by Mark Morris
A FLAME TREE
BOOK OF HORROR
After Sundown
AN ANTHOLOGY OF NEW SHORT STORIES
Edited by Mark Morris
FLAME TREE PRESS
London & New York
Introduction
Welcome to After Sundown, the first volume in what will hopefully be an annual, non-themed horror anthology series from Flame Tree Press.
The premise for After Sundown is simple. As editor, my brief was to produce an anthology of twenty stories, sixteen of which would be commissioned from some of the top names writing in the genre today, and the other four of which would be selected via a two-week submissions window that would be open to everybody, with the aim being not only to discover new talent, but also to give that talent the opportunity to share anthology space with the genre’s best.
As it turned out, the response to the submissions window was phenomenal, and during those two weeks in October literally hundreds of stories poured into the Flame Tree inbox. It was a mammoth job sifting through them all, but as you’ll see when you read this collection, the four tales that eventually topped the pile turned out to be absolute gems.
What impressed me about them, and indeed, what is characteristic of all the stories in this book, was their assuredness, their originality, and their ability to grip the reader from the get-go. In my view horror is a genre with extremely wide – indeed, almost limitless – parameters, and as such the tales contained herein vary wildly in theme and subject matter, and thus provide a perfect showcase for the sheer scope and inventiveness that the field has to offer.
There are Victorian tales here; there are contemporary tales; there are near-future tales, in which the very prescient threat of environmental collapse lurks in the background. There are supernatural and non-supernatural stories; there are stories of ancient magic and dark mysticism; there are stories that defy categorisation.
What all of these stories do share, though, is a sense of disquiet, of unease; a sense of the other. They get under your skin, these twenty little nuggets of dread. And they stay there. And they itch.
Oh, how they itch!
Mark Morris,
28 February 2020
Butterfly Island
C.J. Tudor
Almost every bad plan is hatched over a few beers in a bar. The end of the world won’t finally arrive with a bang or a whimper. It will start with the words: ‘Hey – y’know what would be a really great idea?’ slurred over a bottle of Estrella.
I stare at Bill. I like Bill, as much as I like anyone. My affection is undoubtedly heightened by his ready supply of weed and loose attachment to his cash. That’s why I don’t punch him in the face. I say, “I need to go for a piss.”
“No, wait.” Bill leans forward. “Hear me out, man.”
I don’t want to hear Bill out. As I said, I like Bill but he’s a fucking moron. He’s Australian for a start, which has nothing to do with his intelligence, but does make his stupidity harder to bear. I’d put it down to youth but it’s hard to tell Bill’s age. His face is so weathered by years of sun and sleeping on beaches that he could be anywhere from twenty-five to fifty-five.
But then, to be fair, we’re all a fairly motley crew at this beach bar. At first glance, you might almost mistake us for travellers backpacking our way around the world. That is, if the world still existed in any recognisable form. Look closer and you might notice the ragged, mismatched clothing. The worn rucksacks. The guns and knives people keep quite openly these days.
What we really are is survivors. A rag-tag bunch of nomads who happened to be in the right place at the right time. Or perhaps, more accurately, to not be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Killing our days with tequila and Thai noodles. Wondering when here will be the wrong place and where the hell there is left to go.
“This is the real deal,” Bill says.
“Heard that before.”
“You ever read The Beach, man?”
“Yeah. Long time ago. From memory, it didn’t end so well.”
“Yeah, but this is different. Look around. Look at what’s happening. What have we got to lose? And what if what the dude says is true?”
“Big if. Huge. Fucking colossal.”
“But if?”
He waggles his eyebrows at me. I still don’t punch him. My restraint is admirable.
“I heard some mega-rich inventor bought the island years ago and turned it into a nature sanctuary,” I say.
“Butterflies, man.”
“What?”
“A butterfly sanctuary. Hence the name. Butterfly Island.”
I stare at him in shock. Bill knows the word ‘hence’. Maybe I misjudged him.
“Okay. Butterflies. My point is that I read he went to a lot of trouble to keep people like us away.”
“But the dude’s dead and who gives a fuck about butterflies now, right?”
“True. But I do give a fuck about armed guards.”
“Man, we’re on the edge of the fucking apocalypse. Who’s gonna waste their time guarding butterflies on an empty fucking island.”
He has a point.
“How will we get there?”
“I know a man.”
Other famous last words. I know a man. There is always a man. I fully believe that our current apocalypse began because someone knew a man. Who had a really great idea over a bottle of Estrella.
I push my chair back.
“I’ll think about it.”
I’m halfway to the toilets (a generous description of a lean-to with a hole in the floor) and not thinking about it, when two figures step out of the gloom.
I also know a man. Unfortunately, he is not the sort of man you have beers with. He is the sort of man who smashes a beer bottle on your head and uses the shards of broken glass to scoop out your eyeballs. Actually, that’s wrong. He’s the sort of man who pays people like these two goons to do the eyeball scooping.
“Well, look who it is.” Goon 1 smiles at me.
