Year's Best Hardcore Horror Volume 2

by Wrath James White

  Like an action sequence right out of The Evil Dead, my bloody descriptions of dismembering, eviscerating, and decapitating Deadites were so campy and so cathartic, they seemed to take on a life of their own. I was thrilled when the editor of Corner Bar Magazine felt similarly, and published ‘TGWLBC’ in the Ostarablot issue of March 2016, and even more thrilled when Bruce Campbell himself retweeted my announcement of publication! Now the story is having new life breathed into it by Year’s Best Hardcore Horror, Volume 2, and there’s just one thing left to say: Hail to the King, baby!

  THE IMPLANT

  BRYAN SMITH

  From Seven Deadly Tales of Terror

  Publisher: Bitter Ale Press

  ______

  Awareness of something wrong dawned slowly for John Stark that morning. He awoke with what felt like an ordinary stiff neck, the kind that occasionally resulted from sleeping with his head turned at a bad angle. That he awoke lying flat on his back as his eyes fluttered open didn’t matter. He’d been having some restless nights lately and might have shifted sleeping positions any number of times between bedtime and sunrise.

  He was groggy at first and felt little motivation to do anything about the discomfort he was feeling as his consciousness continued its slow, lethargic return from dreamland. When his head was a little clearer, he would raise himself up a bit, maybe double-fold the top pillow for added cushioning, and wedge it carefully against the sore area. Then a bit later he’d get up and take some Tylenol. That should take care of things.

  In those first moments, though, he was content to simply lie there as he attempted to hold on to fragments of the sex dream he’d been having prior to waking. In the dream, he’d been kidnapped by a gang of beautiful and glamorous female criminals. The babes lived a double life, working as fashion models during the day and committing elaborate heists at night. They took him to their mansion and forced him to be their sex slave. He felt like it’d been probably the most amazing dream of all time, but it was already breaking apart, the few remembered fragments growing fuzzier with each passing moment. Soon, he suspected, he wouldn’t remember it at all.

  Bummer.

  In a few more moments, his eyes opened wider as the grogginess continued to clear. He remembered the basic premise of the amazing dream, but little beyond that, just one or two fleeting images. With the return to full consciousness almost complete, he rose up some, double-folded the pillow beneath his head, and tried to get comfortable.

  It was then he began to realize he was dealing with something more than an ordinary stiff neck. Shifting position did nothing to alleviate the ache. Instead, it heightened awareness of the hard center of discomfort. He tried twisting his neck to see if this was some kind of kink that could be worked out, but all this resulted in was a sharp jab of pain he felt all the way down to his toes.

  Frowning, he lifted up his head and slipped a hand beneath his neck to probe gingerly at the knot of discomfort. His breath caught in his throat and his heart did a little stutter as his fingertips skidded over the hard, round lump protruding from the flesh just beneath the base of his skull.

  John sat bolt upright and probed at the object with a little less delicacy. This resulted in additional jabs of pain, but he couldn’t help himself. There was something sticking out of his neck that didn’t belong there, an alarming development to say the least. Any pain he was feeling from the stings that resulted from each poke of the object was overridden by other concerns, primary among them being a single basic question—what the fuck is this fucking thing sticking out of my fucking neck?

  It did not feel like a natural object.

  This impression was a good thing in the sense that, if accurate, it ruled out the sudden protrusion of a long-developing malignant tumor. The measure of relief this insight afforded him was not insignificant, but it was swept aside by the lingering mystery of what the clearly foreign object embedded in his neck actually was.

  He was able to discern the basic shape of the thing with a bit more gentle probing. It was an almost perfectly round knob and felt like it was about half the size of his thumb. He tried pulling at it slightly, but this resulted in a jolt of pain sharper than any of the previous jabs.

  He was breathing heavily and his heart was beating faster as he tossed aside the blanket covering his body, got out of bed, and hurried out to the bathroom down the hall. The bathroom door had a tendency to stick in the frame. After shouldering it open, he traipsed across the small space on legs turning more rubbery by the moment. He stopped at the sink and peered at his reflection in the mirror above it.

