by C M Muller
Nightscript I
Edited by C.M. Muller
Tales © 2015 by individual authors.
All rights reserved.
First e-Edition
Cover: “Nøkken” (1904) by Theodor Kittelsen
Additional proofreading by Chris Mashak
This anthology is a work of fiction.
Any resemblance to actual events or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Nightscript is published annually,
during grand October.
Chthonic Matter | St. Paul, Minnesota
www.chthonicmatter.wordpress.com
Contents
Everything That’s Underneath Kristi DeMeester
Strays Gregory L. Norris
In His Grandmother’s Coat Charles Wilkinson
The Cuckoo Girls Patricia Lillie
The Sound That the World Makes David Surface
Below the Falls Daniel Mills
The Keep Kirsty Logan
She Rose From the Water Kyle Yadlosky
Animalhouse Clint Smith
Tooth, Tongue, and Claw Damien Angelica Walters
Momma Eric J. Guignard
The Trees Are Tall Here Marc E. Fitch
A Quiet Axe Michael Kelly
The Death of Yatagarasu Bethany W. Pope
The Cooing John Claude Smith
A Knife in My Drawer Zdravka Evtimova
On Balance Jason A. Wyckoff
Learning Not to Smile Ralph Robert Moore
Fisher and Lure Christopher Burke
The Death of Socrates Michael Wehunt
About the Contributors
A Preface to Darkness
“I delight in what I fear.”
Shirley Jackson
Welcome to the inaugural offering of an anthology which aims to sate your appetite for strange and darksome tales. As a reader, I am irresistibly drawn to this sort of fiction—fiction which, in the hands of a specialist such as the one quoted above, implants its weird seed into the reader’s mind and thereafter blooms into something so very satisfying to behold; something which, in the days to come, we cannot avert our attention from. Stories with resonance. But I suppose that’s the ambition of any fiction.
Nightscript, then, exists in part to showcase a select few of the numerous talented scribes currently operating in the field of literary horror—or whichever appellation you choose to affix to this type of fiction. And while the twenty tales collected herein certainly wear that categorization well, there are reasons to delight in each which go far beyond their gray to midnight gradations. These are carefully-crafted works told in a variety of styles, and containing, perhaps most importantly, a powerful emotional core.
It is my hope that this anthology series will continue to find its way into your hands for many an October to come, and that you will join me for that invigorating walk through the darkness. Let us delight in what we fear.
C.M. Muller
Everything That’s Underneath
Kristi DeMeester
Carin left the door ajar for Benjamin. He’d come inside only once that day smelling of sawdust and ice and swallowed the sandwich she’d made for him, pecked her on the cheek, and returned to his project. When he went, cold air swirled through the kitchen and caught at her hair and cheeks, and she stilled her hands which reached to grasp the shoulders of his coat.
“A door,” he’d told her.
“We have a door.”
“No. Something solid. Something good,” he’d said.
The next week he’d rented a saw, borrowed a truck from Tom next door, and dragged home a pile of lumber. At night, the smell of cedar leaked inside of her, and she dreamed of great trees, tangles of limbs and roots reaching deep into the earth under a blood red sky. Redwoods and Oaks and Cedars wrapping tight around her body, squeezing until she fought for breath. Her ribs and sternum cracking under the impossible weight.
“I don’t like the smell,” she’d told him that morning, watching the liquid movements of his body as he pulled on his thermals and boots. Every movement calculated and precise. She’d fallen in love with him while watching those delicate hands fold and unfold a napkin.
When was the last time he’d danced? She couldn’t remember.
Even that was a lie. Of all the things she’d learned to believe these past three months, this was the easiest.
“Everyone likes the smell. It keeps moths away.”
“I guess I don’t.”
“It won’t be as strong once it’s done. You won’t even notice it.”
“Sure.”
“Don’t come out okay? I want it to be a surprise.”
For hours that day, she’d stood at the kitchen window, her hand against the glass, listening to the sharp bite of metal against wood. The sound of her husband slowly, carefully putting it together again.
Something solid. Something good.
Outside, full dark had fallen, and still the saw whined.
Surely a door was a fairly simple thing? Benjamin was no carpenter, but he’d watched videos online, read articles, and it seemed easy enough. A Saturday project. Something he could finish in one day, maybe two if he ran into any snags or really screwed something up.
He’d hidden himself behind the large shed in their backyard. When the realtor had shown them the house, Benjamin had turned to her and smiled, slow and quiet. The secret smile he kept just for her. His lips mouthing the word “studio.” They’d put an offer on the house that afternoon. He’d just started the renovations when his vision began to blur and his toes had started to tingle and go numb.
Now and then she would see the top of his hat or a sudden dervish of sawdust caught in the air, but she never actually saw him. She tried not to worry. The doctors had said his prognosis was good, that he should be able to carry on as normal with a few slight modifications. That she shouldn’t feel the need to hover over him, waiting and watching for another day like the one where she’d found him on the floor of the shed, shaking and whispering that he couldn’t feel his legs.
