.

Now that you are here, though, you wonder at all the precautions.  After all, no one has ever come back to complain, to demand a refund.  The whole enterprise could be a sham and none would be the wiser.  Becoming a Name, you decide, entails a certain leap of faith.  Will the path you’ve chosen meet your expectations?  Will it fulfill your dreams?  And if not, what then?  Names are gnomifiles, mental echoes of your lifelong self uploaded to the Your Name Here virtual mainframe, with its advertised lifespan of effective infinity.  These phantoms cannot, so far as you know, communicate with the living.  They cannot request a reset, retain an attorney.  The marketing geniuses who have cornered the hereafter are beholden to no one, need fear no government regulators or incensed clients.  To become a Name means to trust enough in human ingenuity–and honesty–to seek eternity in a construct of man’s devising.  They may have discovered how to immortalize the mind, but they have yet to figure out how to stopper the soul.

No wonder, then, the truly pious will have nothing to do with the place.  They have set up a permanent picket at all Your Name Here offices.  You walked through their ranks this morning, your eyes on the revolving door; you waved away their glossies of crackling flame behind the words of John 3:16, the promise of God’s undying love.  You withstood their prayers, their appeals.  You noted that none wore the insignia, the fiery cross of the Defenders of the Gate.  Of course.  Their operations were secret, their attacks unannounced: “as a thief in the night,” they wrote, searing the words in charcoal and ash.  Now armed guards patrolled the clinics, and in L.A., site of their bloodiest attack, craft circled overhead.  The Defenders were listed as a terrorist organization after that bombing, which left five techs and twenty clients dead, not to mention the untold numbers of Names awaiting their owners’ deaths before upload to the virtual mainframe.  In triumphal feeds, the Defenders cited John 14:6: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”  And Revelations 3:3: “If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.”  More than one church was rumored to back them.  All denied the charges.  In ways the architects never intended, becoming a Name had become a matter of taking your life into your hands.

You wonder what became of those raw Name files, severed from their donors, preserved in the virtual equivalent of cryogenic freeze, then abruptly, in a silent puff of explosives, curling into smoke and flame.  Did they wake from their sleep of death long enough to witness their end?  Did their owners suffer a pang at the passing of their cyberselves?  And what of those whose physical deaths had already passed, whose bodies lay in the grave but whose recorded consciousnesses had yet to be transferred to permanent storage?  Was there nothing but darkness for these hopeful, deluded souls?  The Defenders had sworn they would not cease till they had razed the ersatz heaven of the Names, rent its towers to the foundations, choked this veneration of false altars and idols.  Immortality for the asking, for the buying.  The consumer culture finally proving, if more proof were needed, that it worshiped no God but Mammon.  So many whose faith rested on machines, whose lights were so darkened they could not wait upon the Lord.  You would not have thought—you sniff, recalling your Dante—that Death could have undone so many.

Yet here you are.  Soon you will be called into the room behind the reception area, seated in the blue vinyl chair where insurance information will be collected, BP and pulse checked, medical history ticked off.  Your height, weight, and vision, for reasons obscure to you, will be recorded.  Moved to an examining room and stripped to your shorts, you will be tested for physical and—so they say—mental fitness to endure the transfer process.  You will be screened by a tech with a compboard, who will administer a psych eval to determine your readiness to place faith and fate in the lab workers who will harvest the thirabytes of mental data that constitute you.  You will testify that you have no religious, moral, or other scruples to the Naming process, that you agree to hold harmless and indemnify Your Name Here, its subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, agents, and employees from and against any third-party claim arising from or in any way related to your use of the Service, including any liability or expense arising from all claims, losses, damages (actual and consequential), suits, judgments, litigation costs and attorneys’ fees, of every kind and nature, brought by your heirs, if any, in perpetuity.  Only once during the interrogation will the tech administering the diagnostic hesitate, frown, the compboard illuminating his face flicker.  You will initial after each paragraph listing potential bugs in the system: partial transfer, which may result in your consciousness surviving for perpetuity in a damaged state akin to that of infancy or mental retardation; data corruption, said to produce symptoms of permanent virtual dementia and/or psychosis; subject splicing, wherein your Name, rather than communing with others, becomes fused with at least one fellow traveler; GI arrest, wherein the link between Name-consciousness and surround fails intermittently or permanently, producing, it is believed, either total sensory deprivation or an effect resembling an endlessly skipping laser disc or strobe light.  When the techs are done with you, clothes returned, results posted, you will schedule the daily recording sessions that will occupy you for the next several weeks, as the immeasurable reams of thought the techs name you will be extracted.  (The process, you’ve been warned, is exhausting; even if it were less extensive, it could not be completed at a single sitting.)  You will then make your way back out through the lobby, where new faces of doom and decay will have assembled, their eyes resting on you in confusion and wonder, maybe in anger, some in suspicion, even in pity, you the sole apparent possessor of an as yet unbrittle body.  You will wade through their stares like fog.

On the sidewalk, past the sawhorse perimeter drawn for the protestors, you will refuse their literature once more, watch them cross themselves, fold hands over rosaries, close eyes and bow heads in dumb protest or petition.  You will think that, for all their slideshows and icons, these emissaries lack the vital courage of their faith.  Though only a child when September 11 struck the nation, you nonetheless felt an awe-like sickness in the pit of your stomach at the thought of its dealers’ fiery martyrdom, the conviction it required to yield their bodies to the flame.  You wonder who will be the saved: those who stood by in passive prayer, or those who flung themselves into the roaring breach.  You ache to receive an answer.

You remind yourself to be patient.  You will be dead in less than a month, and then all things will be revealed.

***

When you received your death sentence, a mere half year ago, you craved assurance that your demise might serve some cause, some purpose.  You saw, as only one on the brink of mortality can, the mere waste of your days: never to be married, never to raise children, never to answer life’s calling.  You would not have bothered to lengthen this excuse for existence if you had not been brought to believe that, as a Name, you might claim some place in a grander scheme.  You grew convinced that Time had been your enemy all along—Time, and the world’s indifference.  As a Name, those hindrances would no longer apply.  Eternity beckoned, a limitless escarpment gilded by special status.  Compared to that, casting aside the body that had slogged through its middling allotment of years seemed a small price to pay.  You would die, but your Name would live forever.

“Getting your affairs in order” was a joke.  You didn’t even own a dog.  No farewell letters to polish, no final trips to take, no last flings to consummate.  The only challenge to face was the breakdown of your body, a process they’d cautioned you would be grim: as the virus spread through you, shutting down organs, thinning bones, you’d experience pain on a scale that would make the faint of heart tremble.  And your mind would remain intact through the failure of your physical being, your mind would witness your body’s utter dissolution.  It had to be that way: you could not be transfigured otherwise.  The loss of corporeality did not particularly faze you, though naturally you fretted to learn what form the pain and debility would take.  You were assured you’d last long enough for a full recording, even if, as proved to be the case, your final sessions would be conducted at home, where you would lie pinioned to your bed, your legs too weak to carry you and your arms too frail to lift toward the window’s light.

The extraction, it turns out, is every bit as grueling as foretold: your body shudders as if your guts are being sucked from their moorings.  Yet as the days pass and you watch your frame dwindle, your chest collapse, your ribs slice through your flesh, you feel a calm descend upon you.  Soon it will be the end.  The fire in your veins has become, if not tolerable, at least not unfamiliar.  It burns away your outline, leaving only your spirit.  The more your body weakens, the more your will braces; lingering doubts drop off like the last wisps of hair you’ve found littering your sickbed.  You realize you are becoming what you will remain for the rest of Time: ethereal, incorporeal, pure faith and implacable conviction.  Without a body to bear you down, you soar.  The words of the hymn return to you: “on eagle’s wings.”  Had you possessed such faith before, you would not have waited so long to take this journey.  But the journey was requisite to forge the faith, you know that now.  You are a pilgrim on the road to glory.  Only by this path may you enter.

The techs bustle by your bedside.  They strip the last shards of your sharpened consciousness, watch your breathing grow so shallow only you know it is there.  “Is he gone?” they ask, probing for a pulse.  Their gloved hands leap from your skin before they find it.  “He’s on fire!” they curse, and you smile inwardly, no longer able to form your face to your mind’s resolution.  You know the end is near.  You wish you could speak to them, pronounce your final sentence.  You watch the room darken, the techs and their machines freezing and melting away, and you know you are there at last.

***

You wake to perfect darkness.  This is not unexpected; the literature predicts a delay in the Name’s correspondence to the GI.  Or it could be the interface is malfunctioning or, what did they call it, sleeping during the system’s routine self-maintenance.  Whatever the case, you will need to be patient, more patient than you’d ever imagined it possible to be.  Time is no longer a factor.  No, Time has no meaning here.  Eternity stretches before you.

In the absence of external stimuli, you test your consciousness to register if all appears intact.  You remember who you are, how you got here, why you are here.  Good.  You suppose you should experience delight that you have cheated death, that such a place truly exists, that you have not been deceived.  Instead, you experience only eagerness to begin.  You quiver for another Name to pierce the darkness, to make contact.

Patches of light, filmy and fluid as sun through a leaf’s green membrane, begin to penetrate the dark.  The surrounds flicker like heat lightning.  A landscape forms out of nothing, the one you selected at random from the menu: endless green fields, groves of fruit trees, a sparkling river.  Lanky bird shapes, perhaps sandhill cranes, bank against a strawberry and lemon sky.  Now that you see it, you suppose you might have been drawn to it by some impulse toward tranquility.  Or at least, its bland beauty was preferable to the alternatives.  You’d been appalled, but not surprised, to find that one of the options was a mammoth mall.  (Its slogan, in squirming neon: “You are what you shop.  Forever.”)  The experience of the interface, like everything else here, is personalized: what you see as a sheltered valley some other might know as a seascape.  Even your sense of self will not match another’s: they will see you, and you them, as each wishes.  If all works as advertised you will be able to commune with other Names, but not to experience the afterworld through their eyes.

The tickle of an uncompleted swallow weighs in your throat.  Only you have no throat, your throat is in your mind, a function of mentality’s tenacious belief that it must be tethered to some physical form.  You had a choice to refashion your body as you willed, to become the hero or idol you’d not been in life.  Most Names shaved years.  Some, you learned, went so far as to swap genders.  But you announced that you would have no body at all (the tech had raised an eyebrow); you would become pure mind.  You’d been convinced at the time, and even more so as your disease ravaged you, that one could be a slave to one’s body as surely as to other false gods.  The fact that your motives were different, you’d been assured, would give you an advantage no other could foresee or resist.  Unhampered by a material body, you could achieve the mission for which you’d come.

You rove, wraithlike.  Your mind, you discover, possesses an expansiveness and flexibility it could not have matched on earth: it gallops in great dizzying vaults, wolfing territory, refusing boundaries.  Soon it is racing ahead at light speed, conscious of what lies beyond long before you reach it.  Your pace, impossibly, quickens: trees shoot past so quickly they seem to sprout from bare earth, a mountain range is at once remote and eclipsed the moment you record its existence.  The world warps, space no longer laid out in a radius around you but curling through you as if through the eye of a needle.  The experience is exhilarating, the power to conjure rather than inhabit a world.  Yet this ability more than anything cements your conviction that this place is counterfeited, its designers no true believers.  Here you are a God.  In the heaven to which you aspire you would be but another thankful soul.

With a shiver of excitement you realize your first contact has drawn near.  You have no idea whether it is male or female, young or old, black or white: however it may choose to experience itself, all you see is an open, throbbing form, something like a flower, something like a wound, something like a heart.  This, too, is as it should be.  Your purpose coils within you as the Name recognizes your presence, expands its consciousness to embrace yours.  Sensing no threat, it opens wider to commune.  You detect the fragrance, the balm, of its greeting; the walls of its cavity melt away.  To its eyes, you might be another bargain-hunter at the Perpetual Mall.  In moments it will speak, in the customary manner.

I am Ada, it says, its nebulous form pulsing like lips.  Its voice is as the rushing of blood. I welcome thee.  Tell me, beloved friend, thy Name.

I am Death, you respond, the Destroyer of Worlds.

Then you strike.  Your mind lashes out and plunges into its aperture, a sensation at once wildly exciting and cramped to the point of panic, and what they told you would happen begins: the Name called Ada screams, shudders, convulses around you, its mollusk-form radiating frenzied signals of memory and collapse.  You experience, in a brief burst of illumination, its life: the cancer that hollowed its mortal form, the lust for fleshly pleasures that brought it to this place.  (The Name called Ada, you learn, was a woman.  Her stink suffocates you.)  You witness her sins as if they were your own, and for a moment you long to withdraw, to break contact, to flee.  But it is only a moment, and you hold firm until the Name called Ada flames, her consciousness consumed, you have been told and so believe, by her own sins.  You are only the agent, the activator.  Entering this false paradise, you do nothing but reveal the truth.

When the Name called Ada withers into a film, feebly palpitating, you leave it to hunt for others.

With each it is the same; with each it is different.  The Name called Bel shrivels at once, its sins so palpable you can taste them like a gum on your tongue.  The Name called Gem sickens, its form turning leprous and black before you shake free.  Many repeat Ada’s fiery end, though the intensity and tint of the flame, the concentration of mind you must expend to draw forth their confession, varies.  You do not linger to speculate, but move on.  The most satisfying are those you drive mad, those you leave shrieking monosyllables or tearing at their leached forms.  These, you trust, retain enough awareness to suffer the torment of self-knowledge.  As you spread through the system, encountering Names, waiting for their welcome, stabbing through their defenses, you learn to prevail over the flood of feelings that at first made you waver; though your loathing does not slacken, as you find that none can withstand you your will to carry out your appointed task grows ever stronger.  In no time the Elysian fields are littered with their carcasses.

Your only regret is that you cannot communicate with those on the outside.  You have opened the door, but you may never know if they have managed to complete what you made possible.  The timing of their attacks was to have coincided with your death, but not having spoken to them for months beforehand—by design—you cannot be sure if they remained as resolute as you, if they struck as boldly as planned, or, if they did, if their success was as total as all swore.  You suppose you may find out.  If the attacks succeeded, the place of Names should remain vulnerable to you for as long as your deathless consciousness walks this land.  If they failed, if those responsible for this heathen heaven remain alive or the pathway to the VM remains intact, then someone may be able to undo the damage you have caused: to restore or delete corrupted Name files, to reboot the system, to root your consciousness out of the mainframe.  Yet even if they did, would you know it?  Or would you be snuffed out so completely you’d have no knowledge you had failed?  Could you, in fact, exist at this point as anything other than what you have chosen to become: a virus, a rot in the system?  It was this same virus, implanted by the Defenders, that killed your body, leaving only your infected mind.  Deprived of that, what could you possibly be?

These questions wrack you, but you tamp them down as you move on.  You remind yourself of what you have vowed to do, of the sacrifice you alone were willing to make, the place you were willing to go, and all with full consciousness that you would receive neither recognition nor reward in this afterlife.  Your mind has been lopped not only from your body but from your immortal soul; neither can know the fate of the other.  Suppose all goes as planned.  Suppose you obliterate all that haunt this place.  Still your mind will never leave.  It will remain for all Time in the hell it has created.

The wailing of ruined Names surrounds you like a sulfurous cloud.  The plains smoke with the fire pits of your passing.  You sense an infinitude of untouched Names crowding the boundless horizon, terror-stricken by now but unequipped to repel what you carry.  You decide to let them wait for your coming, to add doubt and despair to their punishment.  You know at last that this is what you are meant to do.  You know you will make it to heaven, even if you must spend an eternity in hell.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

J. David Bell is the author of Framing Monsters (2005), a study of monsters in fantasy film, as well as of numerous short stories. His works have appeared recently in such journals as Terrain.org, The Squirrel Cage, The Battered Suitcase, and Dark and Dreary Magazine. He has just begun writing a novel, tentatively titled The Rise and Fall of the Great American Sandwich Lab. You can follow his thoughts and rants at http://bellsyells.blogspot.com/.

I cannot with any assurance state that this will be the most nerve-shattering tale ever conceived by the misguided mind of man, but I can solemnly swear to you that its intention is not only to shock and surprise, but also to arouse naught but the most bestial emotions from deep within you. Our tale this evening concerns a most pure and delicate maiden, barely eighteen years of age. To say that Charlotte (for that was the young lady’s name) was possessed of the most striking beauty would be a dreadful understatement. Her straight, dusky hair made the blackest ebony weep with envy. Her electric blue eyes shamed the most brilliant sapphires. The milky white skin was as silky and as smooth as the finest alabaster. The luscious curves of her body were enough to make even the most stalwart clergyman quiver with lust. The most striking feature of our dear Charlotte had to be her lips. Naturally they held the color that lies beneath freshly cleaved skin. A deep crimson red that was matched only by the virginal blood left after a woman’s first time in the act of love.

Charlotte was the only child of a poor family that lived just on the edge of the Ardennes. Her father Francois was a simple farmer, her mother Denise a seamstress. More than once comparisons were made in the town tavern, (then called the Black Rose) how these folk were the rotting pile of compost from which sprang a most lovely blossom. It was understood by her parents that Charlotte would soon take up a trade and settle into the same life of drudgery as they had done many years ago, but the young maiden unbeknownst to her parents had much different ideas. Our poor Charlotte longed for some sort of relief from the provincial purgatory, which she seemed to be permanently exiled to. And while it was true that there were plenty of able-bodied young men with whom she could pass the time she had no desire to hear their constant bragging of their skill with the fairer sex. Especially considering the best these boys could muster was a thrilling evening of unbridled lust with their fathers’ prized sheep. Besides, Charlotte had already discovered that she could bring the wondrous rapture of orgasm to herself with a few well-placed strokes of her very skillful fingers. She was certain that this would be considered sinful by her parents and by the Church, but in the end she decided that if God had not wanted her to delight in her own touch He would have made her arms shorter.

Whenever her mind was wakeful during the late hours Charlotte often found herself walking into the leafy canopy of the Ardennes. At least here, she thought, she would be able to escape the everyday boredom that was her life. At home there was naught but needles, thread, and boys’ tales of their massive pikestaffs. Here in the lush growth of the forest however, was a world where anything was possible. From her days as a little girl, she had been told stories about the many otherworldly creatures and beings that dwelled deep in the bosom of the woods. It was said that long ago, dragons lived here along with wizards, fairies, and a host of other things that held a great deal more appeal than a farm boy clumsily fondling her breasts.

With her mind deep in thought it was impossible for Charlotte to say how long she had been walking. Only that now the forest seemed much thicker and fuller, almost as if it had a life of its own. Not as a collection of millions of different things, as she understood it truly to be but as a whole. It almost seemed to breathe softly in her ear. Unsure of her direction, Charlotte looked up to try and see the position of the moon, but this was no help as the canopy of the great elms blocked out the sky completely. Somewhere in the distance a beast howled, its voice shattering the stillness like a hammer through glass. In spite of herself the young maiden suppressed a shiver. She knew there was nothing to be afraid of. She had been told countless times that the beasts of the woods only sing once they have already made a kill. She hoped the tales were true.