  John knew what he had to do.

  But he was reluctant.

  There was something in his neck that shouldn’t be there. It hadn’t been there when he’d gone to bed. That he knew for a fact. He’d gone to bed stone sober, just as he had every night for the last five years, following his fifth (and final) DUI arrest. He’d been in full possession of his senses until lights out, no question about it.

  So, again … what the fuck?

  He lingered there in frozen terror a moment longer, knowing he needed to visually appraise whatever it was. Until he did that, he couldn’t even begin to figure out what the thing in his neck really was or how to remove it. And yet a very frightened part of him didn’t want to see it, was, in fact, terrified at the very idea. Whatever this thing was, someone else had put it there.

  Or something else.

  Aliens, maybe.

  The idea was ridiculous on the surface. He’d always scoffed at tales of alien abductions and experiments, treating the stories with the same disdain he felt for kooky conspiracy theories. Only now, with this goddamn thing stuck in his neck, it was hard to discount any of the wild possibilities he’d once treated with such contempt.

  “I’ve got to do this,” he muttered, his voice too loud in the otherwise empty room. “I’ve got no choice.”

  He turned to his side, craned his neck around, and lifted up the little scraggle of dark hair at the nape of his neck. The object protruding from his neck was pretty much as he’d envisioned it from his initial tactile examination, except that the hard knob was a shade of light blue rather than the dark brown or black he’d expected.

  Leaning over the sink, he put his head as close as he could to the mirror, his eyes swiveling and straining in their sockets as he tried hard to get the best possible view of the thing. He still couldn’t tell whether it was made of metal or some other hard material. With the fingers of his other hand, he pressed down as hard as he could on a patch of flesh adjacent to the protrusion, hoping for a glimpse of the part of the object that was actually inside his flesh. This resulted in a series of minor stings that were bearable and nothing compared to the sharper jabs that came when he applied direct pressure to the object.

  By doing this, he was able to catch a brief glimpse of something silver attached to the bottom of the blue knob. He was only able to observe it for a few seconds before the stinging sensations became more than he could tolerate. Though minor at first, they became steadily more intense the longer he pressed down on the flesh adjacent to the object.

  He took his hand away from his neck and let out a breath.

  A rod or bolt of some sort, apparently made of metal, had been inserted in his neck while he slept. How this had been accomplished without waking him or causing excruciating pain, he did not know. He stared at his reflection and wondered what to do.

  Get it out. Now.

  Well, that was easier said than done, wasn’t it?

  The object was deeply and firmly embedded in his flesh. Removing it would require a significant amount of force. Judging by the jabs of pain triggered by simple prods of the exterior knob, any attempt at removal would likely result in waves of mind-bending agony. There was also the issue of the placement of the object to consider. It was lodged dangerously close to critical areas such as his brain stem and spine. By trying to forcibly extract it, he might inadvertently cause some kind of debilitating and irreversible dam
age.

  John nodded, still staring at his reflection.

  What he needed was the help of medical professionals.

  On the other hand, what if his wildest imaginings were true and the object in his neck was some weird piece of alien technology? Once this was determined to be the case, he might be taken into custody by the military and shipped off to fucking Area 51 or some other secret place from which he might never return. Where once he might have dismissed such a notion as paranoid and absurd, it now seemed all too plausible.

  John Stark really didn’t want to spend the rest of his life locked away in a secret underground laboratory. He also didn’t much relish the prospect of doing nothing and leaving himself at the mercy of whoever had implanted the object, regardless of whether those responsible were actual creatures from somewhere beyond earth or some sinister and equally mysterious earthbound organization.

  Several more minutes of thinking it over resulted in no revelatory insights, but he did come to a conclusion about what he needed to do next. He shuffled back to his bedroom, grabbed his phone from the nightstand, and called Mike Carter.

