Shadows & Tall Trees, Volume 8

by Michael Kelly

  Shadows & Tall Trees 8

  edited by Michael Kelly

  • • ∞ • •

  Winner of the 2017 Shirley Jackson Award – Edited Anthology

  Finalist for the 2015 World Fantasy Award – Best Anthology

  “Michael Kelly’s Shadows & Tall Trees is a smart, soulful, illuminating investigation of the many forms and tactics available to those writers involved in one of our moment’s most interesting and necessary projects, that of opening up horror literature to every sort of formal interrogation. It is a beautiful and courageous series.”

  — Peter Straub

  “Shadows and Tall Trees epitomizes the idea of, and is the most consistent venue for weird, usually dark fiction. Well worth your time.”

  — Ellen Datlow

  Also by Michael Kelly

  Songs From Dead Singers

  Scratching the Surface

  Ouroboros (With Carol Weekes)

  Apparitions

  Undertow & Other Laments

  Chilling Tales: Evil Did I Dwell, Lewd I Did Live

  Chilling Tales: In Words, Alas, Drown I

  Shadows & Tall Trees, Vols. 1 - 7

  Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 1 (With Laird Barron)

  Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 2 (With Kathe Koja)

  Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 3 (With Simon Strantzas)

  Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 4 (With Helen Marshall)

  Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 5 (With Robert Shearman)

  All the Things We Never See

  SHADOWS & TALL TREES, Vol. 8 copyright © 2020 by Michael Kelly

  COVER ARTWORK copyright © 2020 Matthew Jaffe

  COVER DESIGN copyright © 2020 Vince Haig

  “The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell” © 2020 Brian Evenson

  “Too Lonely, Too Wild” © 2020 Kay Chronister

  “Tattletale” © 2020 Carly Holmes

  “The Somnambulists” © 2020 Simon Strantzas

  “The Sound of The Sea, Too Close” © 2020 James Everington

  “Hungry Ghosts” © 2020 Alison Littlewood

  “A Coastal Quest” © 2020 Charles Wilkinson

  “You, Girls Without Hands” © 2020 KL Pereira

  “The Quiet Forms of Belonging” © 2020 Kristi DeMeester

  “Workday” © 2020 Kurt Fawver

  “Camera Obscura” © 2020 C.M. Muller

  “The Fascist Has a Party” © 2020 M. Rickert

  “Child of Shower and Gleam” © 2020 Rebecca Campbell

  “Sleepwalking with Angels” © 2020 Steve Rasnic Tem

  “Green Grows the Grief” © 2020 Steve Toase

  “Lacunae” © 2020 V.H. Leslie

  “Down to the Roots” © 2020 Neil Williamson

  “Dollface” © 2020 Seán Padraic Birnie

  Interior design and layout by Courtney Kelly

  Title page decoration designed by Freepik

  Proofreader: Carolyn Macdonell-Kelly

  First Edition

  All Rights Reserved

  Trade ISBN: 978-1-988964-16-4 / Hardback ISBN: 978-1-988964-17-1

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons—living, dead, or undead—is entirely coincidental.

  Undertow Publications, Pickering, ON Canada

  undertowbooks@gmail.com

  www.undertowpublications.com

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

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  Contents

  The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell ― Brian Evenson

  Too Lonely, Too Wild ― Kay Chronister

  Tattletale ― Carly Holmes

  The Somnambulists ― Simon Strantzas

  The Sound of the Sea, Too Close ― James Everington

  Hungry Ghosts ― Alison Littlewood

  A Coastal Quest ― Charles Wilkinson

  You, Girls Without Hands ― KL Pereira

  The Quiet Forms of Belonging ― Kristi DeMeester

  Workday ― Kurt Fawver

  Camera Obscura ― C.M. Muller

  The Fascist Has a Party ― M. Rickert

  Child of Shower and Gleam ― Rebecca Campbell

  Sleepwalking with Angels ― Steve Rasnic Tem

  Green Grows the Grief ― Steve Toase

  Lacunae ― V.H. Leslie

  Down to the Roots ― Neil Williamson

  Dollface ― Seán Padraic Birnie

  Contributors

  The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell

  Brian Evenson

  • • ∞ • •

  It began with Hekla’s sister, who had always been, so she liked to style herself, a seeker. There was a workshop she was dying to attend, with a guru of sorts, concerning attunement. But it took place some distance away, far outside the city. Would Hekla accompany her? It was a long way to go and she didn’t want to make the drive alone.

  “Not really my thing,” said Hekla.

  “I’ll pay your way,” said her sister. “You’ll share my room and I’ll cover the workshop fee. It’s in a place called Verglas lodge, out in the middle of nowhere: birds, cows, trees, probably. Come on, it’ll be fun.”

  Initially Hekla resisted. She didn’t have a believing bone in her body. But when her sister continued to pester her, she began to think Why not? It would be a vacation, a chance to get out of the city. The workshop would do nothing for her—none of the events her sister convinced her to attend ever did—but she’d tune it out, just as she always did, and enjoy spending time with her sister.

