Evil Jester Digest, Volume 2

by Holly Newstein

  Billy broke off and pointed out the windshield.

  “There! See that dirt road up there, off to the left? That’s perfect!” He turned around in his seat and looked out the back window. “I don’t see any sign of them. Now’s our chance!”

  Daniel checked the rearview one more time and saw only darkness. He knew that didn’t mean the shadowmen weren’t still back there, though. They weren’t on their bumper anymore, but with the way their dark vehicle blended with the night, there was no telling how far behind they’d fallen. Maybe not far enough. Still, this might be the only chance he and Billy got.

  “Hold on,” Daniel said. He took his foot off the gas, let the Cherokee decelerate for a few seconds, and then hit the brake. He had to resist the urge to jam the pedal to the floor. At the speed they were going, they’d end up in the ditch, maybe even flip over. As it was, the Cherokee’s back end shimmied, and Daniel had to fight to maintain control of the vehicle. The dirt road—which Daniel knew would in truth be a mud road after the rain they’d had earlier—came up faster than he expected. He yanked the steering wheel to the left, and the Cherokee hydroplaned as Daniel aimed for the entrance. The vehicle slid onto the road sideways, and as Daniel had feared, it was nothing but mud. When the Cherokee hit the road it kept right on sliding, smashing through a wire fence and into an empty field whose crop—wheat or perhaps soybeans—had been harvested some time ago. But even as they slid into the field, Daniel had the presence of mind to flip off the Cherokee’s headlights and take his foot off the brake, and they came to a stop in darkness.

  Daniel turned off the engine, just in case the sound might attract the shadowmen’s attention. Besides, he doubted they’d be able to drive out of this muck anytime soon. They’d probably have to be towed out. Of course, if their ruse didn’t work and the shadowmen found them, getting his Cherokee out of the field would be the least of his worries.

  Daniel and Billy sat, listening to the ticking of the Cherokee’s overheated engine. A faint odor of burning plastic drifted in through the vents, but Daniel barely registered it. He was too busy looking out the windows, searching the night for sign of the shadowmen. He saw nothing, but as he started to feel optimism stirring, he reminded himself that they wouldn’t see anything—not until the shadowmen were almost on top of them, and by then it would be too late.

  While Daniel feared the shadowmen, for their sheer otherworldliness if nothing else, sitting there in the dark, watching and waiting, he realized he didn’t fear dying. He’d been seeing a therapist ever since Angie had told him she wanted a divorce, and he’d just had his latest appointment two days ago. After telling the psychologist how he felt like a failure as a husband and a father—absolutely without worth to anyone, least of all himself—she’d tried to turn the conversation in a more “productive” direction by having him focus on the future.

  What are you looking forward to? she’d asked.

  After a moment’s thought, he’d answered. Nothing.

  But that hadn’t been his first answer. The one that had popped into his head the moment she’d asked the question, the one he’d left unvoiced, consisted of two simple words. My death.

  Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if the shadowmen found him. Maybe it had been a mistake to run in the first place. A missed opportunity.

  Billy spoke then, interrupting Daniel’s grim thoughts.

  “Do you remember what you did when those boys started to beat me up in the locker room?”

  For a moment, Daniel had no idea what Billy was talking about, but then it came back to him. He answered without taking his gaze from the windows and the darkness that lay beyond the glass. “I tried to help you.”

  “You took two steps toward me. Exactly two. Yes, I counted, and yes, I’ve never forgotten. I also have never forgotten what you said. ‘Hey, guys, enough’s enough. Leave him alone.’ Do you recall what happened after that?” Billy’s tone had taken on an insistent, almost demanding edge, which Daniel chose to ignore.

  “One of the boys—Chris Milligan, I think—told me that if I didn’t stay out of it I’d get my ass kicked, too.” Even now, sitting in the dark, waiting for creatures out of nightmare to come for him, Daniel felt shame at the memory. Shame because he hadn’t stood up to Chris and the others. Because he’d backed away and gotten dressed to the sound of the crowd laughing as Chris and his cohorts returned to their fun. They were still at it when he left the locker room and headed off for class, Billy’s sobs lingering in his ears.

  “None of them—Chris Milligan, Bob Lewis, or Douglas Sanderson—was ever punished.” Billy’s voice was thick with venom now, so much so that the sound of it made Daniel turn away from the window and look the man in the face. A face that became increasing twisted with hate as he went on. “That fat-ass Briggs never checked to see what went on in the locker room, but I always figured he knew. How could he not? You know gym teachers. They figure shit like that will toughen you up, and if it doesn’t, you’re a pussy and you deserve whatever you get. I survived, but I lost a couple teeth, and I still walk with a limp on my right side.”

  Daniel remembered when he first saw Billy tonight, illuminated by the Cherokee’s headlights, his right leg looking as if it might buckle any second.

  Billy paused then and his mouth eased into a sly smile, though hatred continued to burn in his eyes. “Everything I’ve told you about the shadow creatures is true. But I never said they were chasing me. I said I’ve been dealing with them for a while. I chose my words very carefully, Daniel. They were drawn to me because they wanted to feed on me, but they didn’t want to kill me. They wanted to keep me alive so that I could continue to produce negative emotions for them, like a cow giving milk.”