  Mike was his oldest and most trusted friend. They’d known each other since elementary school. They’d been through thick and thin together. John had been best man at both of Mike’s weddings. Mike had bailed him out of jail a couple times back when he was still drinking and getting into trouble. His old friend might not have a solution for him, but he might be able to steer him in the right direction as far as what course of action to take.

  That initial conversation was brief. John didn’t want to tell the full story over the phone because it would make him sound crazy. Mike would think he’d suddenly started drinking again, which would be a logical enough deduction to make minus the visual evidence. Instead, John kept it simple, effectively imparting a sense of urgency and direness in just a few terse sentences.

  Mike said he’d be right over.

  He got to John’s house inside of fifteen minutes.

  At first he expressed the expected skepticism when John told him what had happened and his suspicions about it. The skepticism faded, however, when John showed his friend the object embedded in his neck and invited him to press down on the flesh adjacent to it in order to glimpse the silver bolt.

  They were in John’s living room at that point. The morning light spilling in from the sliding glass doors overlooking the patio and large, leaf-scattered back yard was muted, the day overcast and drizzly. Only a single lamp was on in the living room. The semi-gloom imbued the moment with a disquieting sense of the funereal.

  Mike drew a hand across his mouth and scratched at his jaw. “Maybe you’re not paranoid, after all.”

  John let out a shuddery breath and nodded in an emphatic way. “Damn right, I’m not. That thing is there. It’s weird, but it’s real. And I want it the fuck out of me. What the hell do I do?”

  Mike took his hand away from his mouth. “There’s only thing you can do.”

  John’s brow furrowed in confusion. “And what would that be?”

  Mike smiled.

  For the first time, John experienced a mild tingle of trepidation where Mike was concerned. There was something in that tight little smile that was not at all friendly. But surely that was just more paranoia, right?

  Mike reached inside his jacket and took out an automatic pistol. “What you need to do, John, is put this gun in your mouth and wedge the sight up against your soft palette. Once it is firmly in place, squeeze the trigger.”

  John laughed, albeit nervously.

  This had to be a joke.

  Only it didn’t seem like a joke. And that gun was very real. “This isn’t funny.”

  Mike nodded. “Unfortunately for you, John, I’m not attempting to elicit a humorous reaction.”

  John flinched but did not retreat as Mike approached him and pressed the gun into his right hand, forcing him to curl his fingers around the grip of the pistol. Once the gun was securely within John’s grip, Mike moved back several steps, glanced briefly at the smart watch strapped around his hairy wrist, and shifted his gaze back to John.

  His tone was stern and devoid of even the slightest trace of mirth as he said, “Put the gun in your mouth, John.”

  John glanced at the gun. He tried willing his fingers to uncurl and allow the ugly weapon to fall to the floor. Instead the gun came to his mouth. Then it went inside his mouth and in another moment the sight was wedged painfully against his soft palette. He trembled and whimpered and longed to yank the gun away, but he just stood there, powerless, no longer in control of his own actions.

  Mike’s expression remained mostly emotionless, but there was a small hint of smug satisfaction at the corners of his mouth. “You’re probably wondering how this is happening. And you’re probably wondering why your best friend since childhood is compelling you to do this.”

  John could not nod. He just whimpered some more. His bladder loosened and a flood of piss stained the crotch of his briefs.

  Mike’s nose crinkled slightly in distaste. “The answer is simple. I’m not your best friend. In fact, before I walked through your front door a few minutes ago, you’d never met me before. Everything you know about our history together is a fiction. It is an elaborate tale woven into the code of the implant in your neck, which was not put there by little green men. Since you’re about to die and take the secret to your grave, there’s no harm in telling you that it’s an experimental mind control device developed by rogue elements of your own government, for whom I work, albeit in a necessarily secret capacity.” Now he smiled again, more broadly than before. “Your tax dollars at work.”

  John couldn’t believe any of this. It was crazy. He’d shared so much of his life with this guy, countless things that were an integral part of the fabric of his existence. No way could those things all be products of computer code.