Just then, a soft wind blew across the forest floor sending a tantalizing breeze underneath her skirt. Charlotte flushed for a moment as she could swear she felt a soft hand caressing her inner thigh, but dismissed the thought almost as quickly, as she knew it must be some trick of the wind. Although she wondered, why had the breeze not disturbed any of the leaves on the forest floor? She had heard tales from some of the boys in town about mischievous entities in the woods that delighted in playing the most sinful tricks on mortals, especially young, beautiful maidens like her. But that was only child’s play. Nevertheless, she felt that she should be heading back, lest she be lackadaisical in her chores tomorrow from not sleeping well. After a short while she saw a small cabin in a clearing. She had not seen this particular structure on her trek into the forest, so she determined that she must have gotten turned around somewhere. The wind was picking up now and Charlotte spied a lit lantern in the window of the cabin.

As she peered slowly into the side window there appeared to be nobody at home. The cabin was decently furnished, a bed, table, and rocking chair, with a fire burning ever so invitingly in the hearth. It seemed that whoever the occupant was, he or she had no plans on being gone for very long, but still the warm and cozy scene kept reminding Charlotte of how awfully chilly it was out in the night air. With an audacity that her father would surely chide her for if he ever found out, she made her way towards the front door.

Now I realize, dear reader. that nothing truly extraordinary has happened as of yet in our tale tonight. But I caution you just to be patient and observe a little while longer. The benefits of this could be only too clear, for if our dear Charlotte had taken the same advice while at the cabin window she would have seen the rocking chair within begin to slowly rock with no occupant in its seat and the covers of the bed slowly pull themselves down of their own accord. As it was though the lovely maiden saw none of this as she slowly turned the knob and let herself into the cabin. Closing the door behind her, she immediately felt the pleasant warmth of this little domicile washing over her. It was after all a cheery sort of room even with a few small drawings on the wall. Each rendering she noted was of a young girl. All of them appeared to be not quite in their twentieth year and all wearing nothing but the glory of their supple bare skin. Whoever this artist was (she thought) he has excellent taste. Perhaps he’d even do a drawing of me if I ask politely. Suddenly suppressing a yawn Charlotte realized how tired she was. She had been walking an awfully long time and while the bed looked ever so inviting, she knew her father would simply hide her if he knew she had slept in a stranger’s bed. So she daintily lowered her wondrously supple backside into the rocking chair by the fire instead. Within seconds she found herself pulling her shoes off and stretching out, letting the fire warm her feet. As could be expected, in the lap of such comfort she soon found herself dozing off.

While she was asleep, Charlotte had what could only be described as a fitful set of dreams. She felt warm hands caressing her soft skin. Oh how she wanted more. These were not the hands of an inept peasant boy. These were the hands of a true lover. She giggled in spite of herself as she felt hands creeping into her blouse tantalizing her smooth flat stomach. That special warmth grew between her legs as she longed for her unseen consort to continue his loving pilgrimage. She could never remember having such vivid dreams as she felt the caressing hands slowly move lower, gently arousing her in her most intimate of areas. Suddenly her eyes snapped open, and she looked about her surroundings. She was still in the cabin, and still in the rocking chair. She was breathing very heavily and her skin had just a hint of perspiration on it, causing her to glow in the firelight. Most disturbing of all though is that she saw that her blouse had been fully undone, and her skirt was unfastened! Surely she could not have done all this in her sleep…could she? It mattered not if she had disheveled herself in a fit of dreaming lust or not, she felt it best to leave before the cabin’s occupant returned to find her in such a shameful state.

She quickly dressed herself as best she could and opened the door only to find the knob snatched from her hand as the door closed itself, sealing her in the cabin. The rocking chair was once again rocking of its own accord and a soft laughter could be head coming from every corner of the room. A deep velvety voice seemed to sensuously whisper in Charlotte’s ear.

“Was it really so unpleasant?” A velvety voice inquired. Charlotte wheeled herself around only to find she was staring into empty space. Again she heard the throaty, whispering laughter. The frightened girl felt a delightful shiver. Someone or something was gently blowing in her ear. In spite of herself, Charlotte began to speak.

“Who…what are you?” She asked. Soft, almost patronizing laughter caressed her ear.

“I am no one. I was once an artist. You see my work on the walls around you.”

Even though she had seen the drawings before Charlotte felt compelled to once again view the objects d’art. To her amazement the sketches had transformed themselves. Gone were the simplistic sketches of the soft young maidens, and in their place were depictions of the same maidens engaging in all manner of depravity. One was lovingly taking a huge phallus into her mouth, another was copulating with a group of no less than ten men, and still another was engaging in the fiercest act of love with a corpse. Charlotte felt her legs turn to water as she viewed these most disturbing, yet subtly intriguing images. Each one held a most revolting scene, but human nature demanded that she take in each and every one. Just like in her dream she now felt the same silky, unseen hands gently caressing her. The fingertips were raising goose bumps along the gentle curve of her neck. Charlotte closed her eyes and began to surrender to the experience when the images of the wall sketches leaped into her mind.

“No!” She yelled as she jumped away.

“I have no desire to do that.” She motioned to the drawings. A deep, booming laughter filled the room.

“I have no intention that you should. Why would I want to engage in the same pleasure twice? My dear Charlotte, I only wish to give you the same gift I gave to all these women. Each of these fair flowers held a secret desire, denied to them by their surroundings. In your case it is simply a relief from provincial monotony that you seek. Won’t you let me help you? After all, I know all your secret desires.” With these words Charlotte felt the invisible hands softly tickling between her breasts. She closed her eyes as she felt her delicate pink nipples being gently kissed. The moisture between her legs grew warmer as the dead man softly kissed her with unseen lips. She knew deep down that this was not just wrong, but sinful, even unholy. Her whole childhood was spent being taught the catechism and the rapture of serving Christ. She read the words but never felt anything close to the wonder of having a dead artist slowly suckling her nipples.

Slowly she felt him lowering her onto the warm, inviting bed. She felt nothing of him but the soft caress of his fingers touching her in places that she never knew could radiate such immense pleasure, and in the most delightful moments, she felt his lips and tongue bringing heavy breaths out of her with ever-increasing frequency. In between passionate breaths she asked,

“What is your name?” To which her unseen companion replied by gently licking in her navel causing Charlotte to arch her back like a contented pussycat. Slowly she felt her wrists being tied to the bedposts with some very expensive looking silk scarves. Charlotte arched her back further as she softly whispered,

“Let me see you, please, your face.” The artist began to lick around her navel, and then moved lower saying,

“Very well Cherie, open your eyes now.” With this, Charlotte let out a blood- curdling shriek. A talking corpse had just lifted his rotting face from in between her thighs. The worst of it was the smell. An almost visible green miasma penetrated her lungs, filling her up with the overwhelming stench of death. She strained to get up but found herself smartly tied to the bed. The artist looked down at her with his empty eye-sockets. His skeletal visage was completely expressionless.

“How you carry on so. Is this not what you wanted? Did you not want something far beyond the realm of your own life? Well now you have it. You did not mind making love with a dead man when you did not have to see the abomination touching you. Allow me to alleviate your stress.” And with this, he plunged a skeletal finger down into each of her eyeballs. Through her shriek of pain, Charlotte could feel the corpse slide between her legs.

“After you finally leave this life, when I have taken every bit of warmth I can from you, I will then add you to my sketchbook. You will be the crown jewel of my collection.” Charlotte tried to scream again, but found her mouth filled with his still slithery, rotting tongue. Her face became a horrified mix of tears and blood, and her last thought before she passed out was how much she longed for the simple life of a farmer’s daughter.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gerald Vincent is originally from New York City and is a devotee of classic horror/monster movies like Jaws, Alien, and Godzilla. His favorite writers are Edgar Allan Poe, Alexandre Dumas, and Rod Serling. Bela Lugosi once said that true horror both attracts and repels. That is what Gerald looks to accomplish in his writing. His stories can also be read in Morbid Outlook Online Magazine.

In the light of the quarter moon he could see the bloodstains upon the sleeve of his wool jacket and he could see the horse’s breath plume then disperse into the waiting darkness. The coldness was bitter and the wind blowing in his face was stiff and sharp. Although unseen in the ink black night he could hear the leafless trees rattle in the wind as they trotted past. In the far distance he heard the faint howls and barks of a pack of nameless dogs. They had been pursuing him and his wife for the last several miles, tracking them, stalking them as if they were wounded prey. As if their blood had been spilt on the darkened earth and now glowed faintly under the moonlight for the pack of dogs to follow. It was his wife they were after. The smell of death and decay he knew was hovering in the air, riding the tails of the wind and spreading into the night like rising water. A scent which humans could not smell, and for that he was thankful. He looked back at his dying wife and shook his head and cursed. There was nothing left he could for her save what he was doing now: taking her beyond the city limits to the outer boundaries of the county to see the only person who could render her well.

It was two days previous when he approached the undertaker Ballard at his establishment on Main Street. It was cold then too, his breath smoking before his face as stood he outside Ballard’s place of business deciding whether or not it was indeed a good idea to proceed. He had always been fearful of Ballard, uneasy in the man’s presence and it was not simply because he was a mortician and took great pleasure spending his days with the dead but also because Ballard had a curious face and a slight figure and his eyes were narrow and set close together on his face giving him a peculiar look. His nose pointed like a hawk’s bill and his hair was black as a raven feathers.

He found Ballard that particular day hunched over a pine casket, his body draped in black, his fingers and hands working furiously on a dead body. He stood leaning against the threshold watching Ballard work. Then he coughed into his hand and stepped into the room. Without turning around Ballard slowly raised his head from the casket. He spun around and faced him and in his left hand he held a silver tray. Atop the tray were round tin cans of earth toned makeup and brushes to apply the makeup to the deceased. Ballard set the tray down and motioned him into the room with the flick of his hand.

I need your help, he said to Ballard without moving.

Ballard wiped his hands down the front of his black wool pants and moved across the room.

It’s my wife, he said. I think she’s dying.

You need a casket then? Ballard asked.

He shook his head. No, I don’t need a casket. Not yet.

Then what I can do?

I need to know if you can keep her alive.

Me?

Yes.

I’m not a doctor, Ballard said then. I work with the dead. You do know that, don’t do you? Ballard stepped to the side and nodded towards the pine casket. The husband looked at the pine casket and the dead man lying in the pine casket for the first time. He did not know the dead man, did not recognize the face but the face of the dead man appeared oddly familiar to him in death. As if Ballard possessed some uncanny ability to transform the faces of the dead to resemble faces of the living.

He looked from the pine casket to Ballard and nodded yes that he was well aware of Ballard’s occupation.

I just need to know if you can help me. If you can’t then I’ll let you be.

What ills her? Ballard asked.

The husband stepped fully into the room and removed his hat and held it between his hands. He was a tall man, square shouldered with tussled brown hair that had not been cleaned in days, and now was grease grimed and slick. The man’s hands and fingers were no cleaner than his hair and standing this close to Ballard the man’s wool shirt stunk, the hat too, the brim of it stained dark with dirt and sweat.

She has the plague, the man said, his voice catching slightly as he spoke of his wife.

Ballard nodded at this. He raised his arm and coughed into the crook of his elbow. Are you contagious? He spoke over his arm, fearful of lowering it maybe, fearful that quite possibly this man before him may be harboring the infectious black germ of the dreadful plague.

The man shook his head. He said, I don’t think so. I don’t feel the slightest bit sick. Even though it’s hard I’ve been wearing the mask around the house.

Ballard lowered his arm and nodded. Then come, he said, walking past the husband. They walked down a hallway lit sparsely by slender candles in hanging in lanterns from the wall. Before the hallways end Ballard stopped and opened the last door on the left, he motioned the man through the door. And they sat at a round oak table in Ballard’s kitchen in the dim light, the world outside shut against the wooden blinds, only narrow bands of light snaked through the small creases of space, spreading dully across the wooden planked floor.

Ballard offered the man a drink of corn liquor and the man shook his head no. Said, I gave it up years ago. Haven’t tasted it since and haven’t wanted to either. But thank you.

Very well then, Ballard said, nodding. He spread his hands atop the table and stared at the man. Let’s talk about your wife, shall we?

The man leaned forward in the cane back chair, his arms and hands folded atop the table. Yes, let’s please talk about her. We need your help.

What is it you think I can do for her?

You can keep her alive. Make her well.

I can do no such thing.

The man gasped a thin wisp of air and leaned back.

Who told you I could keep your wife from dying?

Mercer, the man said.

Deacon Mercer?

Deacon Mercer.

A sly grin began from the corners of Ballard’s mouth then spread across his mouth as a whole. As if some unseen person from above was working the smile like a puppeteer would their wooden puppet.

I don’t know anything about what he speaks of, Ballard said.

You’re lying to me, the man said. I can see it flat as day. The lie is written all over your face.

I’m not lying, Ballard said back. And maybe you should recall your manners. You’re in my house. My place of establishment.

The man moved in the seat, shifting his weight, thinking of what to do next. He wished he could leave, just stand and walk out as if he had never come, but his wife, his sick, dying wife.

I’m not apologizing because I did wrong. I’m only apologizing because I love my wife and I need your help, the man said then.

Ballard took a small sip from the mason jar then wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt. Very well, he said.

They sat in a dead silence a moment. The world outside alive all around them, the wind racing through the trees, the clouds rolling across the sky, all of not irrelevant to the man as he sat before Ballard.

It’s an old folktale, a legend if you will. Ballard began, he took another sip of the corn liquor then he started again. It’s been passed down from family to family. My grandfather told me the tale when I was only knee-high. Said out there deep in the woods on the county line lived a man rarely seen by the townspeople. He lives in a plantation home on the McCarthy farm. Legend has it this man only comes out at night, never in the day. My grandfather told me he went back there once, said it took him a full day to find the house, that he had to walk through all kinds of woods and even had to cross a river. He said he when he found it, the house, that it stood out like a sore thumb. Said it was in pristine condition, simply beautiful. But he said the grounds of the house were clogged with weeds and tall grass and that dead animals were scattered about all over.

Dead animals? The man asked.

Yes, dead animals. He said the necks looked as if a panther or bear had ripped them open.

Did your grandfather see him?

No. He told me he hid behind a tree and just watched the house. He said he felt as if the house were watching him back, as if it was a living thing.

I don’t understand how this can help my wife?

Ballard took up the mason jar and drank and then offered it once more to the man and the man shook his head no.

Part of the folktale is that this man possesses the power to keep people alive.

How?

Depends on who is telling the story, Ballard said. Some say by simply laying his hands upon the sick he heals them. Others say that he bites the sick person and sucks the sickness clean out of them.

And your grandfather, the man said. What did he say?

That he lays his teeth into your neck and draws away your blood and disease.

Like Dracula?

Ballard was quiet a moment then nodded. Said, I’ve never thought of it like that before but yes like Dracula.

Do you believe your grandfather that man like this exists?

Ballard sighed and pushed himself away from the table and stood. He went to the window and parted the blinds with his finger and peered through the narrow opening then turned around and faced the husband.

Ballard nodded finally and eased himself back in the seat. He took up the mason jar again, only not drinking from it this time and bubbles the size of marbles floated up from the bottom to the top. The man watched the rise of the bubbles, how they floated like jellyfish through the whiskey. He guessed the corn liquor to be around 150 proof, judging by the size of the bubbles.

Where’s this man live, the man said and it was not a question so much as it was a demand. I need to know.

Ballard shrugged again. I don’t know.

The man nodded and smiled faintly like it hurt. Deacon Mercer informed me that years ago you rode out there to this man’s place. That you were seeking his help.

That was a long time ago, Ballard said.

Did he help you?

No.

Why?

Because I never went inside.

He turned you away?

No, Ballard said. I was afraid and I left before I ever met him.

Did you see him at least? The man asked, his voice desperate with angst.

Ballard nodded. I saw him, yes. It was from afar but I saw him. He does exist.

How can I find him?

Ballard rubbed his chin with his thumb and forefinger much like a businessman would do mulling over a proposition. As if money were about to exchange hands, legal or illegally. Ballard smiled a snakeish grin, his black eyes lit with eagerness.

Due to hard times that information will cost you. You do understand don’t you?

The man sat silently. His hands folded atop the table still. His face void of expression and near featureless in the pitiful light. He had no money to speak of. Had spent the last of their meager savings on the doctor from Louisville and the land they once owned was no longer theirs because of the doctor bills. Then like a snake striking a rat the man flinched suddenly, something deep within him snapped like a rubber band.

And unless Ballard had seen the steel blade of the knife glint in the weak light there was no way he could have known what the man–with the ease and slight of hand of a magician–had pulled from his coat pocket. The man put the blade of the bone handled knife under Ballard’s chin and pressed it against his skin, a narrow line of blood trickled down Ballard’s neck. He loomed over Ballard with his arm wrapped around Ballard’s neck, his knee pressed into the back of the chair.

She’s my wife, he said, spittle dangling from his mouth. I cannot. I will not sit by and watch her die. Tell me how to find his house.

Ballard coughed and squirmed; pleading for his life the man released his grip from around Ballard’s neck and took a step backward, the knife still pointed at Ballard.

Ballard brought his hand to his neck. He touched the red welt where the blade of the knife had been, smearing blood across his neck and shirt collar. He removed his hand and stared at it the blood streaked across his fingertips.

Good God, man. You cut me.

That was not my intention, the man said.

Then what was?

To find out where this man lives. I need to find him.

Ballard wiped the blood from his hand on his black wool trousers and shook his head. Beads of sweat rolled down his face, his cheeks were flushed, eyes still wild.

Go out the road past the general store and stay straight. The road will soon end. Cross over the pasture there to the other side. Once you get to the other side start looking for a small opening in the woods, it’s hard to find but it’s there. Once you find it go through it. It will open up just big enough for a wagon, stay on that rutted road through the woods. You’ll be running parallel to the river, depending on the water level you may have to cross through it. Just stay on that road, if you can even call it that, until you come to T. At the T go straight. Don’t go left or right, just straight. You’ll see the house after a bit; it’ll be sitting at the bottom of a hill. And remember, if you dare go out there travel only under the light of day.

The man nodded and sheathed the knife. He set his hat atop his head and squared it. Then he thanked Ballard and turned to leave.

If I didn’t tell you what were you going to do to me, Ballard said before the man exited the room.

Cut your throat, the man said back without turning around, without even the slightest bit of hesitation.

And on they rode in the pitch black darkness, the horse and wagon navigating the rocky and rutted out makeshift road. The man half asleep atop the wagon, his hands still working the reins as if from memory, his wife still in the back, only now she had rolled over onto her stomach, her brown hair pooled around her shoulders and face. If he slowed the horse and listened intently he could make the sounds of the flowing river, the water rushing over the granite and limestone rocks. It was a soothing sound; one he wished his wife was capable of enjoying.

After a while the road they traveled bended and curved around a rock outcrop then righted itself at the banks of the river, the water flowed dark like ink under the quarter moon and the quarter moon showed its reflection upon the waters rippled surface. Its image distorted much like the man’s own mind as he stayed the horse and stepped down from the wagon. He studied the water a moment then turned to the wagon and went around to the back where he hopped up into it and knelt near his dying wife. He removed his gloves and took her face in his hands, angled it so they were staring at one another. Her eyes were pale and near lifeless. He brushed her hair from her face with the backside of his hand, allowing his hand to linger a moment on her forehead just so he could feel her skin, the heat from the fever like a flame from a fire. Then he stood and put back on the gloves and stepped down from the wagon.

