by Graeme Hurry
“That you boy?” his father growled from the cave-like living room. Before his mother died that room had been Aric’s favourite in the whole house. Its walls were white with bright yellow trim and the hardwood floor was always swept until it shone. All his mother’s bookcases were in there and she had let him read anything he wanted, not just the little kid books. He’d spent hours curled up on the soft couch consuming the words of writers as diverse as A.A. Milne, Ray Bradbury, Stephen King and Beatrix Potter.
No longer.
Now the walls were stained with tobacco smoke, and the stink of cigarettes clouded the air even in their absence. The floor was worn and grungy, and Aric’s feet often stuck to it when he walked across. Worst of all, that’s where the stairs were.
“Boy?” His father said again, and Aric considered fleeing out the back door and pretending he’d never been there, but the screen door’s squeak would give him away and then he’d be in for it.
“Yes, it’s me.”
“Where you bin?”
“With Austin,” Aric answered truthfully. “Down on the beach.”
Their house was the last one on the bay before open water and ever since Austin and his family had moved in just down the road, he and Aric had been inseparable. They played on the rocky coastline for hours. Looking in tide pools, skipping rocks and having adventures. Austin was his best friend, the only person in the world he’d even considered talking to about his mother. Of course, in the end he’d decided against that. It was safer that way. For everyone.
In the living room, his father made a non-committal grunt and turned his attention back to the baseball game showing on the cabinet television he’d dragged in from the garage. Aric could remember his parents fighting about it. His father wanted it in the house but his mother didn’t, she said television rotted the mind. It was the one argument Aric could ever remember his mother winning. Assuming she had, that is. Which wasn’t an assumption he could safely make since the television had been in the house before his mother had even been in the ground.
He looked at the floor. Cigarette ashes and scattered burn marks marred its worn surface. He used to be bothered by that, but right now the only thing bothering him was the grumbling in his stomach. He was hungry. He hadn’t eaten anything but the piece of dry toast he’d snatched on his way out the door this morning, and he’d spent all day being a pirate with Austin. Pillaging and sword fighting built up an appetite. Still, given the six ‘dead soldiers’ on the kitchen table and the half-consumed one in his father’s hand, it might be better to go to bed now and try to sneak down for a snack later, after his dad fell asleep in his chair.
“What you loomin’ there for?” his father snarled.
Caught by surprise Aric blurted out the first thing that came to mind, the truth. “I’m hungry.”
“I’m hungry,” his father said, lifting his voice high in a mockery of Aric’s. “I’m hungry. Well I’m damned tired so why don’t you cook us somethin’ for a change?”
Aric was doing his best to fry up some eggs and potatoes when he heard the ominous crunch of gravel under tires. His father heard it too. He was up and swearing, stumbling past Aric and toward the kitchen door before the car was even stopped. “Goddamn it, why don’t those bastards leave me alone?” He said, scratching at the graying hair on his chest.
Glancing out the window Aric saw Officer Perkin’s RCMP car. He looked down at the food in the frying pan. “They want to talk to you about Mama again?”
Crack!
Aric felt the weight of the back of his father’s hand across the side of his face. It knocked him clean off the chair he’d been standing on to use the stove and left him sprawled across the cracked linoleum floor. Tears sprung to his eyes but he blinked them back. He would not cry. He would not. Crying always made it worse.
Outside, the car pulled to a stop and Aric heard the door squeak open. The sound was of metal on metal, a terrible squeal like something from a scary book. He looked up to see his father’s finger pointing at him. “Get up to your room and don’t let me hear a peep from you or you’ll regret it.”
Aric scrambled to his feet and up the stairs to his room. His cheek throbbed and burned. He didn’t have a mirror but he imagined the hurt took the shape of his father’s hand, and when he held his own near it he could feel warmth radiate off it. His eyes burned as though he’d been crying though he hadn’t shed a tear.
His window faced out into the bay, so he couldn’t see his father and Officer Perkins talking, but he could guess at the conversation. Ever since his mother died the police had come around a lot. His father said it had been an accident, claimed she’d tripped over one of Aric’s toys and tumbled down the stairs. But Aric knew better. He’d heard the fight that happened right beforehand. Truthfully it hadn’t been better or worse than any of the million fights they’d had before, not until the sudden ending.
“…takin’ him and leaving!” His mother had screamed, her voice shrill and cracking. It was a sentiment he’d heard over and over for years, one that made him burrow deeper into his quilt, trying to block out the sound because it always resulted in his father getting even angrier. And he had. He’d roared like a fog horn and from his room Aric had heard him stomp down the hallway toward where his mother stood at the top of the stairs. And then there had been the crash. And her scream. Her scream that went on and on for an impossibly long time. And then there was silence.
Aric’s dad talked to Officer Perkins, now as he had then, and sent him on his way. There was no ambulance following in his wake on this trip, but he was gone just the same. Aric heard his father slam the door as he came back in from talking on the driveway, and then, from all the way upstairs, he heard the unmistakable sound of his dad twisting the top off another Ranier and throwing the cap on the table.
