Terror Scribes

by Adam Lowe

  They took her iPod and told her she was grounded for a month. She was going to go to school, do homework and her online computer time was on hold until she explained her actions. How could she explain when she had no idea what had happened?

  Eventually the sobs subsided and she was left feeling exhausted. She opened her top middle drawer, looking for Mr Squiggles, her favourite teddy. She had put him away when starting secondary school, as she didn’t want to look like a baby. Tonight she just wanted to curl up and hug him.

  She lifted the pile of t-shirts he was usually under, but there was no sign of him. She started hunting through all her drawers, flinging her clothes on the floor, but she still could not find him. She moved on to her shelves and wardrobe, looking everywhere she could think of. She felt the tears starting again until it hit her. Marcus. Her brother must have taken him in retaliation.

  She stormed into his room and found him Skyping friends.

  “Where’s Mr Squiggles?” she demanded.

  Normally she would have been mortified at mentioning her teddy in front of Marcus’ friends, but nothing seemed normal tonight.

  “What? I don’t have your stupid teddy,” he replied.

  Then he pointed his webcam at her and spoke to his friends.

  “Behold, my sister, the thief.”

  “I’m not a thief, I didn’t take anything.”

  “Yeah, right. Get out Soph, before I call Dad up here.”

  She hesitated for a second, but the thought of another confrontation with her father was just too much.

  Back in her room, she hugged a pillow and thought about her day. What was happening? Why would someone want to make her look like a thief? Who had taken Mr Squiggles?

  Was it only this morning that she was not really listening to her Grandma Iris at the graveyard? Rabbiting on about showing respect for the dead and not disturbing their spirits. It seemed like that had all happened days ago.

  She dug her hand into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out five purple stones. The ones she had taken from the fancy grave of a child this morning. These were the only things she had taken today. She stared at the stones, looking dull in the glow of her bedside lamp. These were the only thing that she had taken.

  A few minutes later, she walked carefully down the stairs and tip-toed past the lounge, where her parents were still watching TV and talking quietly. About her, she did not doubt. In the kitchen she paused, her hand hovering over her mother’s house keys. They already thought she was a thief, so she may as well live up to their expectations. Sophia grabbed the keys and slipped out of the back door.

  She had a few moments of panic trying to manoeuvre her bike out of the shed. Each step sounded like a thunderclap to her. Finally, she was through the back gate and wheeled her bike down the drive.

  Then she peddled as fast as she could down the street.

  She was panting when she arrived at the churchyard. She felt like she had never ridden so hard in her life. Pursued by the fear of her parents realising she was gone, of being out on the streets alone in the dark, but worst of all, of being wrong about what she was doing.

  She leaned her bike against the church railings and peered into the gloom beyond. She thought the church would be lit by spotlights, like at Christmas, but they must have turned them off to save money. The street lamp she was under was the only light in the area. She was glad she had grabbed a torch from the shed on her way out.

  She turned her flashlight on and picked out the group of graves she had been looking at that morning. They were further back from the street than she remembered. She went to open the front gate and found it only rattled rather than moving. The sound made her freeze and she looked at the gate more carefully. Locked.

  Great. She couldn’t climb over; the railings were too high and pointy. That only left the path from the lane at the back of the church, where it would be even darker.

  Taking a deep breath, she walked around the back of the church, shining her torch a few steps ahead of her. She concentrated on where she was going, heart still thumping and her breathing slightly ragged.

  Something scraped the top of her head, tangling in her hair, making her yelp. She started panting again and slowly reached a hand up to free herself. She had walked farther than she thought and realised she was caught on a branch of the Hanged Man’s tree.

  She kept repeating that it was just a story, and there was nothing to be afraid of, while she freed herself. Above the beating of her own heart, she heard the creaking of the branches above her. It sounded like the noise the tyre swing down by the stream made, the squeaking of rope against wood.

  She yanked her head down, pulling strands of hair out, but escaping the tree’s embrace. A breeze cooled her stinging scalp as she moved forward. It brought with it whispers. She imagined that she heard a voice pleading with her to stay.