They crossed the river without problem or interference and were back on course for the house nestled against the nameless hillside. Soon they came to the T in the road and the man slowed the horse. Looked left and right and saw nothing save darkness in either direction. Before him was more of the same but he had no time to weigh his decision as the quarter moon still hung high in the night sky and he wanted to reach the house by the first light of day. They rode on into the darkness. The quarter moon and stars overhead were soon abated by unseen clouds and the man and wife were encased in a sort of darkness the man only thought possible in a coffin. They rode on into the darkness, the horse seeming to find his place amidst the darkness trotted along the makeshift road without the slightest tug of the reins. And from time to time he would close his eyes and allow his mind the briefest of moments to think of his wife.

He was half asleep half awake when the horse slowed then stopped, the wagon jolting, the man slid off the wooden bench seat. He righted himself and rubbed at his eyes with the palms of his hands, clearing his vision. He looked behind him at the eastern sky; the sun slowly tracking upwards above the tree lined horizon was bright and intense like a fiery ball. He sat a moment without moving and watched its ascent, was moved by its peaceful elegance, the natural beauty that lied within in all the colors the sun presented: yellow, orange, red and the pink layer that resided under it all.

Before him sat the white clapboard house just as Ballard had spoken of, tucked against the hillside and between a wooded lot of live oaks and poplars that stood leafless like skeletons reaching into the breezeless morning air. Through nameless trees he spied the house. From the chimney a thin wisp of smoke rose above the tree lined horizon up into the pale sky of dusk where he lost sight of it. He squatted and studied the house. Nothing moved. Not even a bark from a dog nor the scurrying of a barn cat. Nothing save the rasping breath of his wife, the whole idea of breathing and just living was becoming a much cumbersome task for her. He wiped at his face with the sleeve of his jacket and still he studied the house and still nothing moved. He stood and walked crablike through the cold, brittle grass and overgrowth so he could peer closer yet at the distant house. And yet nothing moved. He stood and clambered down the hillside.

The house was two stories tall and a white porch wrapped around the house from the front to back. The yard was overgrown and clogged with brown winter weeds and grasses. The house if he did not know any better appeared to be vacant and rundown. He stood slowly and returned up the hill.

He tugged the reins and the horse nudged forward slowly, as if it were wary of the house. The horse pulled the wagon down the cache drive and the man stopped it short of the yard. He let loose of the reins and sat studying the house. The paint was faded and chipping, falling off in chunks like pieces of flaked skin. A set of rickety stairs lead from the uneven stone sidewalk to the wood planked porch, and from where he sat in the wagon the porch appeared to be falling apart, just short of collapsing. He studied the windows on the front of the house for a long moment. Dark curtains were pulled taut across all the windows abating any view of the inside from the man. He looked back at his wife, she lay shivering under the fowl smelling quilts and blankets. He was unsure of what to do next. He questioned if he should approach the house and knock on the door or simply wait until darkness swept over the hollow and for the mysterious man to show himself along side the dark and night.

His wife groaned and her eyes parted, revealing some resemblance of life. She opened her mouth to speak but a thin wisp of air crawled from between her lips instead of words and the man stood and went to the back of the wagon.

I know, he told her. Just hang on. I’m going for help.

He stared into her grey, dying eyes. Can you hold on?

She half nodded then grimaced in pain. She closed her eyes but he knew she was listening still, waiting on his voice to break the cold silence.

Just hang on a while longer. You’re going to be saved. Just hang on for me. You have to hang on.

And with a closed fist he knocked on the door then stepped back and waited, his hands held together before him. Nothing. He knocked again, harder, and still nothing. He rocked back on the heels of his boots and cursed. He turned and faced the wagon. The horse had her down gnawing at the dead winter grass and from where he stood on the porch he could make the outline of his wife’s motionless body under the blankets and quilts. He walked down the length of the porch, his boots a hollow empty sound on the wooden floorboards. He stopped at darkened windows, leaned and cupped his hands and peered inside. But could he see nothing save his own bare reflection upon itself. He returned to the door. He weighed his choices. He could break a window maybe or try to kick in the door, either way he was uncertain of the consequence that awaited either choice. So, instead he tried to the door handle and when he tried to turn it he found that it indeed turned and the door opened to a dark, unlit house. He went in.

The house was dark and cold and the man could see nothing. Heavy plush velvet curtains were drawn across all the windows and there was no light to be seen save the faint daylight spreading across the threshold of the front door. The man left the door standing open. Before him stood a narrow staircase but he could not see where it led. He cleared his throat and called out. His voice echoed through the vastness of the house. He called out again and again he received the same outcome. Nothing. Was the house Ballard spoke so highly of vacant after all? He turned and punched the door and cursed.

His wife was worse than before, her skin was red hot and she lay shivering under the quilts and blankets, clothes soaked through with sweat from the fever. He sat cross-legged on the wagon bed with her head cradled in his lap and wept. Sometime later he awoke dazed and disoriented. He was unsure of when he had fallen asleep, he could not recall doing so but he had. It was dusk now, the sun dropping below the distant rim of the earth. And snow fell from the grey sky above, gathering in white globs on their wool clothing and clumping in their grimed hair. He looked at his sick wife then at the foreign house and in the far east window a single candle flame burned.

He carried his wife from the wagon bed across the snow dusted yard to the front porch. This time he did not knock, he shouldered the door open and once inside he kicked it shut and laid his wife down on the wood floor. He knelt and swept her hair out of her eyes and face. He kissed her gently on the lips forgetting briefly of the sickness she harbored within then he stood. And the man of the house was standing atop the stairs watching him and his wife with a peculiar smile on his face.

Welcome, he said, his voice layered with a foreign accent the man had not heard before.

The man looked down to his wife and when he raised his head the strange man with the power to heal was standing before him, face to face.

The man stumbled backwards into the wall, startled and confused of how he had made it down the stairway so quickly, so quietly. The man said nothing. He stood expressionless staring up at Elijah, who was well over six feet tall.

I’ve been waiting on you, he said to the man. My name is Elijah. Welcome to my home. Come, he said then. Follow me.

But my wife, the man said. She’s sick and dying.

Elijah stared down momentarily at the man’s wife then he raised his head, said. I know. I can help her. But come, follow me to my kitchen.

They sat at a squared table of oak in Elijah’s kitchen. Elijah leaned over the edge of the table. The candle in the center of the table and the candle flame wavered and flickered and in the illumination the man saw Elijah’s ashen colored eyes, his face blanched and colorless.

I was told you could save my wife. Is what they say true?

Yes, what they say is true. I can save her. But to save your wife means I cannot save you.

I don’t need saving, the man said.

Are you certain?

Yes, I’m very certain.

First, tell me why you want your wife healed?

Because I cannot live without her. I cannot fathom waking up a single day without her by my side. I wouldn’t be able to live if she were to die, the man said.

If I heal your wife she will out live you.

That’s okay. I’ll manage through my life as long as she’s in it with me.

You will die before her, you understand? She will live a very, very long time and you won’t. You will die and put her through what you’re avoiding going through with her death.

That’s a long ways away, the man said.

You sound selfish and confident right now. Are you?

No, the man said. I’m certain of what I want. I traveled a full day to come to your house to see you. I’m just a husband who wants his wife better is all.

That’s all?

That’s all.

Elijah stood and went to the sink. He placed a cup under the faucet and filled it and drank from it. The man sat watching him as he did this and the man suddenly realized that Elijah’s reflection was absent in the lone kitchen window, as if he was not standing there. The man stood, knocked the chair over, and crossed the kitchen and stood behind Elijah. He could not believe what he saw; it was as if his mind were up to trickery, some long ago magic trick like Houdini. Elijah and the man stood shoulder to shoulder but only the man was silhouetted against the dark window pane. The man wheeled backwards, stumbling, falling over the kitchen table and overturned chair.

It is okay, Elijah said. You eyes do not deceive you. What you see is really the truth.

The man lay flat on his back. His breathing was rapid and frantic, his eyes wild with terror. Elijah stood over him, his body cloaked in a black velvet suit, his black hair long and tied back with a piece of cowhide.

Let’s heal your wife, Elijah said, turning, his jacket billowing behind him like cape.

Upstairs in Elijah’s bedroom the man’s wife was laid out on a delicate lace comforter as if ready for burial. Her hands were clasped and rested peacefully atop her stomach. Next to the bed on the nightstand sat a basin of warm water, draped over the lip of it a linen cloth. Elijah dipped the linen cloth into the water and then placed on the wife’s neck. She did not move and Elijah gently scrubbed at her neck in a small circular motion then he rinsed the linen cloth back into the basin. The man watched all this from across the room, he was seated in a large leather chair.

Elijah leaned over and sunk his teeth into her neck and bit down hard, his jaws tense and corded with muscles unknown. Blood streamed down her neck and chest and soiled the delicate lace comforter. He bit down harder, sucking her blood. Her neck turned from red to purple to black and her body arched and thrashed, her arms and legs twisting in pain as if a jolt of energy surged through her veins in place of blood.

The man shot up from the leather chair and crossed the length of the room in three strides but was met with Elijah’s swinging backhand that sent the man falling flat on his backside, knocking him out cold.

#

He awoke to darkness then coldness, his body numb from pain or the cold he could not tell. He staggered to his feet and gauged his surroundings. Above, the sky was dark and cloud covered and snow fell in droves. The ground was snow laden and stark white. The front door of the house stood open and as he moved towards it Elijah and his wife filled the opening. Elijah held an iron lantern in his right hand and the light from the candle lantern played on his wife’s face. And it was as beautiful as ever. Full of life and all things he knew of goodness from her.

He called her name but she did not respond. He called for her again, his voice strained against the cold, his breath pure white smoke in the nighttime darkness.

She looked up at Elijah as if for approval and he nodded towards the man. She came down the steps angelic like, clothed in a red flowing dress like a dot of blood she moved across the white snow.

He opened his arms to her but was greeted with more than a hug. She nestled her face in the crook of his neck and he did not feel the sensation of pain at first. Only the warm kiss from her cold lips then a feverish warmth of pain shot through his body and he could literally feel the blood from within being sucked out of him.

He lay on the cold ground on his back watching the snow spiral downward feeling no pain at all save the sick emptiness in his heart. And staring upwards through the snowfall and vast darkness he saw an image of his wife from when they first met some years ago. An image of her from before the sickness, from before this man named Elijah took her from him and this world. And he smiled at her and wept then he took her hand in his and closed his eyes. They went on.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Drew McCoy ( http://www.drewmccoy.com/ )is 29 years old and presently studying creative writing at Murray State University. He’s been published in numerous publications most recently his short story, “The Long Way Home” placed 2nd in a southern gothic short story competiton and is featured in the anthology “Southern Gothic Shorts”. And his short story, “How to Be Loved” is being adapted into a short film by T5G Productions. He currently lives in Kentucky with his wife and son where he is at work on a historical novel set in and around 1937.

Miss Sharon paced the front of the classroom. “Good morning, girls. I have a surprise for you today.” Thirty girls quickly let out an excited breath. “I would like to introduce you to Miss Andrews. She is going to lead this Rainy Day Recess for us, and I’m sure she would appreciate your full attention.” Each girl turned quick attention toward the door, through which walked a sharp, pointed-looking woman. The woman looked around the classroom quickly, giving a small nod in acknowledgement of the thirty girls. She began to speak. “Girls. Hello. I am pleased to work with each of you today.” She took a stance at the center of the front of the room, beside Miss Sharon. “I think we will have a great deal of fun together. This morning we will participate in a Knowledge Bee.” The girls squealed, delighted, and waited for the inevitable explanation of the rules.

Miss Andrews continued. “I would like all thirty of you to line yourselves up at the front of the classroom, against the chalkboard. I will then ask each girl a science, social studies, English, or mathematical question, starting with the first young lady at my right. If she answers correctly, she may move to the other end of the line, to be further questioned. If she is incorrect, she must take her seat. She will have lost her chance to be one of the ten winners of the Knowledge Bee. The last ten girls standing will be the winners, and each will be rewarded at the end of the recess period. You may line up now, and you may line up quietly.”

The thirty girls excitedly and quietly moved to the front of the room, assembling themselves into a perfect line. Miss Sharon took a quiet stance at the back of the room, and Miss Andrews stood near the front, shuffling her index cards. “Are we ready to begin, girls?” The thirty girls shouted their unanimous “yes!” and the game began.

Miss Andrews raised one eyebrow at the first girl in line. “Young lady. What is the name of the third president of the United States of America?” The girl rocked slightly back on one foot for a moment, sticking her tongue between her teeth in thought before answering. “Ma’am, I believe the third president of the United States of America is Thomas Jefferson.” The girl held her breath as Miss Andrews paused a moment. “That is correct. Stand at the end of the line.” She directed her attention toward the next girl in line. “Young lady. What is the capital of Russia?” The girl’s face showed her nervousness. “Ma’am, I believe the capital of Russia is St. Petersburg.” Miss Andrews paused again, and this time said, “No. Sit down.” The young lady dropped her immediately quivering chin, and took her seat as the first Knowledge Bee loser.

“Next,” ordered Miss Andrews. The next girl in line stared nervously at the wooden floor of the classroom. “Ma’am, I believe the capital of Russia is Moscow.” Miss Andrews nodded sharply, and continued in her line of questioning. “Young lady. What is the sum of thirty-nine and forty-two? Young lady, what is the definition of a cumulous cloud formation? Young lady. Spell the word ‘magnanimous.’ Young lady. Name the parts of the respiratory system.”

The game continued in this manner as twenty girls slowly took their seats. The ten girls left at the front of the classroom beamed in excitement at their newest accomplishment. At the end of the game, these ten were congratulated by Miss Andrews and Miss Sharon, and each of the ten waited patiently to hear what their award would be. Miss Andrews did not humor them. “Nice job, ladies. Now take your seats. And I would like the twenty girls who lost the Knowledge Bee to line up once again at the front of the room.” The twenty embarrassed girls slowly walked back to the chalkboard. Miss Andrews nodded at them. “Young ladies, follow me.” She opened the classroom door, and promptly walked out. Twenty uncertain girls followed.

The ten girls remaining in the classroom looked at one another in both disappointment at a lack of immediate reward and in smugness at having won the Bee anyway. Miss Sharon gave the ten girls a tight-lipped smile and said, “Again, girls, well done. I am proud to be your teacher. It is time for individual reading, now, and I will turn on the CD player while we read quietly at our desks.” She walked to the counter at the side of the classroom and turned on one of Beethoven’s more rousing symphonies.

As the girls pulled out their worn copies of Mark Twain novels, of S.E.Hinton books and of George Orwell classics, faint murmuring was heard within the classroom from somewhere in the hallway. Miss Sharon turned the CD player’s volume up slightly. She walked back and forth, looking over the titles of the books the girls had chosen to read. A small cry was heard from the hallway, and two of the girls looked up from their books. Miss Sharon laid a pointed finger against her pursed lips, and shook her head. The two girls continued reading. A moment later, another series of cries were heard, this time more clearly. Miss Sharon hurried to the CD player and turned the volume up once again. A few more girls looked up from their books, foreheads crinkled and eyebrows raised, but were silently instructed again to return to their books.

Miss Sharon leaned against the counter, hand poised above the CD player. By now, the symphony was playing rather loudly, and each of the ten girls tried to ignore the volume of the CD player as well as the strangeness of Miss Sharon’s behavior.

A shrill scream sounded from down the hall, and the ten girls in the classroom looked worriedly at their teacher. Miss Sharon replied with a stern “Read. Your. Books. I won’t say it again.” More screams exploded from the hallway, and the ten girls within the classroom bit the insides of their cheeks. The screams did not come from Miss Pinkerton’s office, and they did not come from the bathroom. They did not come from the eight-year-old classroom, or from the seven-year-old classroom. It sounded as though they came from the Gassing Room, the one room in the tiny schoolhouse each girl wished to avoid more terribly than they wished to avoid the inside of Miss Pinkerton’s office. Only the Deviant Girls were sent to the Gassing Room. Not a single girl was quite sure of what went on inside the Room, but whatever it was must have been awful, as the girls who were sent there left school entirely and were not seen again.

The screaming continued, sometimes growing louder and sometimes sounding like quiet yelping. The ten girls in the classroom continued reading, and the symphony continued playing at an exaggerated volume. Slowly, and somewhat pathetically, the screaming stopped. The yelping stopped, and all of the cries stopped. The ten girls were almost relieved. Miss Sharon turned the volume of the CD player back to its normal quiet, and even the rain outside seemed to stop.

A moment later, Miss Andrews returned briskly to the classroom. She stood at the front, and addressed the girls. Although her hair was still tightly in its bun and her outfit still crisp and neat, her face was flushed.

“Young ladies. Congratulations on winning the Knowledge Bee. Each of you will be presented with a gold star and a letter of achievement at the end of the school day. More importantly, however, each of you has earned herself a potential lifetime of intelligent contribution and service to your society. Not everyone deserves a lifetime, but you ladies have earned it. Please give yourselves a round of applause.”

The ten girls quietly clapped their hands together as ordered, some looking forward to the gold star they would be able to show their mothers, and others wishing the reward could have been an extra ration of ice cream or something more useful than a star and a letter.

Miss Sharon clapped her hands together briefly, and nodded at Miss Andrews. “Girls, Miss Andrews will be leaving us now. She is going to help some of the other teachers with their classrooms today. Please thank her for being here this morning!” Ten girls replied with their unanimous “Thank you Miss Andrews,” and Miss Andrews exited the room, tapping her way down the hallway and into the seven-year-old classroom.

Miss Sharon glanced at the clock in the room. “Alright, girls, we will have our mathematics lesson, and then snack time.”

Forty-five minutes later, ten girls crunched hungrily on their carrot sticks and apple slices. Their teacher stood, once again, at the counter beside the CD player. As soon as the first few screams were heard from the Gassing Room, Miss Sharon quickly turned the volume up, and the girls continued snacking.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Renee Beauregard is pursuing her MFA in creative writing at Hamline University. She has a tailless cat named Bean, and once bit a urinal cake on a dare. It tasted a lot like chemicals and burning. Recent and forthcoming publications include The Northern New England Review, The Rectangle, and Arsenic Lobster.

” Yes, sweetie, I’m here.“

“I’ve missed you so much.  You don’t know how hard it is sometimes.  It’s just… just…”

” I know, sweetie, I know.  You’ve been so brave, taking care of the kids and keeping Mom from going crazy.  I’m real proud of you!“

“Barb, I can’t do this anymore.  I’m not strong enough.  I’m not tough like you… were.”

” Sure you are, Rick.  You’ve been so strong, and everybody relies on you.“

“I can’t. I can’t have everybody relying on me.  Sometimes I just want to scream and run away, but I don’t know where to run to.  I miss you so much, and I just don’t understand. I don’t.”

” Understand what?  What don’t you understand?“

“Why did you have to get… you know?  Damn, I can’t even say it.”

” Why did I have to get cancer?  There wasn’t any reason, Rick, it just happened.  God wanted me to come home.“

“Ah, don’t talk like that.  You know how that religious crap bugs me.”

” But it’s true, Rick.  God wanted me home, so I came.“

“Are you sure?  When you died and I… looked at your face lying there… I just thought you were gone.  Really gone.”

“I’m not gone, sweetie.  I’m right here, waiting for you.  And when God calls you home, I’ll be waiting here with open arms.“

“I guess we’ll see.”

” See what, Rick?“

“If you’re there waiting for me.  I got tired of waiting, so tired.  I was just too lonely and tired.”

