Ashes and Entropy

by Laird Barron

  ASHES AND ENTROPY

  Edited by Robert S. Wilson

  Ashes and Entropy

  Copyright © 2018 by Nightscape Press

  This edition of Ashes and Entropy

  Copyright © 2018 by Nightscape Press, LLP

  Cover illustration and design by Pat R. Steiner

  Interior illustrations by Luke Spooner

  Interior layout and design by Robert S. Wilson

  Edited by Robert S. Wilson

  All rights reserved.

  “The Gray Room” copyright © Tim Waggoner 2018

  “The Head On the Door” copyright © Erinn L. Kemper 2018

  “Flesh Without Blood” copyright © Nadia Bulkin 2018

  “Scraps” copyright © Max Booth III 2018

  “Yellow House” copyright © Jon Padgett 2018

  “What Finds Its Way Back” copyright © Damien Angelica Walters 2018

  “We All Speak Black” copyright © Lynne Jamneck 2018.

  “Ain’t Much Pride” copyright © Nate Southard 2018

  “The Choir of the Tunnels” copyright © Matthew B. Hare 2018

  “Amity in Bloom” copyright © Jessica McHugh 2018

  “Red Stars / White Snow / Black Metal” copyright © Fiona Maeve Geist 2018

  “Shadowmachine” copyright © Autumn Christian 2018

  “The One About Maggie” copyright © Greg Sisco 2018

  “Breakwater” copyright © John Langan 2018

  “For Our Skin, A Daughter” copyright © Kristi DeMeester 2018

  “Houdini: The Egyptian Paradigm” copyright © Lisa Mannetti 2018

  “Girls Without Their Faces On” copyright © Laird Barron 2018

  “Dr. 999” copyright © Matthew M. Bartlett 2018

  “Leaves of Dust” copyright © Wendy Nikel 2018

  “The Kind Detective” copyright © Lucy A. Snyder 2018

  “The Levee Breaks” copyright © Jayaprakash Satyamurthy 2018

  “I Can Give You Life” copyright © Paul Michael Anderson 2018

  First Electronic Edition

  Nightscape Press, LLP

  http://www.nightscapepress.pub

  All regional spellings have been kept intact in order to preserve each author’s particular voice.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS:

  THE GRAY ROOM by Tim Waggoner

  THE HEAD ON THE DOOR by Erinn L. Kemper

  FLESH WITHOUT BLOOD by Nadia Bulkin

  SCRAPS by Max Booth III

  YELLOW HOUSE by Jon Padgett

  WHAT FINDS ITS WAY BACK by Damien Angelica Walters

  WE ALL SPEAK BLACK by Lynne Jamneck

  AIN’T MUCH PRIDE by Nate Southard

  THE CHOIR OF THE TUNNELS by Matthew B. Hare

  AMITY IN BLOOM by Jessica McHugh

  RED STARS / WHITE SNOW / BLACK METAL by Fiona Maeve Geist

  SHADOW MACHINE by Autumn Christian

  THE ONE ABOUT MAGGIE by Greg Sisco

  BREAKWATER by John Langan

  FOR OUR SKIN, A DAUGHTER by Kristi DeMeester

  HOUDINI: THE EGYPTIAN PARADIGM by Lisa Mannetti

  GIRLS WITHOUT THEIR FACES ON by Laird Barron

  DR. 999 by Matthew M. Bartlett

  LEAVES OF DUST by Wendy Nikel

  THE KIND DETECTIVE by Lucy A. Snyder

  THE LEVEE BREAKS by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy

  I CAN GIVE YOU LIFE by Paul Michael Anderson

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  THE GRAY ROOM

  by Tim Waggoner

  You pull your beat-up Chevy Malibu into a parking space in front of an old two-story apartment building. You kill the engine and turn to Liza, sitting in the passenger seat beside you.

  “This looks shady as fuck,” you say. You try to sound cool, like you’re amused, but you can’t hide the nervousness in your voice.

  She laughs, or at least tries to. It comes out more like a chuffing sound, a noise produced by the cancer-ridden throat of someone who’s been smoking for decades. But Liza doesn’t smoke. She has a far different addiction, one you’ve come here to feed.