  Sophia started running towards the front graveyard, the torchlight bouncing before her. She misjudged the corner and careered into the church wall. The impact jolted the torch from her hand and knocked the breath from her lungs. She gasped, rubbed her shoulder and bent to pick up the light. Dizziness rushed through her head, blotting out her vision and she froze in place. Once she could see again she realised the torch bulb was smashed.

  Her eyes adjusted to the dark and she could make out the slightly lighter grey of the path in the moonlight. The graves looked misshapen and seemed to loom out of the night at her. Sophia looked back at the darker patch beneath the apple tree, wondering if she should just go back home.

  She could always come back tomorrow, when it was light. Surely she was just being stupid, coming here in the dark. She was already in serious trouble with her parents; this would just make things ten times worse. Plus, she was starting to ache all over and her head was really sore.

  She took a couple of steps back the way she had come, paused and took a final look towards the family of ornate graves. There was something on the child’s grave. It was the size of a small cat, with a patch of white in the middle. Sophia hoped it was a cat, but knew better as she squinted at it.

  “Mr Squiggles,” she whispered.

  She moved towards the teddy bear on the grave like a moth to a flame. She had to get him back.

  When she reached the knee-high wrought iron fence around the grave, a figure appeared from behind the headstone. It was a little girl, about half Sophia’s age and height. She wore an ankle length nightie with long sleeves, and lace around the edges. The girl was the colour of moonlight and just as insubstantial, but Sophia’s muscles trembled at the sight of her.

  “I knew you would come,” the girl said. Her face was calm, her head cocked to one side.

  “You took a little bit of me with you. You stole from me, so I stole from you,” the girl continued.

  Sophia tried to speak, but her throat felt tight. Her body felt weighed down with guilt and trying to move was a huge effort. The girl held up a finger and wagged it at her.

  “Thieves must pay,” the girl carried on in a sing song voice.

  “That’s what the man said. Thieves must pay. Daddy stole Mummy, so we all had to pay.”

  Sophia’s throat started to feel very dry and sore as the girl continued.

  “Daddy stole Mummy and he would burn in hell.”

  The girl’s voice got harsher and her silver glow turned orange. Flames started flicking around her feet and Sophia started to feel hot.

  “Daddy stole Mummy and he would burn in hell. But first we would all burn on earth.”

  Sophia started coughing and choking on invisible smoke, as the flames writhed up the girl’s torso. Sophia smelt cooking meat as the girl’s face started to melt. The flesh dripped from her skull and evaporated, leaving no trace.

  Sophia’s lungs started to burn as she gasped for breath.

  “The man said thieves must pay. Daddy stole Mummy so we all burned for his crime!” the girl shouted.

  “So shall you,” she hissed as she moved closer to Sophia. The he
at became more intense, and Sophia soon grew light-headed. She fought to gain control over her body, willed her legs to run, but could only manage a few steps backwards.

  A wind swept through the graveyard, lessening the heat and smoke. Sophia sucked in a deep breath as she heard the creak of a swinging rope and a moaning noise.

  The girl’s head whipped towards the apple tree. The flames died down slightly as she did so.

  While the girl was distracted, Sophia found she could move very slightly. She dug her hand into her jeans pocket and grasped the purple grave gravel.

  “I’m here to return what I took,” Sophia said and threw the stones at the girl’s face.

  The stones tore holes in the half melted visage, causing the girl to scream in rage. As each stone hit the grave behind the girl, her figure grew dimmer.

  Sophia darted past her and grabbed Mr Squiggles. The girl reached for him at the same time, but missed. Instead her hand closed around Sophia’s wrist, causing the skin to immediately blister. Sophia fell to her knees, crying in pain.

  The girl clung on, even as she became more and more insubstantial. Another gust of wind blew the last trace of her away. Sophia scrambled backwards, away from the grave, just as the girl reformed. Blazing upwards, she was wreathed in flames. She tried to move towards Sophia, but the flames tethered her and her hands could not reach past the cold iron fence surrounding the grave. She screamed in frustration as Sophia pushed herself up, and turned and ran.