After four doctors, two specialists, and six months, they’d finally received a diagnosis. A pink-lipped, blonde doctor, her voice light and giggling like a young girl’s, telling him that he would never dance again, that M.S. would slowly take away everything he had ever known. Ever loved. How Carin had wanted to slap that baby-voiced, Barbie-faced bitch and tell her to talk like an adult instead of a goddamn child. Her palms had itched with the want.
Again, she went to the kitchen window and looked for him in the gloom.
He hadn’t turned on any lights. She frowned. He did this sometimes. When he was immersed in a rehearsal or in new choreography, he would forget to eat or to sleep. Once, when they’d first been married, he hadn’t come home, lost himself in the tying together of music and muscle, and she’d spent the night curled in the bathtub, the water turning cold around her. The next morning he’d hugged her to him, his chest and stomach hard under the dark sweater he wore, and swore that he would love her until his body couldn’t remember how to breathe.
Still. He shouldn’t be using a saw in the dark, and she moved toward the door that led into their backyard.
She called his name into the black, the wind whipping her words away from her before the winter night swallowed them. Shivering, she stood in the doorway taking her right foot on and off of the top stair. The saw came to life for a brief moment before settling once more into silence.
He’s fine. He can take care of himself. He’s not a child, she thought, and she turned back, left the door slightly open for him. He would be disappointed if she went to him and spoiled the thing he’d worked on all day. Especially now. As if the disease blooming inside of him had already eaten through what little he ha
d left. As if she didn’t trust him to be able to do this thing for her. Something so simple. A thing a husband should be able to do for a wife.
With methodical care she cooked a dinner she wouldn’t eat and packed it in the refrigerator in case Benjamin was hungry when he finally came inside. There was a decent bottle of Malbec, and she opened it, didn’t bother with a glass.
At midnight, she was drunk. Somewhere beyond the kitchen, Benjamin hammered at the door, and the rhythmic pounding coupled with the wine made her sleepy. Leaning into the couch, she closed her eyes and vanished into the smell of clean wood. Somehow, it had seeped into the house, stealing in through the crack at the bottom of the door. It didn’t bother her anymore. Benjamin had been right.
It could have been hours or minutes later when the sound woke her. A light scritching, like something wrapped in heavy fabric dragging itself across the hardwoods. She caught her breath and willed her heart to be silent and listened to the heavy silence of the house. One. Two. Took a breath and let it out. Slowly, slowly. Tried not to think of the fear curling hard and sharp in her belly.
The sound stopped, and she had the distinct feeling of it moving, turning back. Something crawling on its belly from the kitchen toward the back door.
Benjamin must have come inside because all of the lights were off. He would have gone through the rooms and switched them off one by one, moving quietly to avoid waking her. She could picture him stumbling in, tired and aching from a long day of work, and letting the door fall shut behind him without the latch catching properly before going to bed. An animal—a squirrel or a possum—had found its way into the house seeking warmth from the frigid night. This was the sound. Had to be the sound she heard now. She couldn’t let herself think of the possibility of anything else.
The sound had turned, was moving away from the kitchen door. The crawling thing making its way out of the kitchen, past the dining table on the left and toward the living room where she lay trying not to breathe. Whatever the animal was, it was much larger than she had originally thought. A dog, maybe? But why would it creep around like that, dragging itself along on its belly?
She could hear its breath now, slow and even. Certainly not a squirrel or a possum. Too large for that. Too large even for a dog. Something the size of a man. Benjamin had not closed the door, and now an intruder had slipped between their walls, would open her up with his teeth and use the parts he could. This was what she thought as she listened.
Her heart hammered in the back of her throat, and she squeezed her eyes shut, willed herself to move, to scream, to do anything but keep still. It was a simple thing to sit up, to reach over and switch on the lamp resting on the end table next to the couch, but the thought of the creature on the floor kept her frozen in place.
“Carin?”
Her breath whooshed out, her lungs burning and aching.
“Benjamin?”
“Are you awake?”
“What the fuck? Are you okay? What are you doing?” She sat up quickly, reached a hand for him, but he shrank away from her, tucked himself further into darkness. She squinted but could only make out the outline of his frame prostrate against the floor.
“Come to bed with me.”
“Did you fall? Let me help you.”
“Didn’t fall. Just worn out. Didn’t want to wake you. Come to bed with me,” he said again. His voice was strange. Tired. Like he used to sound after a long day in the studio.
It didn’t explain why he’d been crawling in the dark.
He must have fallen. He would have been ashamed, wouldn’t have wanted her to know that it was happening so quickly. The disintegration of this graceful body. His own private hell laid bare.
“Yeah. Of course,” she said, stood, and without thinking, reached for him again.
“Carin? Who are you talking to?” The voice, Benjamin’s voice, came from directly behind her. Not the form lying before her in the soft dark. Her knees buckled, and she stumbled forward, the room suddenly flooded with light as Benjamin turned on a lamp.