  “Nothing personal, but that’s an image I could’ve done without.”

  “Go ahead and laugh if you want, but my friends are plenty satisfied with what I give them. So much so that from time to time they do little favors for me.”

  Daniel kept his gaze fastened on Billy, but out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw something dark move outside the Cherokee. No, somethings. Plural.

  “I told you they’re not very intelligent, at least not in a way you and I recognize, but I’ve learned to communicate with them over the last few months. Enough to get my ideas across, anyway. We visited Briggs first. He was responsible for making sure students behaved in gym. A responsibility he obviously didn’t give a fuck about. The sonofabitch was retired and stuck in a nursing home, but he was still fat as ever. After that, we visited the others—first Chris Milligan, then Bob, then Douglas.” His smile became a grin. “Now it’s your turn. I saved you for last because what you did was worse than any of the others. As much as I hated them, I understood that they were just acting according to their natures. Not that I forgave them for it—or spared them. But you understood that what they did was wrong, and you even tried to stop it. Except you pussed out in the end. For a moment, I believed there was someone on this sorry shit-pile of a planet who gave a damn about me. But then you turned your back and walked away. That’s the worst thing anyone’s ever done to me. Worse than all the punches, kicks, and name-calling I endured as a kid…worse than all the bosses who yelled at me and told me I was nothing when I became an adult, all the women who wouldn’t even waste the saliva to spit on me. And you know what was worst of all?”

  There was definitely movement outside the Cherokee now, and it was close.

  “Because I gave you hope,” Daniel said. “And then I took it away.”

  “Exactly.” Billy glanced out the window, and the venom in his voice gave way to eager anticipation. “It’s been a long time, Daniel, but your bill has finally come due.” Billy was so excited that he was quivering, nearly bouncing on the passenger seat.

  “How many times did you practice that little speech? Nevermind. I’ve got a serious question. Why go to all the trouble of pretending to run away from the shadowmen? They could’ve just taken me back in the parking lot. No, wait. I get it. You want
ed me to see what it was like to have hope taken away.”

  “Smart man.” Billy’s grin stretched wider then, assuming a maniacal aspect that Daniel found quite appropriate given the circumstances. “Besides,” he added, “it was more fun this way.”

  “I’m sure. So…you hook up with supernatural creatures that are willing to do favors for you as long as you keep supplying them with the good dark stuff, and the best you can come up with is to use them to kill some people who pissed you off in high school?”

  The hatred in Billy’s eyes dimmed as doubt moved across his face, but a second later a sneer contorted his features, and the fire in his gaze burned strong as ever. “You’re just like all the others who made my life miserable over the years, for no other reason than to punish me for the crime of existing.”

  Movement caught Daniel’s attention, and he turned toward the driver’s side window to see an ebon hand press against the glass. It was followed by a second hand, and then a dark eyeless face appeared between them and leaned forward. A round orifice gaped open in the middle of the face and affixed itself to the window, the ring of black muscle pulsing rhythmically as if the creature were trying to suck Daniel’s psychic energy through the glass. With a sick twist of nausea, Daniel remembered how Billy had described the shadowmen as bottom feeders, and he had to admit the comparison was grotesquely apt.

  The remaining shadowmen joined their companion—two on the driver’s side window, two on the passenger’s—until all four obscene mouths were sealed against glass. Sucking, sucking . . .

  Daniel should’ve been terrified, and on some level he was. But he also felt a strange sense of peace settle over him.

  “I’m not going to pretend I know what it was like for you to grow up as the world’s emotional tampon,” Daniel said, “But the past doesn’t excuse the present. There are lots of things we can’t control in life—too damned many—but there’s one thing we can control, and that’s the choices we make. You’ve made your choice, Billy. Now it’s time for me to make mine.”

  Daniel undid his seatbelt, then thumbed a switch on the driver’s side door, causing the locks to disengage with muffled chunks.

  Billy frowned in confusion. “You’re going to give yourself to them?” He sounded disappointed, as if he felt cheated that Daniel wasn’t going to struggle and beg for his life.

  “No. I’m going to leave—or at least try to. I have to go to work tomorrow, and I’ve got to mail a check to my ex-wife. You can live in yesterday if you want, but I’ve been there, and I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  Daniel started to push the driver’s door open, and the two shadowmen standing at the window drew back—almost eagerly, he thought—to give him room. He shoved the door the rest of the way open and stepped out into the cold night. His plan was simple: to start running as fast as he could manage across the muddy field and get as far as he could before whatever happened, happened. It might not have been much of a plan, but that was okay. It was his, and for the first time in months, he felt alive again.

  He inhaled deeply and prepared to run as four patches of darkness closed in.

  Fact: Zombies are a big deal in horror fiction.

  Some folks are ready for this trend to end; others want it to last forever. I’m in the middle. So long as zombies don’t push everything else out of the way, the more the merrier, I say.

  As a result of readers’ ravenous appetites for all things undead, an unusual trend has emerged: the melding of zombie fiction and classic literature, including Jane Austen and Lewis Carroll and H.G. Wells, among other dignified icons of noble repute.