  “You can’t buy this shit over the counter at your neighborhood pharmacy,” she says. She pauses, thinks a moment. “I’m not sure you can buy it anywhere else.”

  Anywhere else in town? you wonder. Or does she mean anywhere else in the world?

  She was beautiful once. At least, she looks like she might’ve been. There’s a remnant of blue in her dull gray eyes, an echo of gold in her dingy straw-like hair, a touch of faded pink in her dry, cracked lips. You try to imagine what it would be like to kiss those lips, and you feel a shiver of disgust.

  She opens the passenger door and steps outside. You hesitate a moment longer. Do you really want to do this?

  It’s beyond any high you’ve ever imagined. Beyond sex, love, life, death – and more.

  That’s what she told you at the bar last night, when you tried to match her shot for shot and ended up drunk off your ass while she seemed perfectly sober. It’s the more that really caught your attention, the hook that sank deep in your flesh. What could be more than life and death? What would that more feel like?

  She smacks the flat of her hand against the driver’s side window, startling you.

  “You coming or are you going to puss out?” she demands.

  She’s wearing a Rancid T-shirt and faded jeans that look at least two sizes too big for her. She’s using an old piece of rope for a belt, and her bare feet are so dirty, at first glance it looks as if she’s wearing a pair of black slippers.

  You smile at her, trying to look like you do this kind of thing all the time, but it feels strained, and you fear all you’ve managed is an uneasy grimace. Still, she steps away from the door and you get out.

  It should be dark, should be the dead of fucking night, but it’s two in the afternoon. Although as much as you drank last night, it still feels way too early to be out of bed. The sunlight stabs your eyes, sets your head to thudding. A sudden dizziness hits you, and you put a hand on the car roof to steady yourself.

  When you first pulled up in the front of the building, you thought it was old. But now that you take your first good look at it, you see it’s downright ancient. The brick might’ve been red once, but the years have leeched away most of the color, leaving it almost white. It looks soft and porous, as if on the verge of crumbling to dust. The windows are cracked, the glass so grimy it looks as if it’s been whitewashed from inside. Whatever color the shutters once were is impossible to tell. The paint flaked off them long ago, leaving behind only weathered gray wood. The roof is missing a good number of shingles, maybe as much as half. It’s as if a huge storm blew through her recently, stripped the shingles away, and no one’s got around to replacing them. There’s a sidewalk in front of the building, and a small set of concrete steps that leads to a door. The sidewalk is cracked and broken, as are the steps, and the door – gray wood like the shutters – hangs slightly askew, its metal handle covered with rust. The ground surrounding the building is dotted with patches of dead grass but otherwise is bare, the soil hard and lifeless, the color of diseased bone.

  An odor hangs heavy on the stale air, a rank foulness that reminds you of the time you were mowing your parents’ back yard as a teenager and you ran over the flattened, desiccated corpse of some small animal – a squirrel, probably – that had died and remained out in the summer sun for days. As the chewed-up pieces of bone and leathery hide were ejected from the mower’s discharge chute, a greasy stomach-turning stench had filled the air. The air around the building reminds you of that smell, only worse.

  But all of this – the building’s appearance, its smell – is nothing compared to how the place makes you feel. You’re instantly on edge, jaw tight, teeth clamped together, eyes
narrowed. It’s as if there’s a sound just outside your range of hearing, like the almost inaudible hum of electronic equipment. It worms its way into your ears, making you feel as if thousands of tiny insects are walking across the folds and ridges of your brain.

  “Not much to look at, is it?” Liza says.

  She tries to sound flippant, like she’s aware of the effect the place has and is unaffected by it. But you can hear how uncomfortable she is, and for some reason, this bolsters your courage. You suppose it’s good to know Liza’s not as tough as she pretends to be. It makes you feel less alone.