  Mike sighed. “You don’t believe me.”

  John managed to mutter the word “no”, though it was muffled by the barrel of the gun.

  “Device,” Mike said, his tone turning more precise as he pitched his voice louder. “Cycle red, directive one, wipe.”

  The moment the word “wipe” was spoken, John knew he was staring at a stranger. Everything the man had said was true. The truth about his life came back in an instant. He was a lonely, broken-down alcoholic. He had no friends. None that were still alive, anyway.

  Tears spilled down his face.

  His heart thudded painfully in his chest.

  Mike cleared his throat, straightened his tie, and said, “I’ll take the device with me when I leave. The angle of the shot about to split your head wide open should erase any evidence of its insertion. The gun is registered in your name. Yes, I know you’ve never owned a gun before. We’ve arranged everything, all the paperwork and the suicide note you were compelled to write before device insertion last night.”

  “Please,” John managed, the tears spilling faster and hotter down his face. “Don’t.”

  Mike ignored this plea and said, “Your country thanks you for your service and your contribution to our ongoing mind control studies.”

  John screamed. He glared at his hand, tried again to regain control over his body and pull out the gun.

  To no avail.

  “Device,” Mike said, again speaking in that loud, clear tone. “End program.”

  John’s forefinger began to squeeze the trigger.

  He managed one last muffled scream.

  The last thing he saw before the bullet blew out the back of his head were the unforgiving, soulless eyes of the stranger, which were faultlessly observant and appraising to the end.

  FATHER OF DREAD

  MATTHEW CHABIN

  From Cthulhu Lies Dreaming

  Editor: Salome Jones

  Publisher: Ghostwoods Books

  ______

  No one knew what possessed them to do it. An unusually powerful spirit of iconoclasm, perhaps. Maybe they’d hoped to purge the land of id
ols yet still mitigate the world’s outrage—unlike when the Taliban dynamited the Buddhas at Hajarazat. Still, it is hard to imagine how sane men, capable of all the necessary calculations, could have arrived at such a “solution.”

  The great Sphinx of Giza was a 200-ton monolith. It was extracted, intact, by the most exacting and expensive stratagems, and placed upon a massive iron float. This was then ferried for more than a hundred miles down the Nile, requiring constant dredging, and causing frequent, deadly mishaps. Finally, it was towed out beyond the breakers at Raz El-bar, only to be cut loose and left to drift away. To do all this in a time of war, with limited resources and the world falling down around them … It was one of the maddest undertakings in the history of the human species. And yet they did it. Then, when the pride of the pharaohs was a vanishing speck on the waves, when the engineers had been dismissed, when the baffled soldiers had been debriefed and sent back to the front, the planners of the feat, those inscrutable midwives, took cyanide and put pistols under their chins—both measures in tandem—and spoke no more. No one knew why they did that, either.

  The Sphinx, once liberated, moved steadily west. It was seen from the island of Crete, from the shores of Tripoli and Tunis. Past Malta and Malorca it drifted apace, and like a key guided by an unseen hand, found its way to the Strait of Gibraltar. On a night when the waves tilted blackly against the coastline, and crimson lightning lanced the cadaverous skies, this progeny of the ancient world slipped through into the cold, heaving wilds of the Atlantic.

  The Australians attempted a recovery, but were thwarted by a sudden squall. The Russians tried for it, and lost two of their ships and fifty-nine men in a terrible, freak collision. Bad weather and bad luck attended it like grim handmaidens, and in the turmoil of those years the errant beast of Giza ceased to be a cause célèbre and became instead a baleful sign of the times. Mariners told stories—how it lingered over the graves of the Titanic and the Athenian Venture, as if hunting the souls of the dead. How it dwelt among strange currents and mysterious swells and eerie, subaqueous glows. How it was notoriously hard to sneak up on. How, even at a distance, its dead gaze tended to settle upon the lookout, and how that man who first spied it was changed by his misfortune, troubled in his sleep, anxious in his work. A good bet to meet with a bad end.