” Rick, you’re scaring me.“

“There’s nothing to be scared about, Barb.  Nothing at all.  Sorry, I’m feeling a bit light-headed, that’s all…”

” Light-headed?  Rick, what are you talking about?  What is going on?  Where are you?“

“It’s okay, honey, it’s okay.  Everything’s gonna be okey dokey.  We’re in the car.  Remember when you wanted us to hurry up and get ready?  We’d yell, ‘We’re in the car!’  Remember how the kids would laugh.”

” Rick, sweetie, I remember, I do remember, but where are you now?  Where are the kids?“

“They’re here, they’re both here.  They’re in the back seat, fast asleep.  Fast asleep.  You said never to leave them alone, and I won’t.  I swear I won’t.  Never leave them alone.  Alone.”

“Rick! Rick!”

“We’re in the car… in the car… and the engine’s running… and we’re coming to find you, Barb.  We’re coming to join you.  Better open up those arms, now, honey…”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ben Langhinrichs is a software developer living in Shaker Heights, Ohio with three bright kids, two pesky cats and a very lovely wife.  He has had non-fiction articles published in a smattering of software magazines and books, and currently has stories and poems accepted by four different magazines, but none in print yet.

During her lunch break, Valerie left the store to buy coffee and a newspaper to leaf through. Though she knew there would be no mention of Leonora’s death, her work was two cities away from her apartment. She might go have a drink or two with Timothy, Talia, and Caroline when she got home. They would certainly have things to tell her. They all lived closer to Leonora, were bound to have overheard something about the investigation. She was almost jealous at the thought that they may have spoken to the police. It would be disappointing if they’d said anything that would’ve led straight to Randolph’s capture.

Howard, one of Valerie’s co-workers, came into the coffee shop and sat down at her table. She hadn’t even noticed his approach, her mind wandering. They talked for a while about an issue that had come up during the last inventory, neither of them with any heart, and she watched him not drink his coffee, wondering if he’d ordered it just to have a reason to sit.

“If you witnessed a crime, would you report the criminal to the police?” Valerie asked.

Howard leaned back, finally taking a swallow of his drink, seeming displeased with its taste. “Which sort of crime?”

An idiot question, but she told him she meant a violent crime. She meant if he’d witnessed a mugging or a rape, a murder, what would he do?

“I would report it, yes. Why?” He was cleaning his lips with a napkin, not all that intrigued. But then he looked at her, smiling, wanting to know what she knew and about whom.

She smiled back, telling him this had nothing to do with work. It was just a hypothetical. “You would report it?” she prompted him to continue.

“Yes. I would. I guess I might be hesitant if it was especially violent. I would find a way to do it anonymously, but I think that’s perfectly reasonable.”

“You wouldn’t want to get involved too personally?”

“No.”

“Then why get involved at all?”

He shrugged, obviously not caring. And so when he again asked her why she was asking, she changed the subject.

Howard’s little response was worthless. If something has nothing to do with you, it has nothing to do with you and so should be left at that. It was absurd to hear someone off-the-cuff say they would do something of such gravity with no conviction, no passion, like a ‘Hello’ to a ‘Hello’, a ‘You’re welcome’ to a ‘Thank you,’ completely inconsequential. She made a point of avoiding him for the rest of her shift: If she had started any conversation with him, she would’ve found a way bring it around to this subject, found some excuse to snarl something at him.

***

Over a glass of wine with Caroline, after a delay-ridden train commute back to her apartment building, Valerie again found a way to broach the subject of the murder, this time by asking, ‘Do you think it might have been someone we know?’ and giving a sober look to Caroline, tightening her eyes to indicate she was referring to Leonora.

“Not someone that we know. I can’t imagine it. Timothy thinks it must’ve been one of those women she was always involved with.”

Valerie smiled and took a drink of wine, never liking to go along with what she considered ridiculous gossip about Leonora’s sexuality. She couldn’t picture Leonora involved with another woman, couldn’t think of another woman wanting to put their open mouth to Leonora’s mouth, her skin, to move their hands inside of her.

“If you knew who did it, what would you do?”

Caroline was refilling her glass from the bottle on the small coffee table, several open books left around on top of one another, already a page with a damp blotch from a slight spill. “What do you mean?”

“If you’d witnessed it, would you let people know? Would you turn them in?” She had nearly said ‘Him’ instead of ‘Them’ and so to cover the odd stumble hurriedly repeated the question, now saying ‘Her’ and laying a dark emphasis to the word, clicking out her teeth between the slit of her smile.

“Of course I would.”

So glib, as though that could ever be all there was to it. “But why would you? Why would you involve yourself just for something you saw?”

Caroline spoke for almost ten minutes without stopping, without slowing, treading over the same few points, holding up fingers in no specific way to mark them each time she wanted to lay a particular emphasis, all the gestures quite limp. Valerie glanced at the wine bottle which had hardly a sliver of liquid left in it, already on her third glass. Caroline mentioned that Leonora had people who were close to her, who would want to know the reason for her death. Who deserve to know, she kept repeating. And Caroline said that if she, herself, were hurt or killed and someone knew who was responsible she would want this witness to come forward, to speak for her, to allow her life the proper completion. She would expect them to was how she actually phrased it.

All sophomoric points, pedestrian, selfish, and sentimental. The only thing Caroline spoke of that struck in a sharp way to Valerie was the statement and who knows who else some monster might hurt, left to go their way.

The two finished another bottle and most of a third, parting on Valerie’s insistence that Caroline needed rest before her upcoming doctor’s appointment.

Walking the corridor, rounding to the stairwell, climbing the four flights, and walking nearly another full length of corridor, Valerie kept guffing, rubbing her eyes, dismissing the first two of Caroline’s points with this or that retort, but finding the third rotting inside her. As soon as she was in her apartment, she poured a quick shot of bourbon, downed it, poured another and stood in the dark, facing the wall, halfway whispering aloud her discussion of the matter.

***

Valerie woke early, wanting to vomit but unable. Instead, she sat by the window that looked out on the common area in front of the building and drank several glasses of water. She was not exhausted, though felt in no condition to do anything but sit around, and made up her mind that she would take a week off from work and visit with her brother, a train trip of nearly an entire day. She stared down at the pavement, stared at a man who was smoking a cigarette by the public telephones, some vagrant who was always around. She stared and thought about Randolph Tate.

It was after dozing in front of the television, the volume muted, waking to blearily watch mouths saying nothing, people involved in some sequence she could not discern, that it occurred to her she should warn Randolph away from doing further harm. Randolph was probably harmless now, she supposed. It was impossible to picture him as some stalking menace, as anything more than a man who had killed Leonora and only Leonora and only ever Leonora. Certainly it would be enough to indicate to him somehow that he was known for his crime, this would satisfy any last qualm, more than fulfill any sense of obligation, however imaginary, that anyone might invent to harass her with. She laughed, mocked herself for sounding like Caroline, like Howard, like the reporter she had read in the newspaper, like anyone. Whether it was enough to sate any conscience, it was all she felt inclined to do.

Sitting to her desk, she laid a clean sheet of paper down, took a thick marker up, and began to write the phrase ‘I Know’, just those two words, nothing else would be necessary. But immediately she crumpled the paper, uncrumpled it, tore it, crumpled the halves, buried them in the wastebasket in the kitchen. She sat down again, knowing it wouldn’t do to leave such a note that anybody might find. Some neighbor could come across it, deduce what it meant, and even if they were just spooked the police could be informed and an investigation, however casual, could uncover everything.

She went through her desk drawer, found a photograph of herself, two years outdated, took a thick black pen and scribbled all over her face. She would leave it in an envelope, affix this to his door. He would understand, even if he doubted his understanding; no matter what words he might come up with to name the photograph, he would understand it plainly enough. She stared at where she used to have a face, a face that hadn’t been smiling, hadn’t been looking coy, just a face captured, a glance to the camera that Martin had pointed at her, snapping his fingers to get her attention. For just a moment she thought it would be best to use some picture from a magazine, or to maybe just scribble a churning black mess out on a page, but this would make no difference. It should be her; even if not her face it should be something that was her.

***

Valerie called out from work, having a pleasant conversation with her supervisor who wished her a good time with her family, waited another hour, this mostly spent in the shower, letting the water drone from as hot as possible to as cold as she could bear, dressed in haphazard clothes picked from the hamper, threw a sweater coat on, and then left her apartment.

She affixed the envelope, a brick red envelope from one of her sets of stationary to be certain no one could see through it, to Randolph’s door using five strips of tape, wanting to be certain it would not fall or be taken just on the whimsy of someone wanting to give it an easy yank. She lit a cigarette and chuckled, noticing there was enough room to slip the envelope beneath the door, looked at it pinned flat to the blue paint just above the doorknob and decided it wouldn’t matter.

Valerie lingered around outside, the day sour with overcast and a hush of wind. She hardly took notice that she was watching Randolph Tate approach the entrance door she was loitering beside, staring at him, would’ve just stared at him as he walked through the door into the building had he not slowed, puzzled, raised a hand uncertainly and said, “Hello,” his accent peculiar, this the first time she had heard him speak.

“Hello,” she replied. In an offhand way, she asked if he would care for a cigarette.

He accepted the cigarette and hers to light it with, thanking her as he handed it back. “Are you new to this building?”

She shook her head, made a sound like laughing at some silly remark and then asked him if he had heard about what happened.

“What happened?” He was smiling, resting one elbow against the brick of the wall. An odd stance for smoking, Valerie thought. He looked so distinctly foreign, beyond his ethnicity; his every motion perverse and somehow incorrect.

“About the woman who lived here”, she said, making a general gesture with her shoulder to indicate the building. Randolph took a long pause, three more drags from the cigarette, and taking this as a response she asked him had he known her well.

“Not well. She lived very near to me, though.”

“But you knew her?”

“I knew her from walking past, perhaps, but not well”. He let smoke down his nose, stepping out the cigarette but seeming to do so without having meant to. She nearly offered him another, but he said, “It is very upsetting. I do not know what sort of woman she was, but it is a terrible thing to happen in the place where you live. A terrible thing no matter whom.”

Valerie smiled in what she imagined came across as vague sympathy and let Randolph continue through the door with just a nod of his head she did not bother to return.

***

Valerie’s brother, Bernard, was nearly an hour late in picking her up at the train station. Profusely apologetic, he insisted he take her to lunch, immediately, to make up for it. She teased him about the length of his beard and how it was trimmed very unevenly over his lip. He laughed, saying that if he had it his way the beard would have come off long ago; the general rattyness was to make it unappealing to a woman he was seeing.

For two days, Valerie was left to her own devices, Bernard having to work. Each morning he apologized and each morning she told him not to worry, told him she was surprised that he’d managed to get any time off, considering she had just appeared on his doorstep, unannounced. She would watch him take the bus at the corner stop and then would read through magazines, drink enough wine to keep her light but not so much she would get drunk before evening, and she would stand at the windows or the door, but wouldn’t leave the house.

When she told her brother about Leonora, he became very serious and asked her what she was doing to protect herself.

“There’s nothing to protect myself from, Bernard. It’s nothing to do with me.”

“You told me that the man wasn’t caught, yet. How do you know he won’t try to kill, again?”

“I suppose I don’t know,” she said, as though it were a bore, a point she had to acquiesce to or else the conversation would stall out. “But for all I know they might have caught him, in the meantime.”

Bernard told her she was being irresponsible, that it was completely reckless to not take precautions. She laughed, giving him an exaggerated punch to the arm, saying she was dangerous enough in her own right.

“I want you to take one of my guns.”

She laughed a punctuated, piercing squeal, the sound bursting from her suddenly and it took her a moment to compose herself. “Since when do you have a gun? How many guns do you have?”  She made shooting gestures at him, giggling still, breaking his stern expression, but only long enough for him to rough her hair as he stood and told her to follow him into another room.

She agreed to take a gun, but said that she had no interest in his offer of learning how to shoot it. But, he made her go through the motions of loading the gun, readying it, and pulling the trigger a few times, through her protesting, and would not let her alone until she was able to show him she had learned it properly.

“Are you sure you don’t want to fire it, once or twice? We can go in to the basement, no one around here would think it odd.”

She managed to stop herself from laughing at the thought of her brother, all alone, in his basement, shooting a gun at nothing, at no one, the bang and then the silence. She wondered if it felt dull or fulfilling and how often he got up to that.

“I want to go to the movies, tomorrow,” she said, Bernard closing the gun in its box and counting out some amount of bullets for her to keep. He nodded his head and absently said okay, wincing like he’d lost count.

***

The night before her return trip, she woke in the grip of an extreme anxiety, paced the room and then snuck down to have a drink of vodka, as quietly as she could, filling a tall glass and going back to her room with it. She hadn’t thought to call anyone for the entire week, the time had just slipped past and now it occurred to her that Randolph may have been arrested in her absence. In fact, the more she thought about it, it may have been the photograph she’d left that could have prompted things. Randolph may have confessed. She regretted the theatrics of it, the red envelope and the tape, the dank, accusatory feel of her face obliterated under the thick ink. It seemed years and years ago, now, and she could not convince herself at all that things would be as she had left them, that something pivotal hadn’t happened, that things hadn’t gotten away from her. She went as far as picking up the telephone and dialing her own telephone number, listening to her answering machine message, letting the beep sound and the hush of her being recorded fill her ears.

Bernard asked her if she was feeling well enough to travel, even offering to hire a car if it would suit her better, not having to deal with the crowds and the air of the train. She very much wanted to take him up on the offer, but she knew it would play out oddly, her saying yes I would like that would lead him to think she really was ill and then he would insist she stay and that a car could be hired tomorrow, as the train trip was nearly that long, either way and she would not be able to stop herself protesting which in turn would cause Bernard, her brother and aware of too many lines to her face and just what they meant, to ask her what was actually the matter.

“I couldn’t sleep last night and drank to put myself out.”

“Did you?” He was grinning and so she just acted embarrassed and gave him a shove, allowing him to tease her until he drifted in to talking about something else.

In the toilet on the train, she removed the gun from its box, pulling the trigger a few times before loading it. She rested the gun on her bare knee, her eyes stuck in its direction while she urinated. After some time, she found she’d been drifting off, that she was chilly from having been sitting bent forward so long, pants down and a strand of drool was nearly ready to drop over her lower lip.

For a few minutes, she calmed herself by reasoning that Caroline or Talia would have called her had someone been arrested for Leonora’s murder. Certainly if Randolph had killed himself, which was another possibility, that information would get out soon enough and someone would have contacted her, as everyone knew she was just with her brother for no reason in particular, a telephone call wouldn’t interrupt that and even if it was an interruption such news would be considered important enough to breach etiquette.

But there remained the chance Randolph had turned himself in quietly, no news or fanfare. There remained the possibility that he’d written a confession and then driven to some quiet place to end his life in familiar comfort. With Leonora’s room empty, likely rented out again already, none of her friends would know a word of it. She felt ashamed for having left, guilty that she may have let so much vanish without her.

***

The third message on her machine was from Randolph. There was no actual message, no words, just a long silence that she first thought was the call she’d placed to herself, but then a moan of warmth ran through her and she knew it must be him. After another two messages, it was Randolph, in silence again. She wondered how many times he’d called her without letting the machine pick up, tried to think of his face and could not.

She was jarred by the sound of her own voice in a whisper from the machine.

“Valerie. This is Valerie. You cannot sleep. You should sleep. Valerie, you cannot sleep anymore, Valerie.”

She didn’t recall speaking when she’d called. She played the message back twice, erased it and realized that her eyes were watering.

She sat on the sofa, placing Bernard’s gun on the table, chewing on the skin beneath the tip of her thumb. She looked out her window, staring intently at the lit window of the building across the way, waiting for some movement, stood there for ten minutes before she realized there was no point in it, that the window meant nothing.

She set Bernard’s gun on the top of some books on the shelf near the kitchen, taking a dish towel from the counter to cover it. She walked around the apartment, looking at the towel there, and she made this or that adjustment to the placing, not able to satisfy herself. After a little more than an hour, she decided to leave the gun there without the towel, threw the towel into the trash without thinking, began undressing for a shower.

While she stood in the water, not washing, she thought over and over that she heard the telephone. She had left her light on; it would be obvious that now she was at home. She stood naked at the sink and brushed her teeth, challenging herself to keep her eyes closed, to turn her head down, to turn her head up, face the mirror, count twenty and open her eyes, but she was only able to go through with it once out of the half dozen times she attempted.

Pouring herself some wine, she sat to the sofa and watched part of some movie, tilting her head to look at the window and then at the door, the telephone rested on the sofa arm. Her eyes grew bloated and she wanted the light off but didn’t feel like standing. When the telephone rang, she looked at it and sighed, reaching for it in a pretend of melancholy while feeling nothing but the desire to be away someplace else, that and a petty regret at not having already done this, at having waited until now when it could’ve been over and done.

“Hello?”

“Is this Valerie?”

At the sound of his voice she found herself growing frustrated, put upon. “I’ve been away. Have you been calling me? Are you still here, Randolph?”

After a pause, a finished glass of wine at a long swallow, the face on the television changing from this to that to this to a camera arcing over a woman lolling on a bicycle, Randolph said please as though he might be some child wishing to himself.

***

Valerie watched Randolph Tate smoke three cigarettes, sort of wondering why he’d left the building through the side door to have to come around to the entrance down below her window, but really it made perfect sense to her. If Randolph had just come to her door it would’ve been far more off-putting. She went to the door and unlocked it, decided against leaving it ajar, relocked it and went to the sink, washing her hands with soap and drying them against the fabric of the back of her shirt.

Entering the apartment, Randolph moved right past her, a slush of clothing, walked the length of the room and took a seat in her desk chair, turning it out so that he faced the sofa, the squat of the room center. He looked at her, but kept turning his eyes down. Only after a moment did he say something, but Valerie could not hear and, irritation in her tone, she asked him, “What?”

“It was you in the photograph. But I didn’t know.”

She shrugged and told him he wasn’t really supposed to know. “I don’t care that you know, but I don’t think I really thought you would know.”

“You want me to confess.”

She blinked, looking at him, his face quizzical and after a minute she shook her head, mouth a bit of a twist. “No. I don’t want you to confess.”

“I killed that woman. Leonora. That woman who I would see in the hallways.”

She held up a hand, swallowing wrong and coughing, motioning him not to go on while she coughed, let saliva collect, enough that she could swallow the rough of the cough away.

“My mother will be dead, soon. She is very sick. I cannot be away from my mother while she dies.”

She shook her head and started to talk again, only able to get as far as repeating that she did not want him to confess.

“I promise you I will. Valerie, I promise you I will. When my mother dies. I will tell everything. I can tell you, first. I promise you.”

He was nearly in tears and looking now just at his slick folded hands, lightly shivering, dangled between his spread legs. He was whispering things, now, or else his breathing was just odd, foreign words or foreign breathing.

Valerie didn’t move quickly to where she had set the gun and when she picked it up she turned, took a pause but not a hesitation, leveled the barrel as best she could in Randolph’s direction, said his name and in almost the same instant depressed the trigger. From where she was standing, it looked as though the bullet had struck his arm, causing the tweed of his sport coat to pop a small circle, but the bullet must have pierced straight through. After she took a few breaths, Randolph’s body slowly leaned forward and fell from the chair to the floor in an awkward pile. He looked, she thought, something like a bit of old rope that had been coiled once, but had now come part way undone.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pablo D’Stair is the author of novellas The Unburied Man and The People Who Use Room Five, and he is the founder of Brown Paper Publishing (http://www.brownpaperpublishing.net/) . Read Nik Korpon’s review of the novellas here : http://www.outsiderwriters.org/archives/4129

“Darken,” he said and the walls of the elevator took on a dark tint.

