October 23, 2015

From “The Haunting of Hillary Hauser” by Anonymous

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When I saw the home
In an old and worn-out book
It led me to a dead end
In the town of Shady Nook

My blog was brimming over
With debunked haunting tales
I expected nothing scarier
Than a few pale windy wails

My heart did not start pounding
When the walls were closing in
Or when a voice rebuked me
For an old and festering sin

I didn’t quail or quiver
When my nose began to bleed
Even as my eardrums rang
With unearthly roars to heed

There was no thought of fleeing
When palm-shaped bruises on my chest
Appeared as all around me
Ashen urns howled from their rest

I calmly kept my head on
Even when the doors were barred
I didn’t curl up shivering
When the grounds ate up my car

Chased up by blood-red mists
Leaping from the tower high
I woke up in a hospital
Being told I’d nearly died

It was then house did break me
When a detective at my bed
Said it was torn down years ago
Where had I been, instead?

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October 12, 2015

From “Castaways’ Comeuppance” by “Cappo” McEuen

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None of the three men ever discussed what had happened on Finnegan’s Reef after their acquittal, but soon an interesting coincidence came to light.

John Guttner was stabbed in an unprovoked assault two years after his trial, in 1948. The wound was life-threatening, but Guttner survived with the loss of his right arm. In 1949, Arnold Stalknecht was hospitalized with acute symptoms of tuberculosis; he lived, but without his left lung. And in 1950, the third man, Francois Lelande, was struck and killed by a drunk driver at the wheel of a DeSoto.

One might chalk these events up to simple luck save for one thing: all three events happened on October 12–the day that, as best as the investigators could tell, the castaways had perished.

Though some have accused the newspaper coverage of sensationalism, by the time Stalknecht–the last man alive–died in 1960, some terrible occurrence had seemed to visit them every year on that date. If not death, than something which threatened it.

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October 9, 2015

From “Die Rattenkönig” by Ninke Attridge

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In the most dismal and squalid of hovels, offal pits, and other noisome locations, even rats may become entangled and perish. But when the fetid prize that they seek is so alluring that rats keep coming, keep dying, something altogether unnatural may occur.

The flesh and spirits of the vermin form a crucible, a psychic energy well that returns to and reanimates the conglomeration. While it has most often taken the form of a group of rats with entangled tails, the foul matter may take any form that it can maintain. With enough deaths, the gestalt creature can gain human or even superhuman levels of intellect and cunning, and command over rats in close proximity.

This has happened only 25 to 50 times in recorded history, but each time has been tremendously dangerous. This is the birthing of a Rattenkönig, a rat king.

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October 3, 2015

From “Restoreuphoria™ Electric Anti-Aging Masks” by Tori Roupe Asher

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Restoreuphoria™ electric anti-aging masks. Harnessing the power of electricity to restore sagging skin.

Michelle sat in the corner as she did every night. Forty minutes, rain or shine, use as directed. The mask, porcelain plastic, was featureless on her face. tinted glass on round eyeholes, the barest hint of eyebrows, and an opening at the bottom of a sculpted nose. The control unit, which drooped at the end of a coiled wire sprouting from a square nub at the end of the mask’s chin, sat in Michelle’s hand.

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“That thing creeps me right the hell out,” said Dennis, Michelle’s husband. She didn’t respond–movement during the treatment was strictly forbidden–but he thought he glimpsed a subtle flaring of nostril through the breathing hole.

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Michelle bundled herself up for her treatments, the hood of her robe covering her head, tights beneath it, and slippers over those. With her hands withdrawn into ample sleeves, virtually none of her skin was showing. If not for the rising and falling of her chest, Dennis would have thought her dead, or a mannikin.

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“Come on, Michelle, it’s been almost an hour already,” said Dennis. “Take that thing off.”

Michelle’s breathing subtly altered its rhythm but she said nothing.

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“Dammit, Michelle, this isn’t funny.” Dennis was in a foul mood, as he always was. Michelle hiding beneath yet another thing to keep from talking to him was not helping.

He strode over to her. He stood over her. Staring daggers, he tried to communicate wordlessly that she needed to start minding him, or there would be hell to pay.

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“So help me God, Michelle, I will rip that creepy-ass thing off your face if you don’t give me the goddamn common courtesy of looking me in the eye and answering me.”

Reaching up to grab the mask, Dennis gasped when Michelle shot out an arm to seize his wrist. Wrapped in a glove of loose bathrobe, he couldn’t see her fingers but they were exerting a force far beyond anything she should have been capable of generating.

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Dennis howled as his wrist snapped, tinder in a fire stoked with pain. His howl turned into a frenzied screeching as Michelle rose, locked her leg behind his, and pushed. His weight against him, Dennis dislocated something with a wet popping sound and tumbled to the ground.

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Michelle crouched down over her husband’s body. Paying no heed to the racket he was raising, she obeyed his earlier missive and removed the mask. His cries reached a feverish peak as he saw what lay beneath…and saw it occluded by the mask slipping over his own features.

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September 22, 2015

From “Sect of the Morphies” by S. Tom Speicher

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Sect #1338: The Metamorphosis Society (“Morphies”)
Classification: Class III (transcendent, death-worshipping)
Adherents: 2000-5000
Leader: Decker K. Leyen (“The Conduit,” “Neotone”)

Founded as part of the wave of sects that arose in the first decade after transhumanism became mainstream, the Morphies believe that humans are, in fact, the larval stage of another creature entirely. As such, they hold that death (“the Chrysalis”) is the ultimate achievement, and that all humans should strive for “metamorphosis” along the lines of a butterfly or a frog.