  I would normally scoff at such things. Silly, I might say. Preposterous, perhaps. But I can be a bit of a snob sometimes.

  Another fact: Anything done well is worth doing; and anything done great is…well, great!

  And that’s where Eric J. Guignard (a new voice in horror who has quickly earned the “one to watch” brand) comes in.

  For your consideration, I present his zombified riff on “Beauty and the Beast.”

  Whether you love or are tired of the zombie subgenre, I think you’ll dig this one deep.

  A Curse and a Kiss

  Eric J. Guignard

  I was invisible once.

  Long ago—though not so long that memories begin to fade like dying rose petals—I was a mere girl, a house servant, under Prince Ruskin d’Auvergnon. Less even than a servant, I was his property, his chattel, traded in payment while in infancy to settle an obscure debt my parents languished under. I do not begrudge them. I know what it feels like to be battered by despondency and to wish so desperately to be free of something that you would trade even your own flesh and blood for relief. Now, in my older years, I am trapped in this cursed castle, while the world dies around me. O! The wishes that tremble on my lips!

  I wish to be safe. I wish to be somewhere else. I wish I was invisible again and could escape into the forest, walking past the creatures unseen. I wish to still be that mere girl from so long ago, living a simple life and unaware of the horrors the world could unleash. I wish Ruskin had let the old woman into his castle on that fateful rainy night...

  Prince Ruskin d’Auvergnon was a monster—a beast—even before the curse transformed him in physical appearance to match the countenance of his character. Born to a family of privilege, the Prince was gifted with the palace and its staff on his fifteenth birthday. To say he was spoiled and cruel would be an understatement; it would be as if to say a rotting corpse was gray and foul. Of course, that would apply to the Prince as well—a sentiment that even now brings mixed emotions of repulsion and of satisfaction.

  The Prince was in a particularly loathsome mood on the night my tale begins. A wild tempest blew outside, and the moans of the trees and beasts of the wood penetrated the stone walls we languished behind. He imbibed many goblets of wine and ale and, as the gale thundered against the castle, he thundered against us, his staff.

  “Wretched Gods!” Ruskin shrieked at Pieter, a young valet. “My soup is boiling. Are you trying to scald me?”

  He knocked the bowl off his table with a dismissive strike, and it shattered at Pieter’s feet. Ruskin continued, “Have the kitchen make it again!”

  Pieter nodded and fled to carry the Prince’s displeasure.

  I stood behind Ruskin with head bowed, waiting for his order. “And you, girl,” he said. “You infect me with dejection. Your face droops like a withered sow. Are you that unhappy to stand in my presence?”

  “No, my Prince,” I replied.

  “Good.” His hand touched my thigh and slid inward.

  I wanted to scream, to flee, but I knew my place. I suffered his grope and understood he would visit my small chamber that night while I lay dreaming of other lives.

  Josef, a butler, approached from the main hall, excited and with hands upraised.

  “There’s a visitor at the door! It is an old woman, and she asks for shelter tonight from the storm.”

  “Send her away. I’m sure there is a pig sty nearby with vacancy.”

  Josef nodded and turned back the way he had come. The Prince ran one finger across the hem of my sash.

  “The things I will do…” he whispered.

  I shuddered. Josef returned, appearing uncertain.

  “My Prince, the old woman says she has something to barter for your kindness.”

  Ruskin smirked. “What baubles do beggars have? A knit scarf or perhaps blessed pebbles?”

  He stood, and we followed Josef to the main entrance. There were other servants in the grand hall, and they all bowed their heads as Ruskin passed. The front gate was open, and under the storm stood a woman who appeared as old as the moon above. She hunched over, and one eye drooped so that it nearly touched the upturned corner of her drawn mouth. The other eye was large and wild, and it tracked Ruskin’s steps to her.

  “Please,” she said. “I ask only for a bit of shelter tonight from the storm.”

  “I’m told you have something to bart
er,” he coldly replied.

  She paused and looked at us who stood helplessly behind the Prince. The old woman wore a cape, brown and tattered from the elements, and from underneath she pulled a single red rose. The flower glistened from drops of rain that speckled each pedal, and its stem curved beneath the corolla, rich green with pointed thorns, like the talons of a great bird.

  “I have no money, but I give to you this rose, a token of the beauty found in life.”

  The Price laughed. “A rose? My gardens are filled with them. I own all the rose gardens in the land.” He paused, then contemplated her. “Did you steal this rose from my garden?”

  She startled at his accusation. “No, my Lord. I have carried this rose with me from far away.”

  “If you carried that rose from far away, it would be withered by now.”

  “It is unlike other roses. It’s magical, and I offer it to you.”

  “The only thing that is magical is the extent of your arrogance. You thieve from me and try to peddle it back for my good graces!”

  “My Lord, I swear—”

  Ruskin slapped her across the face, and the old woman fell stunned to the ground.

  “Please,” she softly said.

  “I should have my men call the hounds upon you.”

  She tried to stand, but trembled so that she fell to her hands and knees.