He began to read through the brochure he’d spent so much time perusing recently.

Symmetry: Find The Other You

He could recite whole passages from it by now. Could they really fulfill that promise? he thought. The elevator neared Symmetry’s floor and he touched his finger to his wrist and the brochure closed. As the doors began to open, he checked that the polish on his shoes was still flawless. It was.

The two sleek doors cushioned shut behind James and to his right, a tall woman, blond hair framing her face, greeted him. She was nearly a foot taller than James and wore a dark green dress that had probably been a morning’s work to squeeze into.

“James Porticus.” He shook her hand.

“Welcome to Symmetry, James. I’m Romina.”

James peered a little too long into Romina’s eyes. He knew it was illegal to even ask if she was human, such were the anti-discrimination laws, but he was fairly sure he saw nothing machine-like in those irises and from this, he gained a little confidence.

Romina led James down a wide corridor, thickly carpeted. On the walls were constantly changing projections of a succession of happy couples that Symmetry had brought together. Some of the screens displayed interviews with beaming couples. On yet another screen, James saw the president of Symmetry, an immaculate white goatee jerking up and down as he spoke soothing, encouraging words. He’d already seen the clip in the brochure.

They soon arrived at an open door and Romina gestured for James to enter. She closed the door behind them.

Romina sat on one side of a large, shiny black table which reflected the strong natural lighting that fell from the vaulted ceilings. James, allowing himself a quick glance around the room, sat on a backless chair that tilted him towards Romina. There were screens on three of the four walls.

“What do you know about Symmetry, James?”

“Just what I’ve seen in your brochure really.”

“As you’ll have read, no doubt, Symmetry is here to complete you. We live in such a prosperous, peaceful world, but many, like you, James, are fundamentally unhappy. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Many pass through life unfulfilled, out of kilter and, of course, the offspring restrictions mean you need to be sure of your partner, sure that you have found a match for life.”

James nodded, feeling it was expected at this point. Romina continued.

“We will essentially find the other you, your perfect match. We call ourselves Symmetry because we take the half-you, the half you now are,” she now put one hand out in front of herself, “and we bring a harmony to your life with the other you.” With this, she brought her two hands together in front of her face, as if praying. “In this way, your realized, whole-self will find true contentment.”

“Your brochure mentions a totally revolutionary approach to matching couples,” James said.

Romina stood and walked towards the window.

“Presentation,” she said, almost to herself.

The room darkened considerably and the windows became opaque and brightened to a screen. The first image that appeared showed a flustered looking man compiling a form of some kind, using pen and paper. James guessed it was from the 20^th century.

“When computer dating, as it was then called, began around a hundred and fifty years ago, much of the attempt to match people involved this type of thing: endless form-filling, clients asked to mindlessly list out interests, likes and dislikes, hobbies and so forth.”

Romina touched something on the edge of the table and the image changed, now showing a composite picture of a man playing sports, reading a book, fishing.

“It was a naïve attempt to match people with similar interests, similar hobbies, but there was little attempt to really match the people themselves. That’s something Symmetry has been doing for nearly twenty years, something we believe we have mastered, James.”

“What is the procedure?” James asked. “What do I need to do?”

Romina took her seat again as images continued to display to her right: a couple communicating by typing simple messages on a computer; a man standing under a clock, flowers in hand; a sad-looking woman watching a television while a man sat to one side, his head buried in a newspaper. Arcane images from a century or two ago, images that James continued to take in as Romina began to speak.

“With personality mapping at its current stage, we can have a blueprint for your character, what really defines you, after a few simple brain scans.” She touched her hand to her temple. “This is where you really are, James. Your personality resides here within, not on a list of your favorite movies or pizza toppings. There’ll be no questions for you to answer. None! All our tests are physiological. We can now map your personality as those from our past,” she said, indicating the images that continued to flash up on the window, “first mapped their hearts and lungs.”

“And she’ll be the same as me?” James asked.

“The person we’ll find for you, she that will complement you, will possibly like fish, where you prefer steak, of course. But James, in the core fundamentals, in your very character where it counts, you’ll be perfect for each other.”

James stood and shook Romina’s hand warmly. He was taken back down the corridor and made arrangements with another Symmetry employee to come in for his personality scanning the following week. He left Symmetry feeling as though he was at last casting aside the roles that mere happenstance or fortune had played in his sentimental life to that point.

He had suffered a rough six months since his release, but everything that Romina had told him had felt like a fresh breath of oxygen on his flickering flame of happiness. He headed home with a smile hung upon his face.

***

The first name that was sent to James after his personality scan was Anna. He read her file, hungrily searching for the similarities that Romina had promised. Superficially, they were there, but it would be at their first meeting, arranged through Symmetry, that he would discover whether Anna was the person he was looking for.

James first met Anna at a new sky restaurant less than a month after Romina had convinced him of Symmetry’s worth. They had a meal together and spent the evening talking easily and confidently about their lives to that point, which, unsurprisingly, were quite similar. Both had shown an early passion for climatology and gone into the field of greenhouse-climate terraforming. But beyond these mere details, there was a synchronicity in their words and thoughts, a meshing together of two separates, that convinced James that Romina’s confident words had been fully justified.

They talked about their respective character flaws and laughed loudly at how they were identical. Both had marred their previous relationships with a tendency to over-expose themselves emotionally early in a relationship and a bad habit of dealing with their partners in a condescending manner on a day-to-day basis. By evening’s end, James and Anna held hands over their shared Cream Helium dessert and looked into each other’s eyes.

“I thought that Romina at Symmetry was just giving me the usual promo talk, but she was correct,” James said. “I feel as though I’ve found the person who fills in the hole I never even knew existed in me.”

“Just how similar do you think we are, James?” Anna asked. “I mean, having dinner together once, you’re bound to notice a few similarities and focus on them. But do you think it goes deeper than that?”

James put down his whiskey.

“I hope we’re not too similar, identical.” He laughed. “That would be a little odd, wouldn’t it?”

“Hmm, yes. Though it would be fascinating if we shared the darker aspects of our personalities. Would you end up hating me – or improving as a person once you looked into the mirror of the other person and saw yourself?”

“What are you trying to tell me, Anna?” James asked, his mouth crooked into a grin.

“No matter. Come on, let’s go!”

They took a taxi out to Anna’s place, rushing high over the packed street-level traffic, millions making their way back to their compounds, rich and poor. Anna lived on one of the vast islands in the Thames estuary and within a few minutes, they were on the rooftop.

After the taxi had taken once again to the clear night sky, Anna walked to the edge of the roof. The lights of the city formed a twinkling ribbon along the horizon. Below, the deep waters of the Thames swirled and boiled as tide met river.

“I know of no better view of London than this one. Come, James, tell me what you think?”

James walked up so that he was standing just behind her, laying his left hand on her shoulder. He felt her tremble slightly as he did.

“It’s exquisite. It must have cost you thousands to move here.”

“It was all Daddy!” she exclaimed and walked towards the roof exit. “Come on, James. I’ll show you what a rich father can buy you these days!”

Anna lived only a floor from the top and she led him down two flights of stairs. After giving James a quick tour, during which he nodded his head, asked questions and even gasped at all the opportune moments, she headed for the bathroom, sliding out of her skirt as she did so.

“Lower the lights and make yourself comfy. I’ll be out in a minute.”

He commanded the lights to dim and reclined on the sofa, wondering as he did if it was possibly real leather. The room was cool and James could even feel a slight breeze arriving from somewhere above his head. Sweat ran down the small of his back, however. It dampened his forehead and twice he ran a hand across his brow and dried it on his jacket. He listened to the discordant sounds coming from the bathroom as Anna clattered around clumsily. James too was a clumsy person. Making herself pretty for me, he thought, breaking into a grin.

As he leant there against the armrest of the monstrous white sofa, he let a hand stray into the inside pocket of his jacket. Old habits die so very hard, he said to himself. He allowed the pad of his finger to run along the cold blade, careful to steer clear of its edge. Deeper down into his pocket, his hand reached the handle, made from the horn of a Corsican ram and offering his inquisitive fingers a hundred miniscule ridges and valleys to play over. He could still hear Anna in the bathroom. In one flash of a movement, he pulled the knife out of his jacket and slipped it behind one of the plump cushions to his right, taking care to leave it within easy reach.

Just then, Anna stepped out of the bathroom, wearing only a small towel around her waist, breasts hanging freely. She held one arm determinedly behind her back so James wouldn’t see the stainless steel surprise she had there for him. On her face was a toying smile which showed her teeth. James smiled back at her as she approached him.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Neil Coghlan is a 40 year old Londoner presently living in Buenos Aires on a sabbatical year. He has taught English around the world for the last fifteen years and is enjoying this new experience of writing, which he discovered only very recently. Six of his stories are currently scheduled for publication in 2010 in a wide range of print and online publications. He will be appearing, among others, in an anthology ìRetro Spec: Tales of Fantasy & Nostalgiaî, in Bards & Sages Quarterly magazine, in Crow’s Nest webzine, in the UK magazine “Delivered” and in the Elements Of Horror Anthology. He also runs an educational website and scribas.com, a site dedicated to nostalgia.

The new place wasn’t a house like his mother said it would be.  It was a fifth-floor walk up in a gray apartment building on the bad side of some town he didn’t know the name of.  When he stepped out of the taxi he looked up at the windows, all the same size, all the same shape, mirroring each other like dead clones, hanging there.  His mother yelled for him to start carrying up his things and he grabbed a box.

The first night there he couldn’t sleep.  His bed hadn’t been moved in yet and so he lay on his dead grandmother’s blanket on the floor of his unfinished room.  It was a pale blue, with light flowered stitches.  He rubbed his cheek against the fibers.

His window overlooked a small yard and he found himself dragged there again and again during the night.  Derrick moved quietly, his bare feet making slight squeaking sounds as he trudged back and forth from his blanket to the window and back again.  It was sweltering outside, but his room felt like a meat freezer.   He decided to wrap the blanket around himself, still smelling his dead grandmother’s perfume, and stood at the window, surveying his land.  For a moment he pretended that this dark wasteland was his, and that he could build and destroy what he pleased. He watched trees grow and wither like weeds and created a small cabin right there, behind that patch of mud.  The dark grass turned bright and that shadow…

That shadow turned into a man.  A man with black and red skin, whose body was bent, whose eyes were moon-white.  The look on his face was resentful and full of rage and Derrick was reminded for a second of his father, years ago, when the stink of hate was pouring from his mouth, the alcohol bottle swinging like a bat.  The shadow looked right up at him, and with a strong walk despite his crooked features, came towards the window.  Derrick reminded himself it was pretend, he was imagining, and concentrated on making the Shadow-man turn into another twisted tree in his collection.  It wouldn’t work.

He kept walking towards the building, his white eyes focused intently on the boy.  Derrick screamed.  He screamed until his mother came into the room.

“What’re you screaming about? I am trying to sleep!”

“The man! The man!”  was all he was able to get out as he pointed again and again at the window, now choked with the fog from his breath.

She pushed him aside and used her arm to wipe at the window, peering out.  Her scowl deepened and Derrick noticed her arm tighten.

“There’s nothing there.  Go back to bed.  Right now. Don’t you be screaming anymore, you understand me?  I can’t deal with your shit.  You have to think about me here.  Okay? Can you do that?  Can you think about someone besides yourself?  Do you know what I had to do to get us into this place?”  He was about to shake his head no, feeling smaller and shorter and more powerless every word she spit.  But she slapped him before he could answer.

“No, of course you don’t know!”

Derrick felt his eyes burning and drowning, his eyesight under water.  He caught his voice in net upon net of sobs and could do nothing except dig his fingers more firmly into the blanket he still seized.

“Go to bed!” She yelled and he scrambled onto the section of floor that he had decided was his bed.  He buried himself in the blanket and cocooned himself as tightly as he could.  He heard his mother slam the door behind her and his heart stuttered.  He didn’t like it when the door was closed.  He liked it open.  Always.  He almost stood and opened it but he pictured his mother coming back in to find him up and the sting on his cheek pulsed in warning.  He spent the rest of the night with his eyes trained at the window for any sign of black and red skin or white eyes and kept his back to the closed door, pretending it was open and pretending he could get free.

The next morning his mother told him that she hadn’t signed him up for his new school yet and would do so the next time she went to the library to use their computers.  She told him not to leave the house and then went to go get a bus.  She never said where to.  Once Derrick had asked but she told him it was none of his fucking business and he never asked again.

As soon as she was gone he snuck out of the house, walking on the points of his toes, afraid to make noise as if she was still there.  He closed the door behind him, walked down the five flights of stairs and left the building.  He gazed longingly at the bus stop.  Just a little money, that’s all it would take.  He would hand over bills like dark merchandise and speed away.  But no, he turned his head away from his only escape route and headed around the building to the back yard.  He mapped it out in his mind, the small plot burned and permanent in his skull.  There was where the trees had been, there was where the cabin was, and that was where the man had stood.  But none of it was there.

He walked with slow and careful steps the perimeter of the yard, taking in all the details he could; sure he would find some secret, some clue.  When he stood in the shade he whispered to himself that he could feel a chill in the air.  That there must be some evil minion or demon of sorts floating invisible nearby.  But he didn’t.  It was warm.  The branches above his head floated in the breeze on a peaceful wave.  The sun created outlines of the leaves on his dirty shoes.  He looked at the building in front of him, imagining that this must have been where the Shadow-man stood last night.  He counted up five gloomy, cloned windows, searching for his.

The man was standing in the window.

His red and black skin, torn at the edges and fraying like cotton, glittered in the dark of his room.  Derrick felt his heart pound and skip, stuttering in his small chest, his entire body numb.  He was sprinting before he knew what he was doing.

He ran up the flights of stairs and tore open the door to the apartment.  He tripped on the raised edge between the kitchen and the hallway but caught himself on the side of a cracking wall.  He ran into his room and prayed that the man did and did not exist.

He was still there.  He faced Derrick with a calm appreciation, his body straighter this time and some dark ring visible in his white eyes.  He wore no clothes but his body was a marred mess of clotting and bunched flesh. Burned. Derrick couldn’t scream, and so he backed away slowly. He had tried to scream, a couple times, but air would not be forced out his lungs.  They gripped onto the air in a desperate plea for reality.  He stumbled out of the room and the Shadow-man’s eyes followed him like a tracker eyes a deer.

He backed into the hallway, moving faster and faster until he hit the legs of the couch that his mom had bought off the side of a road.  He climbed onto it backwards, mind blank with terror, his legs hiding under his body, his arms around his head.  He kept his eyes peeked above his forearms, pupils pointed and small, directed at the hallway. There was no movement, no shadow, no sound from the room.  The couch felt hot and cold at the same time, the ticking of the kitchen clock made a sick snapping beat as he waited.  He didn’t know what he waited for.  Death maybe.  To be proven wrong.  All he could think of was the dark ring in those eyes.

Minutes passed.  Fifteen, twenty, twenty-five.  At thirty he felt curiosity wriggle around in his body, a grotesque question working its way back and forth between his eyes.  He stood in one fluid motion, adrenaline still singing through his blood, goose bumps making his body feel light.  He walked the same path to his room, only this time with a quiet and determined passion.  The man was there, in front of the window.  He hadn’t moved a bit.  Derrick stood there.  Locked in a standstill, neither twitched nor breathed.  The Shadow-man held out a hand and Derrick felt a tug forward.  His breathing sped up and his heart quivered.  The man lowered his hand.

Feeling calmer, and not knowing why, Derrick took a step forward.  The Shadow-man blinked his inhuman eyes.  Derrick took another step.  The man did not move.

Derrick held out his fingers, shaking so severely they seemed to move his whole body.  His breath felt hot in the room, like frost had begun to coat his clothes and hair.  One more step.

He touched the man.  His fingers met oily, broken skin, bloody strips of flesh forever falling and dripping off the bones.  The man still didn’t move.  Derrick felt a giddy sense of manic energy course through him, bubbling and rising.  He laughed nervously, then laughed harder.  He continued to stroke the man’s arm, fascinated and disgusted and ecstatic.  He laughed at his mother, at himself, at this man, at this place.  He realized the man was standing on his dead grandmother’s blanket and he wondered whether he should ask the man to move.

The Shadow-man followed Derrick’s eyes and stared blankly at his own feet. He took a shuffling step to the side, off of the fabric.

“Thank you,” Derrick said.

The Shadow-man moved his head to the side, a tilt of his burnt and peeling neck.

The sound of pounding footsteps and keys jingling broke the moment and Derrick ran to the door.  His mother was standing in the doorway.  Her face was red and she held paper bags.

“What was this door doing open?” She yelled.

Derrick wrung his hands together, fingernails scraping the insides of his palms.  “I- I was just out, well I wasn’t out, I was here-”

His mother slammed the door behind her and dropped the bags on the floor.  He was sad that they had no entryway table like they did at their last house.  She used to put bags on that table.

Then she charged towards him.

“What were you thinking? I told you not to go outside, I told you!”  She grabbed his arm and swung him around, bending him over and yanking down his loose jeans.  She smacked his butt, her rings turned inward, over and over.  He cried out and tried to explain.

“It was only for a minute!” He screamed.

“Don’t you raise your voice to me!” She hit him again.  He felt his own body twitch and jerk against her arm and he peed himself.  He couldn’t hold it, her knee was pressing into his stomach.  He felt the warmth trickle down into his pants and his mother hissed and dropped him on the floor.

“What the fuck are you doing? You go and clean yourself up and don’t leave your room you hear me? You understand me?”

He cried an unintelligible yes and ran into the bathroom, not understanding anything.

When he went to his bedroom the Shadow-man was gone.  He wrapped his dead grandmother’s blanket around him and curled onto the floor.  He watched the light in the hallway change colors as his mother watched TV.  She went to the bathroom an hour later and slammed his door shut when she walked by.  He closed his eyes and told himself over and over that it would open, that it would just open up, all by itself, and it would stay open.  It would never close, it would get stuck open, the hinges wouldn’t work. Open, open, open.

He heard the floor creak.  He opened his eyes and the Shadow-man was there, half-bent over, like he was checking on the boy for a fever.  He stood up like an old man and reached out a red and black hand to the doorknob.  He opened it, never making a single squeak or whisper.  He looked back and forth between the door and the boy like he was looking for appreciation.

Derrick sat up and looked at this man, his friend.

“I want to talk to you Shadow-man.”

The same tilt happened to the man’s head.

The man stayed standing and so Derrick stood as well.  His bum throbbed sharply and he grimaced.  The man tilted his head even more to the side.  Derrick thought it might fall off.  He put a hand to his butt and rubbed gently, feeling the rage build inside him.

He played the scene tonight over in his head and looked into the eyes of the Shadow-man.

Kill her, he thought.  Kill her, strangle her, watch her die, watch her go away, make her go away.  He thought harder and harder, sure that the Shadow-man would see his thoughts, make them happen.  Kill her, kill her, kill her.

The man turned towards the open door and stepped outside.  Derrick followed him out, keeping close. The living room flashed blue and green as the television switched channels.  The volume was too loud. Derrick hated her more.

She looked up to see him in the hallway.