  *

  When the day came and she arrived at her sister’s place with her bag, she found her hunched over the toilet, vomiting. I can’t go, her sister said between bouts. Too sick. Something I ate.

  “We’ll skip it then,” said Hekla. “Or go late.”

  Her sister groaned. “We can’t go late. It isn’t done. But you go.”

  “I’d rather skip. I was only going for you.”

  “It’s non-refundable,” said her exhausted sister. “Take my car. I need you to go so I won’t feel like I lost all my money.”

  Hekla, as much to avoid seeing her sister vomit again as anything else, reluctantly assented.

  *

  She arrived at Verglas lodge quite late, hours after the other participants. She had no excuse. Her sister’s car had not broken down, nor had she been unavoidably detained. It was simply that, outside the confines of the city for the first time in a decade, she had allowed herself to meander. She had stopped in a gravel pull-out beside a river and watched the eddy and flow of the water below, finally picking her way down the slope. She waded in up to her knees, and then, instead of climbing back straightaway, wandered along the bank. Only once she saw the sun setting did she realize how much time she had lost and how far she still had to go.

  She arrived at an hour that, in the city, would have been considered merely uncomfortably late, still within the range of acceptability. Apparently, country etiquette was different. The chest-high gate at the bottom of the property was chained closed.

  She parked the car on the road’s shoulder, heaved her bag over the gate, then clambered over as well. The gravel of the drive was coarse enough that her bag’s wheels wouldn’t turn. She was forced to carry it.

  She followed the road up through the trees u
ntil it opened into a weedy parking area, Verglas lodge looming above it. Tired from lugging the bag, she set it down and stretched, taking a moment to catch her breath. Above, the lights of Verglas lodge, both inside and out, had been extinguished.

  She picked up her bag and crossed the lot. There was a set of steps cut in the hill at the far end of the lot, hard to make out until she drew close. She climbed them and followed a stone path at the top until she reached the lodge’s porch.

  The door was massive, stained dark. It had a scene carved on it: she could see a fleeing creature, perhaps a stylized deer, surrounded by a profusion of curves. Flames, maybe?

  She looked for a doorbell but saw none. She rapped on the head of the deer, if it was in fact a deer, but nobody came to the door.

  Leaving her bag on the porch, she followed the wraparound porch to the back. There were no lights on there either, and the only door she found, a battered metal one out of character with the rest of the lodge, proved firmly locked.

  She returned to the front door and rapped again. “Hello?” she called, then listened. Still no answer.

  She tried to call her sister for advice on what to do, but her phone had no signal. She spent some minutes knocking before she thought to try the handle. It was unlocked.

  Had it always been unlocked? Perhaps she had simply foolishly forgotten to try the door when she first arrived, had begun by knocking. After all, the gate had been chained closed, the lights off: was there any reason to think the lodge door would be open? True, she was a meticulous person, the kind of person who almost certainly would have thought to check the door when she first arrived. But she found it preferable to think she had forgotten to check it than that someone had unlocked it while she was behind the lodge, and yet hadn’t turned on any lights.

  She pushed her way in, then stood just inside the doorframe, waiting for her eyes to adjust. She could smell something sharp and also the smell of pine—a cleaning product perhaps. She let her hand run along the wall just beside the doorway until it found the blunt stubs of light switches. She flicked up one then the other, but nothing happened.

  For a moment she had the distinct impression that she was somewhere other than she was meant to be. That she had taken a wrong turn and was now entering a long-deserted place. Surrounded by darkness, it took her some effort to stop from backing out the door. She closed her eyes and held still, trying to master herself.

  *

  After a while she calmed down again. She was not certain how long she had held still. Probably just a minute or two, though it felt much longer. Perhaps it had been.

  There are cars in the lot, she told herself, this must be the right place. Probably it was just a matter of a broken switch, or perhaps these switches were turning on lights elsewhere, where she couldn’t see. Perhaps the power was out, or perhaps the lodge wasn’t connected to the grid, was running off a generator that had been shut down for the night. There are many plausible explanations, she told herself, and very little to worry about.

  “Hello?” she called. Her voice vanished into the darkness.

  She got out her phone, turned its flashlight on. In the light, it became an ordinary entrance hall: bare wood floors, gleaming where the light struck them; wood-paneled walls; a ponderous hanging light fixture made of a metal painted dull black; the head of a deer, turned slightly, as if surprised. To her left was a reception counter, a bell on it, a rack of hooks on the wall behind.

  She approached the counter and rang the bell, waited. After a while, she rang it a second time. She looked for a door, a room the clerk might be sleeping in, but there was nothing, only the rack of hooks, a number burnt into the wood below each one. None of the hooks held anything, save for one at the very bottom, from which a key hung. Number nine.

  It was obvious, then. They had left the door unlocked for her and here was the key to her room. It had to be hers: there was only one key.