Aric tracked his father’s progress through the house by the sound of his heavy boots on the floor. He paced around the kitchen some, grumbling and muttering. Then came the crash of the frying pan Aric had been using being thrown into the kitchen sink. “Burnin’ food, ye little bastard!” his father yelled up the stairs. “I’m gonna take the cost a that outta yer ass!”
His father took the steps two at a time, his work boots coming down on them hard enough Aric wondered if one might break and grant him a reprieve. The sound hammered in Aric’s chest and nausea twisted his guts into a bowline knot.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Then he was there and the knob on the door was twisting, the door opening.
He filled the door frame, blocking out nearly all the light from the hallway so the little which did manage to penetrate cloaked him like a halo. His chest heaved, shoulders rising and falling like whitecaps, and the scent of beer filled the room. “Gonna pay for that boy. Ye think we can afford to waste food? Huh? Or maybe ye were tryin’ to burn the place down, eh? That it?”
“No sir,” Aric backed up into the shadows of his bed. Hunching his shoulders and folding as much of himself inward as he could. Trying to become small, so small his father wouldn’t notice him anymore. As small as a mouse, as a bug. As small as he felt. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You’re always sorry.” His father roared, spittle spraying from his lips as he stepped toward Aric. “Sorry just doesn’t cut it! You’ve. Got. To. Learn. To. Think!”
His father backhanded him and the pain bloomed fierce and white as he tumbled to the floor and scrunched his eyes shut to hide from what was coming. Then his father was there, picking him up by the shoulders and shaking him, and shaking him and shaking -
When Aric opened his eyes he was lying beneath the patchwork quilt on his bed. His father wasn’t there and the house was dark. He lay perfectly still, listening. If his father heard him get out of bed he might come back up and well, Aric might be joining his mother in her burial at sea. And sometimes, sometimes he thought maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. He’d read stories about heaven and thought it sounded like
a mighty nice place to go, but still, he wasn’t sure. What if the stories were wrong?
So he waited.
But the house was quiet except for the familiar tick-tock of the old clock out in the hall.
And then for no reason he could think of, except that it suddenly seemed like a very good idea, Aric got out of bed. He tiptoed across his room, careful to miss the squeaky board by his dresser, pulled the lace curtains back from the window and squinted into the mist.
The boat was carried in on the back of the fog.
Growing up on the bay, Aric had seen boats slip through fog plenty of times, he’d even been on a few of them. They were nothing new or unusual for him, and yet—there was something about the shape in the mist, about this particular vessel. He leaned closer and pressed his forehead against the glass.
The shape tickled his brain. It didn’t feel solid. It kept shifting in the fog so that he couldn’t tell how big it was let alone what kind of craft. One moment it looked like a sailboat, the next its silhouette was that of a scallop dragger. It was as if it were being formed and reformed by the fog’s icy fingers while he watched.
As the tide brought it nearer, Aric saw that, in fact, it was a rowboat. An empty rowboat.
Empty, and yet he could hear the soft splish of the boat’s oars entering the water, the whoosh of it cutting through the bay toward him and then the trickle of droplets running down the oars and back into the sea.
Aric was filled, not with fear, but excitement, as he watched the little dory come closer. The name SOUNDER was scrawled across her bow, and the black words shone in the moonlight as though they were painted with reflective paint. In, the oars went, and then back, pulled by invisible arms, and out and in. The water droplets fell off them like diamonds, leaving ripples in the surface of the ocean that spread out as far as Aric could see. In and out.
The boat ran up against the stony shore below their house and the oars tucked themselves neatly inside.
It should have been impossible for Aric to see the rocks shift as though they were being walked on, or for him to hear their crunch against one another, but he could. As clearly as if he were watching a movie. And still, even as he tracked the invisible being’s progress toward him, Aric was not afraid. It was only when the steps went around the corner of the house where the door was and Aric could no longer see them, that he became anxious. Did he dare risk his father’s wrath by going downstairs to see where the ghost was going? Because he was certain it was a ghost – what else could it be?
His decision was made for him when he heard the door open. The ghost moved about the kitchen some, and then he heard it coming up the stairs. Slowly. Deliberately. Heading toward his room.
Shouldn’t a ghost be silent, he thought, and then first trickles of fear ran down his spine, spreading their tingling fingers all through his body and he pressed his back against the far wall.
And then he knew. As suddenly and surely as he’d known to go to the window and look out, Aric knew who was on the other side of the door. He ran toward it, reaching it just as it was opened and threw himself into his mother’s arms.
He could see her, feel her, could smell her. More real, more alive than anything else around him. He felt his tears wet her shoulder, smelled the faint scent of her favourite bubble bath mingling with that of the night air which clung to her. Her arms were warm around him, and her breath stirred his hair.
“Mommy,” he breathed, pulling away just enough to look into her face, to see the tears and the smile there. “I missed you.”
“I missed you too, Aric,” she said, smoothing his hair down in back, blinking away tears. “But now it’s time to go.”