“What are you doing out of bed? Didn’t I fucking tell you not to-”

The Shadow-man grabbed her neck and she clutched at hands that she couldn’t feel or see.  She stared at Derrick, her eyes bulging and wide.  Her face got redder and redder.  She choked out words but Derrick didn’t bother trying to understand them.  He rubbed a hand along his backside again as she flailed and jerked against the man.  The man’s eyes were even darker now, changing almost as fast as his mother was dying.  They went from milk-white to a dark slime color.  Derrick thought he looked better that way.

His mother was crying now.  Thick, fat tears dropping out of her eyes as she pleaded with her son for reasons she didn’t even know.  He felt a pity for her, like a cat feels pity for the mouse he played with too long.  Kill her now, make her dead, kill her! He thought.

The man squeezed harder and he heard a crack.  It sounded like when he popped his finger-joints first thing in the morning to wake them up.  His mother fell limp on the couch.  The man stood and turned toward the boy.  Derrick breathed in and breathed out.  He stopped clutching at his fingers and instead tilted his head so far to the side that his vertebrae rubbed and popped against each other.  His eyes sparkled like dark stars and he felt solid and grounded for the first time in his life.  He looked at the Shadow-man and the man tilted his head as well.  Their own salute.  Derrick opened the door, went down the stairs, and walked away.

The man followed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cassandra Mortimer is currently working towards a BFA in Fiction at Emerson College, where she does nothing but read and write and life is better that way.  She has been published in a few collegiate literary magazines such as The Writer’s Block Anthology and The Emerson Review but looks forward to branching out.  She lives in Boston, MA with a bunch of writers who gnaw on each other’s works, and she loves it.

Lock the door and I’m safe. They won’t get me here.

I look into the mirror and see a girl but not me.

The mirror ripples like a puddle. An unrecognizable person peers from the Otherside. I speak, but don’t hear, look and see a face inside mine pulling me forward.

My breath forces through my teeth and my hands move without thought and shake uncontrolled. My chest seizes and erupts, splashing into the mirror that swallows my heartburst and drums the beat back too loud and too high, sucking out my thoughts. My body damp with sweat, hair clings to my face and sticks in my eye, but on the otherside stands a girl with ravenblack hair and goldviolet eyes, smiling. I try to smile and taste blood. The machinegunning of my jaw grinds my teeth to dust and I wonder if I bit through my tongue.

The mirror draws me into the Otherside and the room I stand in feels far away but twists viciously past me. My mouth full of blood, I bite my hand to keep from eating my tongue and I feel wet enamel dust on my hands while tooth after tooth clatters into the sink. I pick one up to examine it but the ground slides up and almost knocks me down. My hands clutch the sink to steady the world. The mirror wants to swallow me but I’m not ready to dive into a glass pool, though she looks so inviting. The faucet’s on and I drink like I’m drowning and let the water fill my lungs.

I relax. Splashing water in my face and watching my forgotten teeth cackle down the drain. Like someone else, the room stops spinning and the world stops screaming, but the mirror ripples and reaches out to me and it starts again. I flick off the lights and the mirror glows violet from her abyss eyes.

I stand upright, gasping a deathwheeze. The room spins and my left eye loosens in its socket. It drops into my open palm, connected to the inside of my skull by a pink and purple ligament that crumbles to dust. I watch me looking at my eye with the violet heat staring from the Otherside. The mirror. I smash my eye against it and it explodes in purple and crimson that rolls down my arm while the glass falls like ice into the sink where the water pinks. I lift up the shard with her violent violet eye and squeeze it until my hand turns a wet red, but the grip’s right. I carve into my wrist and stab into my thigh until the room hurricanes and blooms in red sparkles.

A door opens and closes far away from the velvet encircling me. There’s a woman running up the stairs who needs to be warned about the ghosts and the mirrors. That woman has a name and face impossible to remember. The room swirls in black cherry technicolor. Seeing through the walls and falling through the floor while a smile crosses my lips to the Otherside of the glass in my hand. Pounding at the door like a million car-wrecks, screaming a word that sounds like a name. The noise from her mouth slurs into the running water of the pipes in the walls. The world muffles and the cars crash against me miles away. I sink into an ocean of violence beneath the floor where dead hands caress me.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Edward j rathke is a wandering sort who spends his time making bad decisions and trying to not die. More of his words and life can be found at edwardjrathke.wordpress.com.

As Jeff crossed the living room, Rocky’s growling grew more vicious. He’d had the dog since it was a puppy. From the loss of his only son to diabetes through a three-year battle with alcoholism that cost him his marriage, Rocky had been the only constant in his life, the only one who stood by him through it all, loyally, unconditionally.

Jeff ran through the kitchen, pulled the door open and stepped into the dark garage. He heard Rocky growling near the front of the car. Jeff reached along wall, found the light switch, and flipped it on. The garage lit up to reveal a hooded man in black clothing crouched defensively against the wall. Rocky stood inches away near the car’s front bumper, teeth bore, ready to lunge. The German Shepard was twelve years old now and beginning to show his age. His vision was failing him, and he no longer cared to go for walks. Because of his bladder problems, Jeff had begun keeping him in the garage. But even though Rocky’s health was deteriorating, he was still a good watch dog, still willing to do anything to protect his master.

“Rocky, sit,” Jeff said.

The dog obeyed, but kept a watchful eye on the trapped man.

Jeff leveled the barrel of the gun on the intruder and said, “Stand up.”

Slowly, cautiously, the man rose to his feet. He was tall and slender, his eyes the only part of his body visible in the all-black attire. At first, Jeff thought he was looking at a ninja. Until the man spoke.

“Careful with that gun, mate,” the man said, his mask doing little to muffle his English accent. Jeff had never heard of a ninja from England.

“What are you doing in my garage?” he said.

“I’m doing my job.”

“Your job is to burglarize my home?” Jeff asked incredulously.

“That’s part of it, yes.”

Jeff couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He figured the guy was probably whacked-out on drugs and looking for something to steal to supply his habit. The city was full of crazy dope fiends. “Well, buddy,” he said, “it looks like you picked the wrong house to do your job at tonight.”

“I beg to differ,” the man said.

Jeff didn’t know what to say next. The man’s boldness had him dumbfounded. Jeff had a gun pointed at the guy’s head, could squeeze the trigger at any moment, yet he remained defiant and cocky. Finally, out of frustration, Jeff said, “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You are Jeffrey White, correct?”

“Yeah, that’s me. Now who the hell are you?”

“I’m afraid that’s classified.”

“Classified?” Jeff noticed something shiny in the man’s right hand. “Hey, what’s that?”

The man quickly put his hand behind his back. “It’s nothing.”

“Drop it.”

When the man refused to relinquish the object, Jeff pulled back the hammer on the gun. Click.

“I said drop it,” Jeff told him.

Reluctantly, the man held out his hand. He uncurled his fingers, and a two-inch, silver nail fell to the ground.

“What’s that for?”

“I work for Karma.”

“That a business or something?”

The man rolled his eyes. “Come now. Surely you know what karma is.”

“I’m not playing, buddy. What the hell is it?”

The man sighed. “It’s the force generated by a person’s actions that determines his fortune.”

“You mean… like good luck and bad luck?”

“Precisely. And I’m sure you’re well aware that you’ve had nothing but good luck for months now.”

Jeff took a quick mental trip through the recent past and realized the man was right—no bad luck of any kind had befallen him. No major illnesses, no traffic tickets, not even the occasional bad day at the office. The divorce was the last thing that had caused him any grief, and that was nearly a year ago. It seemed like nothing had gone wrong since then. Every day was a good one.

“That’s not to say you’ve completely deserved it,” the man continued. “You’ve pulled your share of shenanigans—parking in the handicapped spot at the market, littering the highway, cheating on that wonderful new girlfriend of yours. And you would have been punished fittingly had you not slipped through the system.”

“System? What system?”

“The system that keeps track of good deeds and bad deeds. It’s nothing more than a computer, really. One in dire need of upgrading. Bloody thing’s full of glitches. Has a habit of deleting entire zip codes from its watch, letting hundreds of blokes like you off the hook every year. It’s my job to rectify that.”

“Rectify it?” Jeff said. “You mean you were going to put that nail in my tire?”

“And this in your milk,” the man said, retrieving a small vial of clear liquid from a pouch on his belt.

“What’s that?”

“Magnesium sulfate.”

“Which is…”

“A mild laxative.”

“You were gonna give me the shits?”

“You’re getting off easy compared to the guy down the street,” the man said as he dropped the vial back into the pouch. “He’s getting sugar in the gas tank of his brand new Mercedes.”

Jeff was speechless. Did this lunatic really think he was going to let him do these things? What kind of neighbor would that make him? What if this psychopath ended up really hurting someone? Jeff thought he’d better let the police handle this. He spotted an orange extension cord coiled up on top of his tool box and reached for it. “Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

“Please, Mr. White, if you will just let me do my job, you can get out of this with just a flat tire and an upset stomach.”

“Turn around!”

Reluctantly, the man did as he was told. “Getting me arrested won’t do you any good. Karma has thousands of agents.”

“Oh do they now?”

“They do. And some of them aren’t as friendly as me.”

Jeff chuckled as he looped the cord around the man’s wrists.

“You really don’t want to do this,” the man said.

“Shut up.”

“You don’t understand what you’re meddling with.”

“And what’s that?”

“The course of fate.”

“Tell it to the judge, freak,” Jeff said as he pulled the knot tight. Then to rocky: “Watch him, boy.”

Jeff went inside and grabbed the phone off the kitchen counter. He thought he saw something through the window behind the sink, a dark figure moving through the neighbor’s back yard. Apparently this ninja guy had him more rattled than he thought. He was about to dial 911 when Rocky started barking again.

The crazy bastard’s running! Jeff thought.

He hurried to the garage and found the side door kicked open, Rocky barking outside. As he ran for the door, he heard tires screech in front of the house, followed by a loud thud, then a canine squeal.

“NO!” Jeff cried. He threw down his rifle, charged down the driveway, and ran into the street where a silver Mercedes had stopped. The driver, a stout, forty-something man with salt and pepper hair and a gray suit coat, stood beside the car, dialing his cell phone. Lying motionless under the front bumper, awash in the car’s headlights, was Rocky.

Jeff knelt at his side. The dog’s eyes were still open, glazed and lifeless, a puddle of blood spreading beneath his head.

“He ran right out in front of me,” the driver explained. “I tried to stop.”

“You shouldn’t have been driving,” Jeff said as he stroked Rocky’s muzzle.

“What?” the driver said.

“The motor should have seized… from the sugar… should have kept you off the road. I should have listened. Should have let him do his job.”

“Look, I know you’re upset, but I don’t know what you’re talking about. The cops are on their way to fill out an accident report.”

Behind the driver, up and down the street, men dressed in ninja garb scaled walls, crouched on rooftops, and climbed in windows. Jeff felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned and saw the ninja from his garage, crouched down behind him. He was holding Jeff’s rifle.

“Dropped your gun, mate,” the ninja whispered.

Jeff took the rifle, and the ninja sunk back into the shadows.

“Look, I’m really sorry about your dog,” the man in the gray suit said. “You should’ve had him on a leash. This is all your fault, you know.”

“No,” Jeff said, shaking his head. “It’s karma. It’s working again.”

“Karma, huh?” the man chuckled. “No offense, but I don’t believe in that stuff. I’ve been a prick my whole life and nothing bad’s ever happened to me.”

“That,” Jeff said as he slid a shell into the chamber, “is all about to change.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Reed is the author of more than 50 short stories. His fiction has appeared in a variety of small press publications including Black Ink Horror, Chimeraworld 5, and the Cutting Block Press anthology, Tattered Souls: The Provocative Boundary of Fear, with stories slated to appear in Sex and Murder and OMG! The Book of Awesome Stuff. Aside from writing, he enjoys frozen pizza, Seinfeld reruns, and hockey fights. He lives in Davison, MI, with his photographer wife and their two enigmatic children. Visit his official Web site: www.ChrisReedFiction.com.

http://www.calebjross.com/works/booklength/charactered-pieces-stories/blog-orgy-tour/

Caleb J. Ross is both a gentleman and filthy scoundrel. His recent book, Charactered Pieces, deals with matters  profoundly disturbing and yet they all hit too close to home. The man has been e-touring various sites and blogs ’round the interweb in order to promote Charactered Pieces, and Rotten Leaves is his next stop. The editors agreed to this after Caleb J. Ross left us a twenty minutes long voicemail, recorded in his bathroom, where the author could be heard crying, stomping his feet, and sitting fully clothed in his bathtub while muttering, “Leaf rot, leaf rot, want to be part of the leaf rot.”

From the Outsiter Writers Collective page:

With Charactered Pieces, Caleb J. Ross presents a varied world of familial discord, one where a dead fetus evokes more compassion than its mother (“Charactered Pieces”); where two brothers offer the destruction of a family legacy as a birthday gift for their aging father (“My Family’s Rule”); where one brother’s love of Holocaust documentaries pushes his family through the aftermath of his assumed suicide (“The Camp”).
Charactered Pieces peels away the superficial armor of public life to reveal the flaws beneath and treats those perceived weaknesses not as hidden sources of pain but as reasons to celebrate life.

Without further ado, it is with great pleasure that we bring you the short story “Legs Unwilling”. And once you’re done, why don’t you do your brain a favor and order a copy of Charactered Pieces, right here?

CALEB J. ROSS

LEGS UNWILLING

Summer bakes the metal playground slide to ripples. Still, kids line up. Sadists, all of them. Lucky enough to choose pain. Max feels it every breath, unwanted.

Max was a painful birth, breech, with legs unwilling. He cried, a good sign, but the sound only fell, like a deflating balloon’s stale air. The limp curve of his mouth framed the weak breath. He met monitors and clamps within that first exhale. I asked the doctor, is he as bad as we thought? The doctor moved too quickly to answer.

These years later on the playground, kids impatient for the slide climb his chair and harness, pretend he’s a chained monster. They mistake his twitches and ticks for smiles. His seizures for laughs. And his costume—a stained and stressed denim lion made by his grandmother, before she moved three states away to a place with a worse climate—allows just such a misunderstanding.

I knew he wouldn’t be the same as others: I had no morning sickness; he moved little; family didn’t bother with gifts. When I gave him a name, my mother asked why. Because I want to name something, Mom. I wasn’t meant to live either. Parents named me Tammie because that’s what the nurse’s name was. I had Max picked out for years. I tried learning from my own birth.

But he kept breathing. Doctors didn’t understand it. Even I hadn’t a clue. A mother should know her child’s language. I’ve since resolved to basic interpretation: is he satisfied or no? Only lately, I’ve been asking the same question of myself.

Twelve children were abducted from this park last year. Thirty-four in the region. I live ninety miles away, but I pray the drive was worth it. We missed our monthly angiography for this trip. The doctors should be noticing our absence right about now.

A man with sharp-parted hair and pressed slacks takes the empty end of my bench. He offers popcorn. I accept and toss kernels to the ground for birds. He offers part of his sandwich, and that I accept for myself. He wears a predator’s cliché overcoat, but doesn’t stink the way I’d thought they should.

“He looks so precious in that lion outfit. My boy was Spiderman for Halloween.” He extracts a wallet from his pocket, shows pictures of a boy who knows how to smile.

This man doesn’t want my child. “He doesn’t know what Halloween is,” I say. “The fur is the only texture that doesn’t make him bleed.”

The man folds his wallet and rewraps his sandwich. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Are you going to take him or not?”

“What? Why would I take him?”

“The coat. The hair. I thought you were shopping.”

The man pockets his sandwich and leaves to an empty bench across the park. He sits, but keeps an eye tuned my way.

Max’s father was probably the frat boy who fucked me on a dare. I remember his loose jaw, the way it flapped, guided by so much alcohol. Max has the same way about him. They share eyes, too, always spinning and barely open. After, he hi-fived his roommates, and I went back to the bar, unsatisfied. But the glow had already been planted.

Hours later, when Max and I are the only souls left, after the sun has arched overhead to hover at the horizon and cast long shadows out of the monkey bars and the deserted swing-set, a second man claims my bench. “Great evening, huh?” He sits close, despite the open seats all around. He smells of cat piss and sweat. His long coat looks well-used. Birds escape.

“It still might be,” I say, optimistic of this new stranger, offering a few left-over corn kernels from the bench. “For the birds.”

“For the birds, indeed,” he says. And eventually notices my offered popcorn and laughs. “Of course, ‘for the birds,’” and he takes a few pieces.

He points to Max, hanging in his harness, moved only by sporadic breezes. “That your boy?”

I nod.

“I had a similar situation once. Some complications with surgeries ultimately killed him. But he was a drain, to tell you the truth. I don’t mind saying it.” He eyes Max, defiant against the sun’s sharp reflections.

I squint, but still see envy in this potential taker. “I’d do anything for Max. No amount of money could keep him away from me.”

He turns from the sun, my way, shakes his head slowly. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t meaning to imply anything with your situation.”

“I mean, if something happened to him, I’d give any amount to have him back.”

The man’s eyes widen. “Of course.” He tosses a greasy kernel to the ground, no birds in sight.

“Your boy doesn’t move much, does he?” The man steers my gaze toward Max and comments that he looks too still to be breathing.

“He gets tired easy,” I say.

The stranger hefts a few kernels further than the last, almost all the way to Max.

“Do you want him?” I scan the park’s borders on the rouse of a stiff neck, searching for a van.

He creases his brow, ponders. “Do I envy your position, you mean? No, definitely not. I respect your fight, though.” He throws the rest of his kernels. Some ting against the metal framework of Max’s harness. Some bounce against his skin. He doesn’t twitch.

No van. The sun dips lower, stretches the shadows long and thin along the ground. Max’s silhouette creeps, edging my toes. “Your boy was a drain, huh?”

Out of kernels, the man reaches for a wood chip. “There was nothing left of my wife and I with him around. Max. His name was Max, too. It took both of us, two lives, to keep his one life going. Half-life, really. It sounds terrible, but that’s the truth. I wondered how babies like him are even born.”

“A kid like him makes it tough to believe Darwin, for sure,” I say.

“You’re religious?”

“I can’t really believe in God either, can I?”

“I know exactly what you mean.” He tosses the woodchip at Max, sighs when my boy doesn’t respond.

“He’s tired,” I say. I check the man’s profile against the dying light. His initially rigid features have softened, and even the stink has settled among the natural ambience. “I’ll be honest. I was hoping you were a kidnapper.”

The man smiles. “I am.”

A bird lands within drooling distance of Max. My boy doesn’t respond. His shadow blankets my entire foot, creeping to my knee. I shift away from the shadow, but can’t shake the dark completely. “Did you take all twelve of them?”

He frowns. “Only five,” and stands, wincing as his joints pop and echo against bench’s metal back.

“None of them paid enough for you to stop?”

“I don’t do it for the ransom.” He buttons his coat, scratches his cheek. “I don’t think of me as a selfish person. I imagine that nobody comes to a park with a known streak of kidnappings at this time of the evening—especially alone—without secretly hoping.”

As the man turns from me, his stink resurfaces. I speak without breathing: “I don’t—”

“Do me a favor and wait a half hour or so to call the police. Tell them you couldn’t find a phone.”

Already, and I don’t dismiss the relief, I wonder what to do with his clamps and tubes and pills and van attachments; it’s my space now. “What will you do with him?”