There was nothing there. No strange man huddled in the corner, no terrifying doppleganger of her husband. Only the paisley area rug and a large basket she used for laundry next to the fireplace.
Turning, she looked at her husband. Rumpled t-shirt, his hair tousled from sleep.
“I was dreaming,” she said, but even as the words left her mouth she felt the untruth in them. They fell from her tongue like dead things.
“You were talking,” he said and smiled.
“Overly tired. I do that sometimes.”
He nodded and pulled her to him. His skin smelled of cedar, bright and clean, but as she breathed, the smell turned sour, almost fetid, and she pulled away.
“Come to bed,” he said and reached across her to turn off the lamp before moving down the hallway. For several moments, she waited, let her eyes readjust to the darkness and listened to the mattress springs creaking beneath Benjamin’s weight. She would not look back into that corner. She would not.
When she made her way to their bedroom, Benjamin was already asleep. That night, she locked their bedroom door. Outside, the creature moved up and down the hallway. She did not sleep.
“I’m thinking of carving it. Making it more intricate. Interesting. You know?” Benjamin took a bite of pancakes, smiled at her across the table.
“What?”
“You sick or something?” He reached for her face, brushed her bangs away from her eyes. A gesture he’d made habit while they were dating, but it had been so long since he’d touched her like this. Something light and affectionate not tainted by the darker thing lurking under his skin.
“No. Didn’t sleep well,” she said, and he nodded, tucked back into the stack of pancakes before him.
“Your appetite.”
“Mmm?”
“You haven’t been hungry like this. Not for a while.”
“I guess so.”
She pushed her fork into the cooling stack of pancakes on her own plate, pulled it back and watched as the holes filled with syrup and closed over like blood clotting a wound. When he’d woken that morning, stumbled into the bathroom, she went to the door, thought of whispering through the wood about the sound, that thing creeping up and down their hallway, but she swallowed the words, laughed at how stupid she was acting. She was stressed. Hadn’t slept well in months. There had been no sound. No second Benjamin.
“I didn’t know you could carve,” she said.
“Something about the wood. It’s hard to explain,” he said. She looked at him, but he kept his eyes down, focused on the plate before him. Whatever had come in the night may have been a product of her mind, but she could still hear that soft scraping, could still hear the sound of a body pulling itself up and down the hallway.
“Don’t come out okay? I want it to be a surprise.”
The repeated phrase bothered her. She set down her fork.
“I’ve never seen you carve,” she said, and he glanced up at her then. Blue eyes cold and burning, and she immediately regretted intruding on this moment. He wanted to impress her. To show her that he wasn’t beaten yet, and here she was doing her best to fuck it all up.
“Of course. I’ll be here. Getting drunk. Maybe wandering around naked. You’ll be missing a good opportunity.”
He grinned at her, his eyes flashing, but then snatched up his hat, kissed her, and whispered in her ear, his breath sweet and cloying.
“There’s so much we can’t see. Everything that’s underneath. Hiding. But it wants us to see, to pull it out from where it’s sleeping and make it beautiful again.”
He was out the door before she could open her mouth.
She stood in the hallway flicking the overhead light on and off. Ten hours. Benjamin had been outside for ten hours. There was the dim thought nibbling at the back of her mind that she should be worried, that he could have collapsed again, but right now, there was only this. In that moment between light and dark, vague, amorphous shap
es coalescing, rising and falling like breath. If she flipped the switch as quickly as possible, she could almost make out hair.
How long had she been standing in the hallway? Benjamin’s words were still in her ear, swelling and bloating with impossible weight.
“Everything that’s underneath,” she repeated.
She’d come looking for some evidence, some sign to prove she wasn’t crazy. A groove carved into the floor, a hair, anything that justified the reality of the sound she’d heard in the night. Pulling herself onto her belly, she crawled along the floor, her cheek pressed against the wooden boards, fingers probing.
After an hour of doing little more than bruising her ribs from crawling along the floor, she gave up. It was when she turned out the light, in that brief flash, that she saw something. Each time she thought she saw more of the shape, but then she doubted herself. As soon as the light was on, she absolutely believed that it was nothing more than her eyes playing tricks, and so she flipped the switch off again, squinted into the growing dark.
The back door opened and closed, but she did not turn away, did not look back over her shoulder to see her husband creeping through the kitchen, his fingernails digging into the floor. Surely, he would be creeping. All of the things slumbering inside of him coming awake, waiting to be seen, waiting to be found in the dark.
“Come and see, Carin,” he said, and she flicked the light once more. On. Off. The shape did not move, but she could make out what looked like teeth. She thought she would laugh, or cry, or scream, but every sound stayed locked in her throat.
“Come and see the door. Come and see what I’ve found,” he said.
“I can’t. Please,” she said. If she followed him now, the world would come undone. All of the shadows would come to life and grow teeth. Bite and tear until there was nothing left.
“It’s so beautiful, love. Come and see.”
“Please, Benjamin,” she said, but somehow, her legs carried her forward. Her fear, hard and razor sharp, unfolded inside of her.