Aric opened his mouth to question, to dispute, then followed his mother’s gaze to his bed. Tucked away in the corner and painted with shadows though it was, still he could see. He could see the truth. The stiff form lying beneath the blanket. Hands folded over its chest. With a cry he turned away, burying himself in his mother’s arms once more.
She carried him down the stairs, though he was far too big for that, and as they passed through the living room Aric heard a foreign sound. The thick, wet sound of his father crying, sobbing in the darkness. “I’m sorry,” he said, over and over, his voice slurred from beer, heavy with tears. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Aric looked up to see his father sitting in his usual chair, his face buried in his hands, shoulders convulsing. “Sorry just doesn’t cut it,” Aric whispered, and it felt right, and good. For a moment. Then remorse washed over him, and guilt, like a tide, and he tightened his grip around his mother’s neck.
She stepped out of the house, with him in her arms, about the same time the night sky was painted with red and blue lights from Officer Perkin’s car.
Outside beneath the stars, his mother set Aric on his feet. He looked toward the shore where the little skiff waited and slipped his hand into hers. They took their first step toward it together.
EDITORIAL
by Graeme Hurry
This issue there are three authors who have been published in Kzine before: C.I. Kemp, Steve Jordan and Rhonda Parrish. This may indicate favouritism, but in fact it is much more probable that these authors write with a quality, style and consistency which appeals to me and I hope the readers. Because that’s what I hope makes readers return to Kzine, a consistent sense and consistency of quality.
Obviously no-one will like all the stories as we cover such a range of genres, however I hope the imagination and writing quality is appreciated. Now as to our repeat writers, are they writing within a narrow genre band which just happens to tickle the Kzine editor’s fancy? Well, no. One of the criteria in choosing stories is invention and originality. So sticking to the same type of story would not necessarily get you a return gig.
Rhonda Parrish’s story in Issue 4 was “…Oh My!”, a horror fantasy based in the world of The Wizard of Oz featuring munchkin zombies. This outing is a poignant story of brutality and resolution. One dark humour the other dark sentiment.
Steve Jordan’s story in Kzine 4 was “Sheep”. It was a post apocalypse story of childish games in a deadly world, horror appearing slowly and finally fatally as revenge asserts itself. This issue Steve investigates the imaginative potential of wrestling.
C.I. Kemp had a story in Issue 3 called “Depths” where contemporary children playing in a rural area discover a secret in the mountains. A magic cavern which could bring childish imagination to life, or be used just as easily for evil. This time it is a reinvigorating of Lovecraft’s imagination in “Pickman’s Motel”, a pretty obvious pun on Lovecraft’s “ Pickman’s Model”. But not a reworking, more a continuation of the story into the present day. I feel it fit’s well with Dave Windett’s cover which has a distinctly Lovecraftion feel.
Once again I hope you read the stories without genre preconceptions, that’s one reason why this editorial is hidden at the end.
REVIEWS
by Graeme Hurry
This issue Kzine is continuing its occasional Reviews section of novels written by current and past Kzine authors.
ENGN by Simon Kewin (published by December House Ltd) ****
A Steampunk Gormenghast? That’s the impression initially, and there is a lot of Peake type imagination and imagery. However this detailed account of a machine built over generations, and a boy’s part in its functioning, is tempered by contemporary allusions. Any story of a giant city sized machine worked, Metropolis-like, by slaves to its whim will attract comparisons to our society, our infrastructure… Ourselves! This balance between imagery and allusion is well maintained, but I feel the story wins out.
It is an intriguing book which dangles mysteries in front of the reader one after the other an even answers a few as the story progresses. Danger and intrigue haunt our heroes on this adventure into a city so vast no one person can understand it. This is a great young adult book, but like the best of that genre would also be well appreciated by the discerning adult.
DEAT
H IN THE ASYLUM by Caroline Dunford (published by Accent Press Ltd) ***
This book is the third in a series of novels about Euphemia Martins, set before the first world war. She was born into a rich family, but circumstances set her out into the world alone finding herself with no option but to go into service for the Newly rich Stapleford family. This seems to be a bad move for the family as deaths and violence follows her employment. However for the reader, her quick mind and modern attitudes allows us to not only investigate the murders, but also see the social tensions in the household, above and below stairs. In this episode, mediums and mental asylums combine to expose more skeletons in the family closet.
Not having been much of a period drama reader, I took some time to get into the slightly forced turn of the century languages used. The characters seem fairly thinly sketched but their interactions are complex. However the strength of the book is also its most inconsistent. That is Euphemia’s thoughts, which allow us to glimpse into this period but deadly world, are also jumping between modern and pre-war sensibilities. This did not allow me to quite see the protagonist as a solid character. I could not predict what she would want to do in any situation. Maybe I need to have read the first two books. However, that uncertainty also adds spice.
I feel this series is natural material for Dowton Abbey fans who like the odd crime novel. The climax does offer a situation with all the menace of a gritty and horrific detective novel, even if the events leading upto it were a bit “Agatha Christie”.