“I’ll get the cash.”
“I thought you had it.”
“Soon. I promise.”
“The sea is full of floaters who made promises.”
“I mean it.”
“Good.”
He nods at Goon 2.
Goon 2 grabs my head and smashes my face into the wall. I taste plaster and feel a tooth crack. Pain shoots up my jaw. Goon 2 yanks my head back and smashes it into the wall again. This time I feel the tooth give and my vision blurs. Goon 2 lets me go and I slide down the wall to the dirty floor.
“No more chances.”
A boot connects with my ribs. I scream and curl into a ball.
“Please,” I beg. “Please, no more.”
“Fucking pathetic,” I hear Goon 2 mutter.
I shove my hand into my boot and pull out my gun. I swivel and shoot Goon 2 in the kneecap. He howls and hits the floor next to me. I shoot him in the face. Goon 1 has his gun out but I’m faster. I shoot him twice in the stomach and watch with satisfaction as blood splatters the wall behind him and he crashes heavily down on top of Goon 2.
I push myself to my feet. I still need a piss. I walk into the toilet, relieve myself and splash some water on my face. Then I step over the dead goons and walk back into the bar.
No one has moved, or even looked up in curiosity. That’s the way we roll nowadays. Bill is skinning up. He glances at me with mild interest. “What happened to your face?”
I spit the remains of my tooth into the overflowing ashtray.
“So, when do we go to Butterfly Island?”
* * *
The sun peers over the horizon. Thirteen of us are spread between two ramshackle-looking boats, not including the drunken locals everyone is over-confidently referring to as ‘captains’. A baker’s dozen. Unlucky thirteen. I don’t believe in fate or superstition. I do believe in drunken morons crashing boats into rocks.
The smaller boat to my right is filled with a group of five men and women in their twenties who already look trashed at just gone 4:00 a.m. Or maybe they’re still trashed from the previous night. I wonder where Bill found these people. If this is the best we can do, I think we might as well concede defeat – and superior intelligence – to the cockroaches.
On our boat we have Bill (the man himself) and another Aussie, Olly, a wild-eyed guy with a pelmet of tattoos, a bandana and a hunting knife strapped around his waist, who I keep expecting to say: ‘You don’t know, man. You weren’t there.’ Next to him are a middle-aged couple in matching khaki shorts, black vests and sturdy walking boots, called Harold and Hilda. Probably. I don’t actually know their names. They just look like a Harold and Hilda. Opposite them is an older dude with a shorn head and long grey beard who is calmly reading an old paperback of The Stand. Less fiction, more like a survival manual these days. Finally, only just embarking, are a muscular black woman with dreadlocks piled on top of her head and…
I turn to Bill. “What the fuck is this?”
“What?”
I point at the young girl, climbing on board with the woman.
“What’s a kid doing here?”
“Well, her mum couldn’t leave her behind.”
“This is not a fucking trip to Legoland.”
“Lego what?”
“Fuck’s sake.”
“You have a problem?”
The dreadlocked woman eyes me coldly.
“I just don’t think this is a trip for a kid.”
“I’m not a kid,” the kid says. “I’m twelve.”
“I’ve got T-shirts older than you.”
She looks me up and down. “I can see that.”
I address the woman. “Your daughter—”
“She’s not my daughter. Her parents are dead. We travel together or not at all.”
“Man, we need her,” Bill whispers.
“Why?”
“She’s a doctor. If anyone gets sick?”
“You did check people out?”
“I don’t mean that kind of sick, man. I mean, normal sick.”
He does have a point. I glare at the woman and girl and take out my cigarettes.
“I’m Alison,” the woman says, smiling faux-politely.
“Good for you.”
She crosses her legs. “Well, aren’t you a treat.”
I ignore her and light a cigarette.
There’s a judder as the ‘captain’ starts the engine. We’re off. The crowd in the second boat whoop. I blow out smoke and wonder if having my eyeballs scooped out with shards of glass might actually be preferable. But it’s too late now.
It’s always too late now.
* * *
Forty minutes later and the island draws into view. A jagged dark shape in the distance. It’s mountainous, encircled by jungle and wide stretches of white sand. Years ago, back when I was in my late teens, it used to be a popular destination for backpackers. You could catch a skipper from the main island and stop over for a night or two, sleeping on the beach. They tried to keep it unspoilt. But inevitably, it caved to commercialism. A beach bar sprang up. Then, wooden huts were built for those who didn’t like roughing it in sleeping bags on the sand.
At some point the crazy billionaire guy bought it and no one was allowed back on. But this was around the time a lot of shit was going on in the world, so my memory is vague, what with all the bombing, chemical weapons and new terrorist groups multiplying faster than the recently revived Ebola virus.
Good times.
I watch as the island grows bigger and more distinct, and the sea, which was a little choppy partway across, begins to calm, becoming more transparent. I can see several dark shapes floating in the water, just beneath the surface. Not corals. Not sea creatures. One of the shapes briefly breaks the water to our right. Round with spiked protuberances. And then I realise. Fuck.