  Sophia’s lungs were on fire. Her wrist throbbed with burning pain and her hand ached from clutching Mr Squiggles so tightly. She ran to the only person she thought might believe her.

  Grandma Iris listened to her story, bathed her burns and put her to bed. Her great grandmother’s bedroom smelt of lavender and slightly stale pot pourri. The warmth of the quilt, and the comfort of having Mr Squiggles pressed against her chest, helped to slow her thudding heart.

  She drifted in and out of sleep for several hours. At one point she heard raised voices. Her mother was there, demanding answers, but Grandma Iris told her to be quiet. She could hear little snatches of their quieter conversation about a gang of girls from school—cyberbullying. Sophia was too scared to say no, Iris said. Not responsible for her actions. Iris wove a new story around Sophia as she slept.

  The next morning, Iris drilled Sophia on the new version of events. She insisted that she must forget everything she had seen at the churchyard. When her parents arrived, Iris kissed her gently on the cheek and whispered in her ear. “In future, perhaps you’ll listen to your old Grandma’s tales?”

  Selina Lock is a mild mannered librarian from Leicester. In her alternative life in comics she edited twenty one issues of The Girly Comic, The Girly Comic Book Volume 1 and The Girly Web Comic between 2002 and 2010. She has been involved in various collaborative comics, wrote a column for Borderline – The Comics Magazine, has recently written comics strips for Ink+PAPER #1 and Sugar Glider Stories #2, and has a story in the upcoming Alt Zombie anthology from Hersham Horror. She also helped organise the Caption comics convention between 2006-2011. She currently reviews books and graphic novels for the British Fantasy Society and is one half of Factor Fiction, alongside her partner Jay Eales. Her daily life is spent in service to the god Loki, who currently inhabits the body of a small, black, scruffy terrier. Website: factorfictionpress.co.uk.

  The Glass Chamber

  by Adam Lowe

  She fell from the sky like a star, burning a hole in the forest, which plumed silver towers of smoke like great feelers among the clouds. It was these slow-writhing arms of smoke which drew the trogs to where she slumbered. They were short and thick like the ginger roots they dug up and ate, pale and grey like the worming things in their underground caverns, and hard as the flint they fashioned into tools and weapons. So when they found her, soft and light, encased in a casket of glass and crystal, her hair feathery as something from the sky should be, they were immediately enchanted. They martialled offerings of daffodils like golden blunderbusses, and garlanded her cairn. They raised her on a bier of birchwood and brought offerings from the forest: wild roses, crab apples, fresh meat, honey.

  In time the animals were enchanted too. They came to her bier and stared into the windows of her chamber, wondering what manner of creature she was. Her trogs began to sing to her, in their own glutinous tongue of gutteral sounds and grunts, which only made the birds sing louder and the rain pour harder. But gradually this forest serenade had another, more languorous effect. Tubers of twisting black hair began weaving through the birchwood bier and snaked through the ground itself. Later, these reaching roots anchored themselves into trees and shrubs, spreading like a web through the forest. Soon they were tunnelling through flesh, binding animals into a weird web of life. The trogs, disturbed by this, managed to step over the hair-fronds as they spread, but soon came to recognise their goddess as the source of the affliction.

  Indeed, the woman’s hair had grown wild, tangling through the length of her crystal chamber, which rainbowed like a prism where the sun struck through the torn canopy. The trogs took up their flint weapons and their crab apples and began pelting the chamber, hoping to free the mess of hair and the young woman from whom it spewed. Though their weapons were flimsy in the face of the crystal and glass, they eventually shattered the chamber and watched as the hair sprung loose in great vines.

  The trogs’ destruction of the sarcophagus only served to speed up the twisting progress of the woman’s hair, as it invaded soil and flesh and plant alike. Soon the forest was threaded with her hair, made into a web of it, that connected every being to every other being, and to her. The trogs had either fled or become trapped, wed to her scalp forever in the spaces where they were suspended between trees, tethered by her locks.