  She went around behind the counter and took the key. Number nine. Carrying her bag so as to make less noise, she made her way down a nearby hallway and deeper into the lodge.

  *

  She guided herself using the flashlight on her phone, shining it on each door in turn. As with the hook board, the number of each room had been burned directly into the wood, somewhat crudely. The odd numbers were on the left and the even numbers were on the right, until she reached room number five, where, suddenly, the sides reversed. The numbering ended at room eight. At the very end of the hall was a final, narrower door without a number on it. A supply closet, perhaps.

  She backtracked and looked for other hallways leading off the entrance hall. There was one other. It led her to a dining room, where she saw a table laid for breakfast. She found a meeting room, a kitchen, and a storeroom farther down the hallway, but no door marked with a nine.

  Puzzled, she returned to the entrance hall. Was there an upstairs? Didn’t seem to be: no stairway that she could see. When she turned her phone-light upward, she saw only exposed beams and the slant of the roof.

  She could sleep in her car, but that was hardly safe—anyone could come along. Maybe there was a separate cabin somewhere on the property with a nine on its door?

  But instead of going outside to see, she returned to the first hallway, counting her way past each room in numerical order. She stared at the unnumbered door at the hall’s extreme, then reached out and grasped the knob.

  It turned.

  She pulled the door open. Beyond was a cramped passageway, walls and floor and ceiling all encased in cedar. She had the vague impression of stepping into a defunct sauna. She moved down the passageway and there, at the end, there it was: a door with a shaky nine burned into it at the level of her forehead.

  *

  She dropped her bag beside the bed and tried the light switch. It made a clicking sound, but no lights came on. She set her phone on the dresser with the light shining up at the ceiling. It didn’t light the room well, but it was enough.

  The bed was unmade, the sheets and blankets folded in a pile on top of it, as if the maid had forgotten to make it. And the bed was a twin—it wouldn’t have been big enough for both her and her sister. She made it quickly and sloppily, all the while thinking, absurdly, You’ve made your bed, now lie in it.

  There was no bathroom, only a half-wall near the back wall of the room, behind which was a commode. A mirror hung beside it, though it had been turned to face the wall. She turned it around and found it foxed, almost useless. In it, her face seemed covered with flowers of mold. She hesitated, momentarily transfixed, then shook her head and turned the mirror back to face the wall again.

  Her phone was almost dead. There seemed no place to plug it in, no outlet. She sighed, then quickly undressed, climbed into bed and turned out the light.

  It was very dark—so dark that when she waved her fingers in front of her face she saw nothing at all. She lay in bed, staring up into the darkness. Soon she began to see little vague flashes of light, her eyes misfiring as they attempted to see. Closing her eyes, she turned on her side and tried to sleep.

  *

  She dreamt she was in another place, all plastic and steel, far in the future or perhaps simply elsewhere, another world. She was the one in charge, or not quite, not exactly. She was missing her leg and the prosthetic she wore was a living thing, a strange creature that knew how to look just like an artificial leg. Nobody except her knew it was anything other than an artificial leg. Once removed, it could unfurl itself and become more or less human. Less, she would have said, rather than more, but then one day she unstrapped the leg in preparation for sleep and it unfurled and took its customary place beside her bed, conversing with her in its soft, soothing voice as she slowly drifted off to sleep, the voice humming gently in the background. What was this creature? How had it come to be beholden to her? How had it come to take the place of her leg? In the dream she did not know the answer to these questions, but found herself wondering as she slowly drifted off, falling asleep within the dream.


  But then the creature’s gentle humming changed in pitch and register and became strangely familiar. She was abruptly awake again, listening, her eyes still closed. She looked through the slits of her eyelids and saw that the creature beside the bed was staring intently at her, eyes gleaming. As she watched, its face shifted, then shifted again to suddenly begin to resemble her own face. Another shift and it looked exactly like her, and the voice it now had was exactly her own voice.

  *

  She awoke in the darkness, with the distinct impression that something was in the room with her. She thought she heard a snuffling sound, felt something brush her arm. She tried to move, to reach for her phone, but she couldn’t. She heard a ragged wheezing, which it took her more than a moment to realize was her own frightened breathing.

  Shhh, she heard a voice say, or maybe it was the air hissing through her clenched teeth.

  Suddenly it felt as if a heavy blanket had been placed on top of her. She was very afraid. The heavy blanket, if that was what it was, made it impossible for her to breathe. Slowly, painfully, she lost consciousness.

  *

  She awoke gasping. She could move again. She felt around beside her in the dim light and found her phone, turned it on. Already 9 a.m. She was late for breakfast.

  She opened the curtain and soon had enough light to get dressed by. Hurriedly, she brushed her hair, and, limping slightly, left the room.

  The lights were on in the entrance hall, and a man with curly black hair stood behind the reception counter. He nodded to her as she hurried past, and she nodded back, moving past him and toward the other hallway.