“Cut the engine!” I shout.
El Capitan turns. “Khuṇ phūd xarị?”
“Mines. Cut the fucking engine now and drop the anchor.”
His eyes widen. But he quickly does what I say.
“Did you say mines?” Alison says.
“Look in the water,” I say, pointing at the round spiky objects all round us.
“Fuck, man,” Bill mutters. “They’re fucking everywhere.”
I glance across at the other boat. Some distance away and a little ahead of us. One of the girls is trailing her hand in the water, centimetres away from one of the mines. I open my mouth to yell a warning.
Too late.
Kaboom! She explodes. Along with the boat and the rest of its passengers. One minute there. The next, gone in a flash of orange and a deafening blast wave. Flesh, limbs and shrapnel fly into the air and rain back down on us.
“Duck!” I scream and throw myself down into the bottom of the hull, grabbing hold of the side as the aftershock hits. The boat rocks violently. Water crashes over the stern. I feel something smack into my head and realise it’s someone’s shoe, still attached to their foot. I fling it into the water.
Someone is screaming. The boat rises and falls, straining against the anchor. I remain splayed on the wet hull floor. The rocking calms. Water stops slopping over the sides. We’re still afloat. Slowly, I sit up. The remains of the other boat and its occupants are spread out over the water, which is murky with blood and fuel; bits of bodies, wood, metal, rucksacks.
I glare at Bill who is curled up next to me.
“Who’s going to waste time guarding a fucking deserted island?”
He looks shamefaced. “I didn’t know, man. I didn’t know there would be fucking mines.”
I want to punch him until his eyeballs pop out, but I can’t afford to waste the time or energy.
“Is everyone okay?” Bearded Dude asks.
“We’re fine,” Alison says, helping the girl to sit up.
“They exploded. They just exploded,” Hilda cries hysterically to her husband. “Why would they do that. Why?”
I’m not quite sure if she’s questioning why someone would drop mines, or why people would explode. Either seems a moot point.
Our captain is gabbling in Thai.
“No,” I say. “Don’t touch the fucking engine.”
“How are we going to get to the island?” Alison asks.
“We can’t,” Hilda says. “We have to go back.”
“No,” I say.
“No?”
“Look around. There are as many mines behind us as in front. We just got lucky.”
“Well, we have to try,” Harold says. “What else can we do?”
“We could swim, man.” This from Olly.
“Swim?” Harold says. “Are you insane?”
Possibly, I think, but he might be smarter than his bandana and tattoos suggest.
“We could do it,” I say. “There’s plenty of space between the mines for bodies. Just not boats.”
“But what about all of our stuff?” Hilda asks. “Clothes, food, water, phones.”
“I doubt there’s any electricity on the island, so your phone is going to be dead by dawn anyway.”
Plus, who are we going to call, I think. If any of us had friends or family, we wouldn’t be here.
“There’s supposed to be a stream,” Bearded Dude pipes up. “For fresh water. And maybe there’s food left in the beach bar.”
“If not, we can fish and hunt.” Olly grins and I reinstate my pre
vious opinion of him as a survivalist wanker.
“You’re all crazy.” Harold shakes his head.
“Your call,” Bearded Dude says calmly, taking off his flip-flops and sticking his gun into the waistband of his shorts. I follow suit. Bill and Olly chuck off their trainers. Alison looks at the girl.
“You think you can swim it?”
“No problem.”
Harold and Hilda exchange glances.
“I can’t swim,” Hilda says.
Jesus fuck.
“We’re going back,” Harold says. “He can take us.” He turns to El Capitan and pulls out his wallet.
No, I think. Don’t do this.
“We have money. See. Plenty money.”
He smiles hopefully, waving notes. El Capitan smiles back, takes them and shoves them in his pocket.
“Khup Kun Krap.”
Then he reaches down beneath the wheel and pulls out a semi-automatic gun.
“Get off my boat.”
“What? But—”
“Get the fuck off, all of you. Now.”
We don’t wait to ask about the sudden improvement in his English. One by one we all climb over the side and lower ourselves into the water.
“But I gave you money,” Harold protests.
El Capitan jabs him in the chest with the gun. Harold falls back into the water with a splash.
Hilda yelps. “Please. Please. I can’t swim. I’ll drown. I can’t go in there.”
El Capitan nods. “Okay. No swimming.”
He blasts her with a small spray of bullets. Her body jerks and twitches, spitting red, and then crumples into the boat.
“Linda!” Harold screams.
I was close with the name.
The engine splutters into life and the boat reverses back in a small white wave.
“Linda!”
“She’s dead,” I say. “Swim.”
I strike out and follow the others, not waiting to see if he heeds my advice. We all choose a sedate breaststroke, weaving carefully between the mines. Bearded Dude reaches the shore first and walks, dripping, up the beach. Alison and the girl are next. My feet have just touched the sandy seabed when I hear the boom.