  A knight came by the forest one summer evening, dressed from head to toe in armour. Spying what he thought was a strange type of moss or creeper, he disembarked from his horse and came to the edge of the forest, where the trees were caught up in the hair. He examined the hair and found it silky smooth to the touch, but noticed too that it coiled forward towards him as he stood there. He instantly stepped back, but when the hair met the glinting steel of his armour, it flailed, then recoiled, seeping back into the forest. It seemed the hair, which sought to connect to the life around it, was unable to meld with the inorganic suit of armour.

  Deciding it was best to leave his fleshly horse behind, he strode into the forest, cutting through the thickets and vast networks of webbing locks, and saw how they repaired themself after cutting. Determined to discover what lay at the heart of the forest—what cause was the root of this hair—he continued, till he reached the bier with its shattered coffin and its deathly, slumbering inhabitant. When he drew near, he realised she was indeed a corpse, albeit perfectly preserved. She didn’t breathe or move or answer to his touch or his call. But she did pulse with some forbidden life. It was as though the hair itself siphoned life from the surrounding forest, making of it a circulatory system for her cadaver.

  As the knight stood over her, he marvelled at how truly beautiful she was. Her face was poised in silence, but seemed now possessed of a distant satisfaction, a creeping smile that hinted at rising contentment at the point of her death. Her body was perfect, too, with its gentle curves and smooth, porcelain skin. Just then the knight knew he couldn’t resist her, this goddess of the forest. He pressed his body against her, wishing he wore no armour, and leaned in for a kiss. His lips met hers and instantly something charged between them. He didn’t realise, but the lips seemed to pull him in, locking him in embrace with her, as the coils of her silken hair slithered up his suit of armour, making for the exposed pink of his face. Within moments the hair had latched to him, fixing him, and the kiss seemed to become a sucking, as if of the very air from inside him. Then he slumped lifeless, his face grey and pale, and tumbled to the forest floor. The cadaver, now blushed with colour, lifted from her repose, stretching pristine limbs, and opened a mouth
full of butterflies. The trees around her quivered, the vines coiled and snaked and pulsed, and the earth itself seemed to breathe.

  As she looked about her, noticed the new texture her thorny hair had taken and felt the clay damp of her skin, the goddess of the sky realised she was reborn, and growled the laugh of wolves.

  Adam Lowe is an award-winning ‘all-round madman of letters’ (according to Tom Bradley). He is a publisher, author and journalist. Originally from Leeds, he now lives in Manchester. He has held a number of residencies, including at I Love West Leeds Festival and Zion Arts Centre, and has had attachments with West Yorkshire Playhouse and the Royal Exchange Theatre. He has had commissions from the Cultural Olympiad (part of the London 2012 programme), BBC Radio 4 and BBC Writersroom, Freedom Studios, Contact Theatre, Theatre-in-the-Mill, Stage @ Leeds, Night Light and Conor McKee Productions.

  His limited edition novella, Troglodyte Rose, was nominated for two Lambda Literary Awards in 2009. Meanwhile, Adam’s latest poetry collection, Precocious, has been selected for a GCSE coursework module at the Grammar School at Leeds. Transgressive in nature, it deals with such issues as cybersex, female genital mutilation and wanking off in the frozen food aisle in ASDA.

  To The Stars That Fooled You

  by John Palisano

  And from her blood came demons. Small puddles congealed and formed wax-like shapes. Alex saw little nubs stretch out, morphing into small arms and legs which moved on their own. At their tips, three prongs poked forward, wiggling and sensing the Earth’s air for the very first time. A reheated, rotten smell blossomed, reminding Alex of the stench fuming from the bums on Brooklyn Avenue.

  Alex stepped closer. These things are what John had been after, he thought. These little monsters were what made up his Nancy and had driven him over the edge. She’d be free now, Alex knew. She’d also been unable to be saved; John knew that there was no repairing her. The demons had eaten far too much of Nancy for her to ever recover. There was only quiet inside her. There was only quiet.