  She starts toward the door, and as she mounts the steps, concrete crumbles to dust beneath her feet. You follow, and you feel the steps sag beneath you. You’re slender and Liza is close to emaciated, but even so you expect the steps to collapse entirely beneath your combined weight. But they hold, and when Liza opens the door—which is surprisingly silent given its condition—and holds it open for you, she smiles, revealing sore, bleeding gums and soft gray teeth. You could turn around. It’s not too late. You could run back to the car, get inside, and drive the hell away from Liza, this place, and whatever waits inside. Last chance. Going once . . . Going twice . . .

  Gone.

  ~

  She finds you in the parking lot of Bottoms Up, a dive bar on the west side of Ash Creek. You’re sitting in your car, windows down, head back, eyes closed, listening to the heroin’s sweet, sweet song. Except the song isn’t as sweet these days, is it? It isn’t as loud, either. More and more often, it seems to fade into the background, and sometimes it falls silent altogether. You’ve become habituated and need stronger doses to get you where you want to go. Problem is, you’re not exactly raking in the dough working in the kitchen of a twenty-four-hour hamburger joint, the kind of place where the patties are small and square and taste like used condoms. So you buy the best you can afford, but it’s not enough, not anymore.

  “Enjoying the ride?”

  You slowly open your eyes and find yourself looking into Liza’s face, although you don’t know her name yet. Her hands – small-fingered, nails bitten to the quick – grip the edge of the window, and she’s crouched down so she can look inside.

  The smack in your veins might not be hi-test, but it’s made you mellow enough, so you don’t make a face upon seeing her. Her skin is sallow and drawn so tight to her skull she almost looks like an animated skeleton. At first you were afraid she was a cop who thought you’d OD’d and was ready to give you a shot of Narcan. But you can see she’s only another addict looking to whore herself out so she can afford her next fix. The town’s full of them. You’re not an addict, though. You’re a user. Big difference.

  Her breath is foul, like the stink from an open sewer, and you turn your head slightly to move your noise away from the stench, but it doesn’t help.

  “Not interested,” you mumble, the words barely audible even to you. She has no trouble hearing you, though.

  “How do you know? I haven’t offered you anything yet.”

  You have to admit she has a point. But you just want to be left alone.

  “Fuck off,” you say, voice raised to show you mean it.

  The woman doesn’t go anywhere. She continues looking at you through the open window. She smiles, the movement making her dry lips crack and bleed in several places.

  “You’ve got a problem. I’ve got a solution.” She pauses, then adds, “If you’ve got the balls.”

  She hasn’t said so directly, but you sense that she knows precisely what your problem is. Who knows? Maybe she can smell it on you. Takes one to know one, right?

  “Come inside with me. We’ll do some shots and talk about what we can do to get you where you want to go.”

  You look at her for a moment, considering. Then you say, “What the fuck?” and get out of the car.

  ~

  The entryway is short and narrow, two apartments on the top floor, two on the bottom, and four rusty metal mailboxes set into one wall. The baby-shit brown carpet is frayed, torn, and dotted with suspicious-looking stains. Dead insects line the baseboards, and at first you think they’re cockroaches, and there is a superficial resemblance, but these insects have too many legs, each of which ends in clawed toes. Fliers plaster the walls, held in place by yellowed strips of tape. They’re printed on different colors of paper – blue, pink, yellow, and, of course, white – and they advertise services or make announcements for things that you’ve never heard of, some of which are downright enigmatic.

  HAVE YOU SEEN THE REST OF ME? CALL followed by a long string of symbols unlike any numbers you’re familiar with.

  TWO MINUTES OF DARKNESS! LOWEST PRICE IN TOWN!

  COME EXPERIENCE THE GREAT DISMAL.

  DELICIOUS CANNIBALS – FIFTY PERCENT OFF!

  The smell in here is even worse than outside. It’s like an overfilled dumpster baking in August heat – spoiled fruit and rotten meat slathered in piss and shit. Your gut convulses and stomach acid sears the back of your throat. You don’t throw up, though, even if your body wants to. You haven’t put anything in your belly besides booze for days, and there’s nothing to bring up. A small mercy.

  Liza leads you to the ground floor apartment on the left. A few meager flakes of pale green paint cling to the door, and a symbol has been crudely carved into the wood in place of a number, a lopsided circle with an X over it. The door across the hall has a zig-zagging line running downward from left to right.