“I take him off your shoulders.” The man approaches Max’s harness, doesn’t check for brakes on the wheels, and begins pushing him toward a dim parking lot. “Say ‘goodbye’ Max.” Max only rocks to the pavement’s pebbles and imperfections.

His shadow leaves with him. I whisper my own ‘goodbye,’ and sacrifice a single heartbeat for his absence.

He took a step back, resting his red palms on his knees, wrestling his aged lungs for enough breath to speak. “Look, fella… I haven’t got the right gear to get you out of this. All I got is these old wrinkled hands. I’m gonna get some help, okay?”

There was no reply, only the tremble of splinter-ripped fingers and a quivering movement from the man’s lips, and Arnold feared the man was falling unconscious. If he was trying to say something, Arnold couldn’t hear it. All he could hear was his own rasping breath, the drumming of his heart in his ears, and his spaniel as it scampered amongst the overgrown bushes barking at them as if a deadly predator was lurking amongst them.

It was a mystery how anyone could get into such a terrible state. Arnold was walking his dog through the forest when he found the man. It was a new route; the east side of the woods which he thought he’d try, despite the warnings from his neighbors. They’d told him that the woods weren’t right. That that’s where the ‘Bramble Man was’, and that newcomers to the town like Arnold ought to talk to a few more people before being stupid enough to go in there. Arnold had ignored them of course, passing off their ghost stories as rural myth, but he felt the change in the atmosphere as soon as he stepped over the first few stiles. He’d smelt a powerful stench in the air too, like peeled onions left out too long in the sun, and heard the nervous whining of his dog as they pressed on. But it was only when he heard the wind through the hollows that he began to wonder if there was any truth to the stories; it sounded like the desolate moaning of someone near death. So just to be sure, Arnold went to investigate.

That’s when he came upon what his superstitious fear told him might be The Bramble Man. The poor victim was almost naked. Obviously a vagrant, he was an ugly sort – dark, oily skin, an explosion of warts across his face and a nose like a flattened vegetable. Just a few ragged clothes patterned like autumn leaves torn like newspaper through a shredder, covered him. Those and the impossible tangle of bramble and vines festooned across his body. With his limbs planted into the soil near the roots of the tree, and the thorny plant wrapped around him like mossy rope, he looked as though he’d been the victim of a hate crime. That and the blood.

Noon day sun burned through the canopy, almost sizzling the sweat on Arnold’s balding head, and he wondered if it was the heat causing him to feel so tired, or just the effort and stress of trying to free this unfortunate man. Or perhaps it was that pungent onion smell. It seemed to be coming from a pollen-like substance in the air, produced by small, pumpkin-like fruit nestling like miniature Halloween lanterns amongst the brambles.

Shaking himself out of his growing fatigue, Arnold tilted his head and looked into the man’s half-closed eyes. “Just getting my breath, fella. Like I said, I’m gonna get help. I’d use my phone, but the no signal’s weak in this valley, see?”

If he were a younger man, he would have stayed to help. Ripping those plants away would have been easy enough for stronger arms, and maybe he could do that if he tried for a little longer, but he was so very tired, and there was no way he would have the strength to carry this man back into town all by himself. No; as much as he feared that this man might actually die if left too long, and as much as he was wrestling with his own desire to sit and rest, he knew he had to go back and get someone.

“I’ll be back in a jiff, you’ll see.”

Struggling upright, and calling his dog, Arnold made his way back to town.

—

“You big city types never bloody listen, do you? Or didn’t anyone tell you them woods is haunted, Arnold?”

Keith Manning slammed down the bonnet of the car he had been servicing, and snatched an oily towel from a hook on the wall.

Arnold said, “They’re just stories aren’t they?”

The mechanic shook his head ruefully as he rubbed the cloth around his black fingers. Two of the garage’s engineers – boys no older than seventeen – glanced at each, trying to conceal grins provoked by the prospect of getting involved in a town drama.

“Whatever!” Keith said. “Stories or not, ghosts or not, there’s no denying that people have died in there, and there’s probably truth in the rumors that the missing people met there end in there too.”

“One of my mate’s cousins went in there,” said one of the boys, “and he reckons he saw something.”

“Thing is, Arnold,” Keith went on, ignoring his worker, “you’re new here, and you don’t know the history –”

“Look, I really don’t give a shit about ghosts.’ Arnold stepped forward. ‘You heard what I said – there’s a fella in the woods needs help, and your garage is the closest place. Are you coming or not?”

Keith was already grabbing a pair of bolt croppers from a workbench before he answered. “Alright, alright, Arnold. I didn’t say anything about not helping, I was just saying it’s dangerous in there… Steve, Darren,” he said, waving the croppers at the boys, “go and get some tools from the shed out back, then come and catch us up… oh, and call an ambulance. Hurry.”

Arnold nodded with relief and followed Keith out the door whilst the boys obeyed their employer.

“So, you said he looked beaten up bad?” Keith asked.

“I don’t know if he was beaten. He just… well, he was all caught up in the brambles. Looked like he was on his last legs.”

Keith stopped dead. “Brambles?”

“Yes.” They stared at each other for a moment or two, and Arnold’s spaniel pulled hard at her lead, yapping.

“Was it the Bramble Man?” Keith asked, curtly.

“How the hell should I know? Like I said, surely that’s just a story, right?”

“Right.” But Keith pursed his lips and squeezed the handle of his bolt croppers a little tighter before speaking again. “You remember where this bloke was?”

“Dizzy does.” Arnold nodded at his dog who was still straining towards the woodland, barking.

It was then that the two boys joined them, breathless from their brief sprint.

“Will these do?” asked Steve, offering a long bladed knife and a loaded toolbox.

“It’ll do,” said Keith.

“Ambulance is on its way,” Darren added.

—

Twenty five yards from the tree, just as the rancid onion stench hit them, the mechanic halted and observed the man in the brambles as if he was a wounded lion. “I don’t know if we should do this,” he said.

Arnold and the two youths stopped too.

“What do you mean?” Arnold said. “Do you think he’s too injured to move? Think we should wait for the ambulance?”

Keith gulped, squeezing even harder on the handle of his croppers, not taking his eyes off the vine-covered man. “Uh… yeah, yeah, that’s what I mean.”

But Arnold wasn’t convinced. “What are you scared of?”

“Is it the Bramble man?” whispered one of the youths.

Keith straightened a little at hearing the question and blinked angrily, as if the boy had unmasked his fear before a ridiculing audience. “Shut up!”

“Give me the croppers,” said Arnold, yanking them from Keith’s grip. “Whoever the poor bastard is, he doesn’t look like the bogey man to me.”

“Wait!”

But Arnold was already striding over to the man, determined not to let the returning fatigue get the better of him, and reluctantly, the others joined him.

Even with the aid of their tools, it took over ten minutes to rip the man out through the thorny tangle of branch, vine and stem. The poor wretch was almost unrecognizable as a human by the time they laid him several yards away in the dirt. His feet and hands were so gnarled and twisted, they looked almost indistinguishable from the roots that had got caught around them in the ground. And he didn’t look like he was breathing either.

“Is… he still… alive?” Arnold panted, waving a cloud of pollen away from his face.

The four of them lay next to the victim, all too exhausted to do anything but talk.

“Don’t know,” said Keith. “Just need to… rest… a minute.”

Arnold struggled to breathe, and regretted each gulp of air as the onion smell from the pumpkin fruit tainted each lungfull. “I think that plant’s poisonous. We shouldn’t be this tired.”

And through blurred vision and muffled hearing, he caught the scuffling of boots and urgent voices just before he passed out.

—

“You’re lucky to be alive, Mr. Emerson,” said a blurred face.

Two gentle hands nudged him upright against a soft pillow. “But just relax, you’re absolutely fine thanks to the wonders of private healthcare.” Arnold saw a smile somewhere through the haze. “No lasting damage. If you’re feeling up to it, the doctor will be along in a few minutes to talk to you.”

The doctor arrived fifteen minutes later, and it took ten of those for Arnold to assemble his thoughts and memories into something meaningful.

“Hello, Mr. Emerson,” said a tall, balding man with a goatee beard and a clipboard. “How are you feeling?”

“A little light-headed. What happened? Where are the others?”

“Mr. Manning, Steven Frame and Darren Hardwick are fine, don’t worry. They’re all here receiving treatment.”

“There were five of us. What happened to the other man, the one we rescued?”

“I’m afraid he didn’t make it.”

“Oh God! That’s terrible. Was it the plant that killed him?”

“We don’t know yet, but the circumstances of his death has raised a number of questions, some of which the police need your assistance with. Do you feel up to talking with them?”

“Of course, yes, of course… Oh, what about dizzy, my dog?”

“I’m afraid nobody found a dog, Mr. Emerson.”

“But she’s still out there,” Arnold sat up. “I have to go and find her.”

The doctor pressed him back down onto the bed with a smile. “I am afraid you’ll have to stay in here a further twenty-four hours under observation, the police should be able to help you, though.”

The police interview didn’t take long, and after a making a clearly evasive commitment to search for his dog, the police went on to ask him a series of unusual questions about what he had seen in the woods, whether he had told anyone else about his experience and if he had heard of the ‘Bramble Man’. Arnold knew a cover up when he saw one. Upon asking them about the dead man and if he had family, all they would tell him was that the body had been taken away to some other hospital for ‘tests’. All their questions were geared to find out how much he knew rather than getting anything useful out of him, and they had left him some non-disclosure agreements to fill out by morning.

As a retired political journalist, Arnold knew his rights, but he also knew they’d never let him leave the village if he didn’t make his mark on their dotted line. Whatever was going, he was as much a fan of conspiracies as he was of ghost stories, and before the uniformed men had even left the ward, Arnold had already made his mind up that he was going on his own personal crusade to expose all of it, whatever it was.

Finding and securing his clothing and belongings was no easy task, but rather than cause a scene and arouse suspicion, the nurses on the ward let him leave. Arnold knew the locals would be all over him soon enough, but he also knew that if he called the right people, they’d have a hard time keeping him down. He called in every favor he knew from his days of working in the city as he hurried back to the woods. He’d called his old editor at The Country Herald newspaper, several tenacious journalists from rival papers, his doctor at St Bartholomew’s Practice, a barrister he’d known for twenty years, and several more influential contacts he’d forged relationships with since his retirement. There was no way they were keeping this quiet.

—

“Dizzy!” Arnold yelled as he got closer to the woods. “Here, girl, I’m over here. Come find me, girl.”

He hesitated when he reached the first few trees, a slow chill creeping through his limbs as he peered into the silent woods. “Dizzy!”

He waited a minute more, hoping that she would come bounding through the trees any moment. But she didn’t. He’d have to go in there.

Steeling himself, Arnold was about to head into the woods when the loud chirp of his cell phone sent a spike of adrenaline through his chest.

“God!” he swore into the mouthpiece as he answered it. “Who’s this? You scared the –”

“That you, Arnold?” came a whisper at the other end.

“Yes, it’s me. Is that Kirstie?” Arnold started walking and pressed a finger against his other ear to blot out the sound of his shoes crunching on dry leaves.

“Yeah, listen, I’m on the director’s PC. It’s the only way I could hack into the hospital database to find out about this John Doe you said they’d transferred.”

“That was fast, thanks, I really appreciate –”

“Forget it, Arnold. Just tell me what the hell’s going on? What’ve you got yourself involved with?”

“I already told you, they’re trying to-”

“Because that body isn’t a body.”

“What?”

“I said it isn’t a body,” she hissed.

“Isn’t a body… what… what do you-” Arnold struggled over a stile, smelled the stench of onions again and knew he was getting closer to where he first found the Bramble Man and lost Dizzy.

“It’s a-”

“Hold on a minute, I’ll call you back,” said Arnold, suddenly alarmed by a mournful groan nearby. He heard her say “no” as he pocketed the phone, then stood very still, listening to the silence of the woods, hoping for a repeat of the sound.

Nothing.

“Dizzy!” he yelled.

Then came the moan again. The same moan he heard earlier that day before all this trouble began. “Hello?” he called.

The phone rang again sending Arnold’s nerves into a momentary frenzy. Cursing, he fumbled the phone from his pocket and answered it. It was Kirstie.

“Damn it, Arnold, don’t cut me off, I was trying to tell you something important.”

“Well, what?”

“I was trying to tell you. That body wasn’t a person, their preliminary report says the cell structure is all wrong. They’ve got cellulose or something.”

“Cellulose? So…” Arnold started walking towards the direction of the moaning.

“Yes, cellulose, there’s been a mix up, it’s a bloody plant, Arnold, not your man. And the report says something about the sample being completely covered with spores.”

“What?” His eyelids were getting heavy.

“A plant.”

Arnold tried to waft away the fetor from his nose as he approached a particularly tangled area of bushes. “No. I saw him, he was definitely a man.”

“You might have thought he was but –”

“Oh God!”

“What? What is it, Arnold?”

As if a crucifixion had been set up in a wild garden and then forgotten, a man – exactly the same man as earlier – almost naked apart from a covering of leaves, was hanging amongst a scribble of thorny vines. The same nose, like a flattened vegetable and the same scattering of warts covered the vagrant’s oily, pleading face. From the bloated fruit that surrounded the man, tiny jets of pollen streamed outwards in sulphurous clouds and Arnold coughed as some of it stung his nostrils.

“Arnold? Are you still there? What’s up?”

“He’s bait,” said Arnold, sounding shell-shocked. “The Bramble man… he’s bait. Like a Venus fly trap or… or an angler fish with one of those little lights on the end of its jaw… except… the Bramble Man… he’s that little light…”

“What the hell are you talking about? Listen, this story’s huge, I’m taking it to the editor. The whole village will be crawling with journalists by nightfall, so make sure you’re still there, okay? I want the exclusive.”

“No, no! You can’t send anyone. The spores!” Arnold knew now why the village was covering everything up. “I made a mistake.”

“Too late, Arnold, we’re not letting this one go. I’ll see you later.”

The phone went dead, and as the pumpkin-fruit fumes continued to clog his throat, he sank to his knees, losing his fight against the fog that was rapidly overtaking his mind. He managed to punch redial, but feeling his movements grow sluggish, he dropped his phone amongst the brambles. More pollen puffed around him as he fumbled through the dirt and then his fingertips touched something. An empty dog collar.

“No,” he whispered. Tiny roots snaked across his fingers. The lure of sleep drew his face into the soil. Night came.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Simon lives in Essex England earning his keep as a Clinical Trials scientist. He is currently working on his fourth novel – “The Soul Consortium”

www.simonwb.com

The most recent hurricane swamped the neighborhood several blocks in from the shore. The streets are dark and still even though the electricity has been restored. The basements have been bilged and essential systems are up and running but the lower floors, tainted by horrifying memories and water damage, have been abandoned to rot. Occupants now crowd in upper stories, in some cases using fire escapes to get in and out to avoid the toxic mold. One can only assume that eventually these buildings will crumble beneath their higher upper inhabitants, but these are desperate times and the long view isn’t a luxury that many have.

Before the storms this neighborhood was a home to serious nightlife. In the early days of the Bushwick uprising, slumming Manhattanites fled back to the island, rents dropped and some buildings sat vacant. An influx of the young, broke and rebellious filled the vacancies. It wasn’t long before these quiet blocks became the social brine in which the borough’s independence movement formed and flourished. Now it is damp, dark and silent, though you still sense, in a stray hint of distant music or a glimmer of light through a curtained window, that the party continues. Folks may not be reveling out in the streets as they had in the past but they find ways to celebrate life in dark times, whether in high story lofts, rooftop dance clubs or the water tight beer cellar that is my destination.

The level of silt and mud rises in the streets with every step. Initially tucked into masonry corners and eroded potholes, by the time I cross Wythe river sand fills the street even with the sidewalk. I switch my lens’ optics down through the light spectrum and scan the silent warehouses, each identical in its weathered and abandoned appearance, until I spot a deep neon glow above an otherwise unmarked door that reads “Evergreen”. I lay my thumb on the unassuming door’s metal handle and wait impatiently to hear the welcoming click of the latch. The door opens with a creak and a shutter and I duck in to a lightless corridor. I make my way blindly on, through another heavy metal door and then into an ersatz air lock.

On my left is a serious countertop fashioned from iron rods and diamond plating. Behind it sits a young girl with gorgeous tattoos making a show of being as impenetrable as the counter. She deducts my door fee and nonchalantly requests that I surrender my weapons. She takes my two boot knives and my Browning and places them in an re-purposed school gym locker and hands me an encrypted key fob on an elastic wristband that stirs memories of swimming at the YMCA as a kid. I’m then buzzed in to a dark metallic hallway in which my systems, tech & flesh, are screened for pathogens and my connection with the wide web is severed. All the high rez imagery and toggling stats disappear and the grit of unfiltered reality drops the floor down a few feet. A moment’s pause and then a final door opens leading to the lounge.

Stepping in to the lounge my systems boot up onto the clubs local network. Lists of patrons, mostly l337 gibberish and randy screen names of course, scroll by along with drink specials and DJ and performance lineups. I shake off the information swarm and toss it in the background to be sorted and packed for access. The place is pretty standard. Dark wood and black walls furnished with a scattering of mismatched tables, chairs and couches, everything drenched in filthy red light. I garner very little attention from the scattered groups of talkers, drinkers and well healed slummers on the make as I cross the room to the well worn bar and order up a double tequila with a mandrake infusion.

I try hard not to scowl at the pack of trust fund revolutionaries at the corner table but as I catch the attention of one of their number my countenance betrays me. I’m instantly locked in a bar length staring match. He and his friends are decked out in overly tailored uniforms trimmed out with a hapless clutter of meaningless medals and patches like a pack of arrogant eagle scouts. They have completed the look with bandannas and berets lifted from school videos of third world freedom fighters nearly a century old. The three of these dudes are talking up a storm of shit to a gaggle of cheap, vacant girls with low cut tops and big hairdos. The presence of the girls confirms my suspicions that absolutely nothing will be gained by a confrontation. I try out the casual head nod at the glaring prick but too much time and cold air has passed between us. So before he can push his chair back and make his way over I throw my drink back and make a calm but efficient exit from the lounge and into the clubs main atrium.

As I slip through the black leaden curtains the stale warmth of the lounge gives way to an uneasy chill, unexpected for a large room packed beyond capacity with gyrating bodies. The dance floor is pitch black with the exception of a few brilliant geometric swathes of clean white light that hover about the ceiling subtly illuminating the massive brick lined dimensions of the re-purposed beer vault. The sidewalls and vaulted ceiling still posses their ancient hand masoned brick facade. However, the walls at each end of the long cavern have been replaced with thirty foot sheets of unblemished obsidian so flawless they act more as windows than mirrors.

As my eyes adjust to the dark I can make out the subtle silhouettes of ethereal humanoid shapes on the other side of the dark glass. Some just hang suspended above the floor while others float gently upward and yet others appear to be dancing with the same lazy abandon as their flesh and blood counterparts.

The music is an uneasy mix of scattershot eastern percussion cut through with a pulsing kick drum. Eerie synths channel the atmosphere of ancient harpsichords minus the cheesy Vincent Price allusions while a distant rumbling bass line rises from deep below the cement floor. It’s this distant but steadily approaching low end rumble that draws me in. It grows subtly, mutating and increasing its momentum, moving in closer and laying flesh on to the erratic percussion that is dancing about my skull. It’s not long before my chest tightens and my breath goes shallow. I can feel the mandrake and alcohol radiating heat in my cheeks now. By the time the sub-bass fully materializes, the entire masonry cellar is vibrating and my eyes are struggling to focus.