Naturally, if this were their only belief the sect would be little different than the suicide cults which periodically arise and snuff themselves out. However, the “Morphies” hold that only those that have gained enlightenment may “spin the Chrysalis” and that all others who died are simply reincarnated as “larvae” (their term for all non-sect members).

This makes them incredibly dangerous as they view death before enlightenment as undesirable but little more than a setback. As such, they will not hesitate to lay down their lives, or the lives of others, in pursuit of their goals. Perhaps most chillingly, their leader, known as “Neotone” or “The Conduit,” reserves for himself to determine when sect members are ready for “adulthood.”

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September 6, 2015

From “97 Alternate Panes” by Alana Pettersen

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No one is quite sure how it came about, but the Wickham House at the edge of town came to posess a remarkable power. From the inside, each of its 97 windows showed a what-if visible only to the viewer.

We all have our what-ifs, after all, those decisions we made but also lingered over long after they had faded. 97 of them waited behind the cloudy panes of Wickham House, snippets of what might have been.

They are like echoes, like dreams. You can see as if through a clouded mirror, hear as if through a thin wall. Always something interesting, always seen as if peering through some other window nearby. 97 alternate forks in the road, just visible enough for you to know of them.

People have tried to open the windows and climb through; they invariably find themselves in our own world, on the other side. People have tried to shatter the panes in hopes of I know not what; that is why only 97 remain. Some old-timers swear that at one time there were only 86 windows intact, and that the others have quietly grown back.

The county sheriff has sealed the property off for years. It’s dangerous, they say, a property on the verge of collapse and infested with black mold.

and yet still people come, sometimes from miles away.

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September 5, 2015

From “The 13 Deaths in Wing B” by Hett Eisenhardt

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They called that particular wing of the hospice “the gang” because all of the people there, slowly wasting away from ailment of the body rather than ailments of the mind. They had known each other, it seems, since childhood. And now, lifetimes lived hard and mean had led them to have every similar expiration dates.

And they were angry.

Nurses reported constant verbal and even physical harrassment. Bedpans were thrown, sheets were soiled, and every insut imaginable was bandied about in severl languages. The checks kept coming, and kept clearing, but the abuse continued to escalate until management had to serve the patience notice: “the gang” would be evicted in one week for creating a hostile environment.

The first death happened one day later.

Two more followed the following morning, and another that night. Code blues were ringing around the clock, and the nurses were as harried as they’d ever been. By the day of the hospice managements’ ultimatum, all 13 members of “the gang” were dead and their husks were parceled out to various and sundry funeral homes or potters’ fields.

A collective sigh of relief went up from the staff, thinking that they had survived one last spiteful terror from those elderly delinquents.

And then the noises began, the toppling and moving of objects in the still of the night. And the staff came to realize that their ordeal had not yet truly begun.

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August 24, 2015

From “Exhibit C” by Bruce Sciotti Phoenix

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Raw meat.

Raw meat for the beasts within.

I laid it out where they gathered. Not the beasts that are, not the beasts that must be, but merely the potential, wrapped up in flimsy colorful wrappers. I must tear them off, you see, if the beasts within are to be unleashed.

And unleashed they must be, for the Woods are gathering their army. Every beast is another soldier in the war to come, the war against encroachers and builders, despoilers and plunderers.

I’ve heard the Woods calling to me, softly during the day, louder at night, clearest at dusk. So few can hear, fewer still can comprehend. I speak back when it can hear, wearing the darkness it loves and fears.

Raw meat.

Raw meat for the beasts within.

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August 18, 2015

From “The Shape in the Storm” by Ross Pathem

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Snow begins with shadow.

Sharp, frenzied cries pierce the dark. He is running now, his friends forgotten, through calf-deep drifts. Even when the cries have stopped, he can hear and he can feel.

Snow finalizes shadow.

There was no warning. Darkness given shape and form had risen up and battered the campsite to ash. Only the screaming blanket of wind, which siphoned warmth in lieu of gifting it, remained.

Snow is shadow.

The shape was behind and in front, a marriage of dark and light. Everywhere and nowhere, looming. He falls. Blood from the gaping injury completes the snow, speckled across a surface that it returns to ancestral water. Darkness devoured the ice. It shone in the rising moon, as the shadow upon its surface receded.

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August 8, 2015

From “Adrian’s Horror” by Harrod Rarison

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They were always short-staffed at that particular branch of the Hopewell District Library, so it wasn’t unheard of for Mary to enter the building, alone, around 7:30am to open the place up. It was a three-day weekend, so in addition to no fellow staffers to help out at the library desk, no patrons were waiting by the door to be let in when it was unlocked.

Mary felt bad about what had happened the previous day, even though she kept on telling herself that she had no reason to. It was Adrian’s fault, after all, for invading her personal space. It was his fault for creeping on her and constantly pestering her for her work hours and requests for dates. She had nothing to feel bad about, she kept telling herself, but the feeling was still there, gnawing away, as she busied herself with checking in items from the overnight book drop.

“Are you familiar with the Egyptian book of the dead, Mary?”

Mary cried out and pushed back from the desk. It was Adrian; he must have quietly entered through the front doors despite not technically being allowed on the premises anymore. Mary wanted to do more than scream; she wanted to pick up the handset and dial the police.

The Glock 17 in an open-carry holster on Adrian’s belt dissuaded her.

“N-no,” she said. “I’m not.”

“Really? I’d expect a librarian to know those things.” Adrian was behind the desk now, approaching at an easy pace. “According to the Book of the Dead, or at least the version written on the walls inside of the Red Pyramid, the dead are forever dependent in the afterlife on their killers.”

Mary’s eyes widened. “What?”

“That’s right, Mary. I could take care of you forever; we’d always be together. I may not be able to give you what you need in this life, but surely I can in the next.”

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