  Liza doesn’t bother to knock on the door with the circle and X on it. She takes hold of the rust-caked knob and turns it. She pushes the door open and grins at you, displaying her soft gray teeth once more.

  “After you,” she says, gesturing for you to precede her.

  There’s something seriously fucked up about this building, about the whole goddamned situation. How badly do you want this? You don’t, you decide. You need it.

  You enter and Liza follows, pulling the door shut behind her.

  ~

  Sometime after your first couple shots, but way before your last, Liza asks you a question.

  “Why do you do it?”

  She doesn’t specify what it is. She doesn’t have to.

  You shrug. “Because it feels good, I guess.”

  “Just good?”

  You grin. “Okay, it feels goddamn fan-fucking-tastic.”

  “But not like it used to.”

  “No. I wish it did.”

  “What if I told you I can hook you up with something that’s a hundred times better? Hell, a million times.”

  “I’d say you’re full of shit.”

  She continues, taking no offense, “What do you imagine the ultimate sensation would be?”

  You have to think about that for a time before answering.

  “Dying,” you say.

  She purses her lips in disapproval. “Dying’s no great trick. Everything dies, even the universe. It’s just dying so slowly compared to us that we don’t really notice.”

  She’s starting to irritate you by this point, and you’re thinking of leaving after one more shot. Or three.

  “So what is the ultimate sensation?” you ask.

  “To feel the universe dying.” Her dull eyes seem to brighten a bit as she speaks these words. “To know what it’s like to be in the throes of death for billions of years, with billions more yet to endure. It’s . . .” She breaks off, searching for the right words. “Rapturous. And that’s what you’ve been searching for, isn’t it? The same thing we’re all searching for. To escape these sacks of meat we’re trapped in –” she slaps her chest for emphasis – “even if only for a short time. Doesn’t that sound better than heroin?”

  Until tonight, you haven’t given much thought to the reasons why you use drugs. But Liza’s words resonate with you. You’re such a small person, living such a small life. To touch something so big. . . to know what it’s like to be everything – even if that everything was dying. . . That would be the ultimate, wouldn’t it?

>   “And there’s a drug that can make you feel like this?” you ask.

  She nods. “And I know where to get it.”

  ~

  There are no lights on in the apartment. There’s a window on one wall and a glass patio door, but both are covered with sheets affixed to curtain rods with wooden clothespins. The sheets are thin, though, allowing enough light to filter through so you can see. The walls are the sickly gray color of diseased mucus, and the floor is covered with taped-together sheets of plastic that wrinkle with each step you take. There’s no furniture, at least not in the main room – the gray room – which is all you can see at the moment. But the room is far from empty. The space is filled with some manner of bizarre sculpture made from bones lashed together with rusty barbed wire. Arm bones, leg bones, spines, ribcages, pelvises, skulls. . . all arranged in haphazard fashion, none of the pieces connected in anything remotely resembling a natural way. You recognize some of the bones as human – from both adults and children – but others appear to be from animals. Dogs, cats, birds, cows, horses, large reptiles like alligators or crocodiles . . . But some of the skeletal pieces are. . . different. Skulls with one eye socket, three, or even more. Two mouths, no mouth, a circular orifice where a mouth should be. Twisted spines with serrated fins protruding from them, pelvises which are all sharp angles, rib cages that are curved outward instead of inward, the ends of the ribs sharpened spear points. After the initial shock of seeing this lunatic construction, you realize it’s made of more than just bone and wire. Thin plastic tubing runs throughout the thing, coiling around bones, running in and out of eye sockets and mouths, threading through ribs. . . The tubing isn’t empty, though. Something thick and dark moves through it, and you can almost hear the moist sound of oozing sludge.

  Like the outside of the building and the entryway, there’s a strong smell inside the apartment, but it’s different than the others. It’s the smell of dead, lifeless earth, of a desert so barren it’s incapable of sustaining even the hardiest form of life. With each breath you take, it feels as if you’re losing moisture, drying up inside a little bit more, and you wonder what would happen to you if you stayed here too long. Would you become a shrunken, dried husk, nothing but parchment skin draped over dusty bones?