I surrender my eyesight to the darkness and the engulfing low end rush. As my focus fades my gaze is locked deep within one of the dark obsidian walls. All definition of the world around me dissipates and the ethereal beings beyond the dark glass gain detail and distinction. Eventually I can make out each digit on each hand and the subtlest nuance of each facial expression. A nervous energy runs through the crowd as the music reaches a physical and emotional peak and one by one the ethereal spirits glide across the dark glass plane and into the three dimensional world of flesh and stone. They glide just overhead of the revelers, deftly criss-crossing the room and then dive downward into the crowd, their vaporous forms passing effortlessly through the bodies of the dancers. I am struck by an electric chill and turn suddenly to catch a fleeting glimpse of a female spirit emerging from my chest and continuing on gracefully through a sea of bodies. I am overcome with a fleeting series of foreign emotions and unfamiliar thoughts that sit unintelligibly just out of my mental grasp. My unconscious mind yearns after these intangible experiences as a solidly throbbing kick drum rises through the murky sub-bass and carries my near limp body into a gently nodding, skanking motion.

The revelers around me are also merging elation with motion, dancing their way ever so effortlessly through the confusion and anxiety and toward a more focused yet fluid state of being. I begin to remember why I used to come here so often and why I have been so eager to return. But just as quickly as the cathartic moment had come on it fades out again. The energy lowers slightly. The rushing bass line retreats into the distance and the whirling spirits reluctantly retreat to their place across the smooth black rift. I try to keep dancing, to carry the moment forward but I’ve been reminded of the real reason I’ve come here tonight and it carries serious weight. I give in to the increasing and let my limbs fall limp. I take a series of sharp breathes to gather myself and then make my way across the crowded dance floor toward a set of unassuming doors in the opposing wall of brick.

The huge oak doors close silently behind me extinguishing all sound from the main room. The gentle hum of hushed voices fills the space with reassuring white noise. A flickering candle chandelier reveals, in shadowed glimpses, the circumference of the large round chamber. A faint glow rises off of table tops that double as touch screen monitors, radiating from each of a dozen or so alcoves along the outer wall. The light of each altar outlines a silhouette engaged in conversation with another figure that remains unseen within each recess. A few seats sit empty but I instinctively know to wait in the shadows until a particular medium is free. Eventually a young man rises and leaves by the same door I’d come in. Drawn across the echoing stone floor I take a seat across a gently pulsing table from and a tall slender woman wrapped in a shear shroud of deep cobalt blue.

The smooth glass table monitor separates us. I feebly attempt to dry my hand on my pants and place my fingers, print side down, on the cool surface. A soft swirling pulse of geometric patterns appears as my systems synch with hers and the proper sum is transferred from my bank account.

“It’s been a long time.” Her voice is low and hushed yet every word is perfectly enunciated and delivered directly to my ears. “I was wondering if I would ever see you again on this side of the glass.”

“I didn’t think that you’d re-open so soon”

“Re-open?” she laughs gently, “this place is air tight when it needs to be, we barely closed at all after the last one. The curfews are a bit of an inconvenience but as you can see the more suffering is wrought in the world the more people need to be social, to release their anxiety and to reach out into the beyond.”

An uneasy pause draws out as I try and make out her eyes in the dim monitor glow but they are lost to fabric and darkness.

“She has been asking about you frequently.” She nudges the conversation gently toward the business at hand. “I hardy know what to tell her.”

“Is she alright?” I try to sound calm and detached but my voice betrays me. “Is something wrong?”

“She’s fine, what problems can there be for her now? She is just a bit lonely is all, and a bit concerned for her older brother’s welfare”

Her words, while laced with well practiced nonchalance, are of no comfort.

“Can I speak with her now?”

I can feel her staring at me through the veil, as if sizing up my fitness.

“Lay your other hand down and give me a moment to see if I can draw her out.”

I place my palms down on opposite ends of the glass. The heat of my hands reacts with the touch sensitive surface. A series of vibrant hues radiate out from my fingers towards the darkness. I can hear her heavy yet measured breathing from across the table as she prepares herself. After a few moments she exhales and lays her hands authoritatively down across from mine. Her long slender fingers bring a blue and purple reaction from the screen in contrast to my oranges and reds. I can sense her eyes closing and her focus increasing as her steady breaths become more shallow and percussive Her lips move quickly but no sounds emerge from them. A cold chill rises up from the darkness, swirls around my legs and climbs until it raises the hair at the base of my neck. Candles flicker above me. My vision strobes out gently into the shadows and then there is a voice.

“Javee? Javier is that you?” the stern confidence of the older woman’s voice has been unnervingly replaced by another. High pitched, unsteady and glorious, it’s the voice of my kid sister, Sarah.

“It’s me baby girl” a reflexive grin spreads across my face.

“Javee it’s so good to hear your voice, I was worried for you”

“I’m sorry Sarah, there was another storm and the curfews have tightened, and things have just been a bit mad really, but I’m here now. Is everything alright? Are you OK?”

“Oh Javee, it’s gotten worse here. I knew something had happened ’cause the emptiness, it suddenly filled with voices screaming and crying a lot like when I … first came over. But things haven’t settled since then really, it’s loud and hot always and there is never a moments peace.”

“Don’t you fret baby girl. It will be alright Things will calm down again, you’ll see.”

“I don’t think so Javee. I don’t think things will ever be OK here. Javee, I think… no I know, though I don’t know how, that it’s time for me to pass on, to leave this stale emptiness behind and step out into the cool wind beyond.”

I’m struck dumb, a series of desperate arguments and entreaties race through my head but I can tell in the unwavering tone of her voice that she has decided.

She breaks the silence, “Big brother there is something else, something I’ve been holding on so I could tell you…”

The words are scrambled and distorted through my sinking loss

“What’s that Sarah?”

“Javier I have heard your name, I’ve heard your name whispered over here, repeated and it’s growing more frequent. Big brother, I’m afraid that your time, like my time, is coming soon”

My ears fill with the pulsing of blood and my eyes swim with liquid as my quivering lips stammer.

“Thank you Sarah, I love you baby girl and I’ll miss you.”

“I love you too Javee”, her response disintegrates in to a dissonant glitchy hiss and then disappears into the darkness, lost to my ears forever.

My head fills with white noise as emotion threatens to tear me apart. I rise up quickly and awkwardly sending the chair skittering across the cement floor and shattering the chamber’s oppressive silence. I lunge forward through the heavy doors and out into the frantic crowd filled atrium. I can’t breathe as I struggle my way through the packed room, walls and bodies closing in on me. The music I had enjoyed moments before is now only a series of grating noises flying at me through space. It seems like hours pass before I cross the floor. I throw myself through the heavy curtains only to hit something so solid that I have to lunge forward to keep from ending up on the floor. I push back through the curtains into the poisonous red light of the lounge and find myself looking straight in to the affected stare of the asshole from earlier in the night. “Watch where you’re going private dirtbag” his words, all carelessness and bravado, don’t even register. Only his smug look and well laundered uniform make an impression. The hiss and crackle in my ears drowns out the tense silence of the room and my vision narrows down at the edges. I try to breath but the exhale never comes. I’m on the guy in an instant. My fists raise a dull wet sound from his face as we fall. A deep primal shriek rises from my chest as horrified onlookers keep their curious distance. The dude falls almost lifeless, trying limply to shield himself from my blows. I have him by the jacket collar and have proceeded to bang his head against the concrete floor when suddenly my vision shorts out with the white hot spark of the tazer. Two giant bouncers each grab one of my arms, lift my slack body off of the asshole and smoothly escort me, without my feet touching the floor, out of the club and back out onto the cold dark street.

I exhale with a painful spasm and the taste of blood as my systems attempt to reboot onto the wide web casting my world into the drab gray and muffled silence of unfiltered reality. As I lay splayed out on my back across the crumbling sidewalk, I watch the moon hover low and luminous just above Manhattan’s distant buildings. I shudder a bit from the cold as the adrenaline dissipates. Though the subway hasn’t run for years, I swear I hear a train in the distance. There are phantom trains running through the black night as I lie alone in the street trying to decide whether I should close my eyes and wait here for death or pick myself up and go looking for it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kelcey Wells is a Brooklyn based writer of poetry and fiction.

He shakes out his demons on the blog Night Thief Confessional and is currently at work  on his first novel, tentatively titled Time Stretched.

“What I don’t understand is how you can live like that,” Ashford Brookes said, “It’s not right.”

“Right?” Bob Wistman asked, “How can any man say how I choose to live my life is wrong or right? My own business is my own and the meddlers can go to the devil if they think they can change me.”

Brookes leaned back in his chair and raised his glass to his lips. The orange glow of the fire flickered on his craggy features and glittered in the darkness of his watery eyes. He sighed with exasperation. This wasn’t the first time he’d tried to offer his young friend advice, nor did he think it would be the last. Robert Wistman’s decision to build a farmhouse out on the moor had caused more than a few eyebrows to be raised. When his young niece moved in to help tend the livestock the more conservative folk in the town expressed their concern that a fine young maid should be living alone with her bachelor uncle. Tongues began to wag when the suggestion that Wistman and his niece shared the same bed began to circulate. Wistman made no attempt to quash these rumours, even confiding to his closest friends in Thainsbridge that now he had young Joy’s company he was no longer interested in searching for a wife.

Joy remained somewhat of an enigma to the townsfolk. She was rarely seen in town and when she was it was always in the company of her uncle. She was quiet and said little more than a few words to any that dared greet her. She always dressed in the simplest of clothes and kept her eyes downcast. Many said that it was a shame that such a beautiful girl should be so introverted, shunning the company of those her own age.

Brookes poured the last of the gin into Wistman’s glass and looked at his flushed round face.

“And the girl,” he asked, “What does she wish for?”

Wistman sniffed and waved a dismissive hand at the question as though swatting an irksome fly.

“I am lucky enough to have found a companion who is entirely beholden to my wishes and no other,” he said proudly, “My niece is happy when I am happy.”

“And marriage?” Brookes ventured.

“A needless expense,” Wistman snorted, “We are no more living in sin than the rams and ewes that frolic on my land.”

“Your land?” I was led to understand that you have recently allowed your sheep to roam out past the boundaries of the farm.”

“What of it? There is nothing on the moors for miles around, just a few ruined dwellings and that circle of old stones. What harm can they do?”

Wistman drained the contents of his glass and rose to his feet. Brookes followed his friend to the door where he bade him farewell. The old man shook his head as he watched Wistman stagger into the darkness.

“Adolescentum verecundum esse decet,” he muttered.

“What’s that you say?”

“Something Plautus said about the pride of young men,” Brookes answered.

“You can tell Plautus to keep his nose out of my business an’ all!” Wistman laughed.

#

The walk from Thainsbridge to his house on the moor normally took Wistman a little over an hour. In his inebriated state, however, it took significantly longer. Swaying from side to side, he whistled tunelessly to himself to fill the dead silence of night.

The lights of the town faded into the distance and he followed the beaten track of the Plymouth road until it reached the crossroads at Gallows Hill. There he turned off the main road and followed a rough footpath across the empty expanse of the moor.

With no light to guide him Wistman was grateful that the moon was full and the night was clear. He had not anticipated the lengthy stopover at the house of Ashford Brookes but neither did he resent it. The older man’s company was always pleasant and he had been more than generous with the drinks. Wistman had no doubt that Joy would be concerned by his tardiness but he had better things to do than concern himself with the feelings of a woman. His flock of sheep had survived the cold winter without incident and were almost ready to be relieved of their winter coats. Thirteen lambs had been born to him that April and though their number could be seen as unlucky by some superstitious souls, not one of them had fallen prey to poachers or predators.

He pulled his coat about him and strode onwards, making sure he did not stray off the path. Night swathed the moorland, smothering the rugged landscape about him in deep shadow. A flicker of light in the distance caught his eye and as he stared in its direction, he realised that it came from the ancient stone circle where a number of his sheep grazed.

“Poachers,” he spat, “Thievin’ bastards, takin’ what’s not theirs.”

Seething with rage, he stepped off the path and hurried over the waterlogged heath in the direction of the campfire. Drawing closer, he could see the silhouettes of the huge standing stones and the eerie, distorted shadows created by the dancing flames. There was no sound other than the wind howling across the open moor but he began to smell the sweet aroma of roasting meat. Wistman had not realised how hungry he was until the smells of cooking reached him. His mouth began to water and his stomach grumbled noisily.

Approaching the stone circle, he saw the small fire over which large chunks of meat roasted on a spit. Sizzling fat dripped into the flames and the aroma lingered in the air. Wistman looked around but saw nobody. Overcome by the tantalising scent, he stepped towards the spit wondering who would abandon such an appetising feast.

The growl came from behind and stopped him in his tracks. Turning cautiously, he saw a large black dog step out of the darkness surrounding one of the monoliths. The dog’s hackles were raised and glistening white fangs were exposed when it snarled. Wistman froze, his heart pounding in his chest with such force he wondered whether the fearsome beast could hear it.

The creature’s growls were joined by another, then another. Wistman moved his head to glance around and saw two more hounds, both as large and as ferocious as the first. The dogs flanked him and moved steadily closer, their resolute gaze not leaving him for a moment. Their coats were glossy black and the firelight reflected in their dark eyes, adding to their demonic presence.

Wistman swallowed drily and felt a trickle of cold sweat run down his spine. He wanted to run, to turn and flee from the stone circle but he knew that his legs would not obey. Paralysed with fear, he watched the three hounds move closer.

“Pay them no mind, Mister Wistman,” a voice called out, “They won’t harm you so long as I’m here.”

A figure emerged from behind the largest monolith and swaggered over to the fire. He was tall and thin. Dressed entirely in black, a tattered wide-brimmed hat obscured his face from view. There was a clatter as the stranger deposited the bundle of sticks he carried onto the ground before he skipped over to where Wistman stood.

“Hope they didn’t give you too much of a fright,” the man chirped, “I’m guessin’ they was just worried you were fixin’ on liftin’ their supper.”

“Who are you?” Wistman asked, “How do you know my name?”

The stranger removed his hat and gave an elaborate bow, his green eyes sparkling in the darkness.

“I’m not one for formal introductions.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Doing?” the man shrugged as he fed more sticks into the fire, “Nothing much. Cooking a spot of supper and minding my own business.”

“And the meat?” Wistman pointed at the spit, “Where did you get that from?”

“It’s not one of your precious sheep, if that’s what you’re implying.”

The stranger hummed to himself as he examined the spit and began to pull off the chunks of meat. He whistled through crooked teeth and the three monstrous hounds ran over to his side. Wistman watched with disgust as the man threw a few pieces of meat to the dogs who then proceeded to bark and snap at one another over the scraps.

The stranger crouched down and chewed thoughtfully on a mouthful of meat whilst staring at Wistman. They remained this way until Wistman grew uncomfortable and broke the silence.

“You still haven’t told me your name.”

“Haven’t I?” the man spoke with his mouth full, “Help yourself to the food.”

Wistman tentatively plucked a piping hot piece of meat from the spit and juggled it in his hands until it was cool enough to eat. The meat was tough and stringy but tasty enough. The stranger watched him as he ate, a thin smile visible beneath the brim of his hat. Wistman crammed the last morsel into his mouth and chewed noisily.

“It’s good,” he said, sucking the grease off his fingers.

“Have more, by all means.”

Wistman beamed gratefully and pulled another piece from the spit. The alcohol had roused his appetite and he wolfed the food down as though afraid the stranger would take it back. It was only after his third helping that he felt sated and made himself comfortable on the grass. The stranger sat on the opposite side of the fire and gazed into the flames. For a while the only sounds that could be heard were the crackling of the sticks and the occasional whine of the hounds. The silence was broken when the stranger looked up and focused on Wistman.

“Do you love her?” he asked.

“Love who?”

“Your niece,” the man spoke impassively, “Do you love her?”

“Love is for little girls and poets,” Wistman snorted, “I don’t believe in it.”

The stranger nodded and sat quietly for some time, as if reflecting on Wistman’s words.

“What do you believe in?” he asked eventually.

“Only what I can hold in my own hands. Money, good food, a warm body,” he chuckled lasciviously, impressed with his wit.

“Do you hunger for nothing else?”

“What more does a man desire?”

“The satisfaction of others.”

“Oho!” Wistman roared with laughter, “That’s rich indeed! Since when has a man been happy serving others? I am wholly content with my life and I am answerable to no-one.”

The man shook his head solemnly.

“You misunderstand me. One does not have to serve another to share happiness. Sometimes we do it without realising.”

“Then how can one tell and why would it matter?” Wistman yawned.

The stranger did not rise as Wistman pushed himself to his feet. He looked up as Wistman stretched and glanced at his pocket-watch.

“Going so soon?” he asked.

“It’s late,” Wistman answered, “And I’m tired. I must be leaving. Thank you for the food.”

“You don’t have to thank me.”

Though the remainder of the walk to his cottage passed without incident, Wistman’s thoughts were entirely taken up by his meeting with the mysterious stranger. It was only after walking for some distance did he realise that the man had never revealed his identity. Glancing over his shoulder he saw the distant campfire blazing in the darkness. How had the man known so much about him? He had not recognised the fellow and from listening to his accent he was certain that he was not local. He repeated the conversation over and over in his mind. Why had the man been so interested in him? The probing questions he had been asked had proven surprisingly difficult to answer. He pondered the encounter for some time and concluded that the stranger had been some kind of itinerant preacher out to do good. It was likely that the preacher had heard of him from one of the loose-tongued women of Thainsbridge and had decided to lead Robert Wistman back to the path of righteousness.

“Bad luck, holy man,” Wistman belched, “I’m far too comfortable to be changin’ my ways.”

He staggered on, his mind groggy with drunkenness and his stomach gorged with food. By the time he reached the cottage he was not surprised that there were no lights left on inside. Joy had probably tired of waiting for him and had taken herself to bed. He chuckled to himself as he thought of slipping into their warm bed and running his hands over her lithe young body.

Stepping into the house, Wistman expected to feel the warmth of the fire but was somewhat taken aback to see that the hearth had been untended all night. He blundered about in the darkness until he laid his hands on a lantern. Fumbling with the matches, Wistman swore at them volubly, unconcerned that his curses would disturb Joy. He breathed a sigh of relief when he was finally able to get the lantern lit, but this sigh quickly became a strangled cry when the darkened room was flooded with light.

Everywhere he looked were signs of a ferocious struggle. Broken furniture and smashed crockery carpeted the floor and drops of blood speckled the ruins. Horrified by the sight before him, Wistman’s legs fell from beneath him and he clutched the wall for support. He slumped to the ground and edged forward on all fours, his breath coming in sobs as he saw the butchered form in the next room. Joy lay on her back, her long blonde tresses soaking in the blood that pooled about her body. Pale eyes gazed emptily at the ceiling, her open mouth testament to her agonising final moments. His mind ran back to the stranger and the peculiar meal they had shared in the stone circle. A note was pinned to her chest and once Wistman had read it, he ran screaming into the night, wild eyed with terror and revulsion. A few words were scrawled on the paper in a spidery, untrained hand.

“Thank you for sharing your Joy. Sometimes we do it without realising.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I’m an aspiring novelist, currently living in the windswept Outer Hebrides with my wife, daughter and Europe’s stupidest greyhound. I have previously been published online and in “Crossed Genres” magazine.