Shock Totem 1: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted

by Shock Totem

  He had purged his house of almost everything they could use. Some he gave to the Salvation Army, some he put in trash bags, some he simply left on the curb. It all disappeared eventually. But they were omnipresent and perhaps omniscient, and Jake knew he survived only on suffrage.

  Three days after Abner’s visit, the doorbell rang again. Jake hadn’t slept well the night before. The nearby highway was under construction and the interlaced sounds of a pile driver and an electrical generator had been audible, suggesting yet another strand of binary data. Audible DNA.

  Someone was knocking on the door. Jake roused himself; he felt increasingly disengaged from the world around him. He stood awkwardly, his knees aching, and stumbled forward, remembering only at the last minute to check his route as he advanced. There was someone standing outside, a large man with thick, black, unruly hair.

  Jake opened the door. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m looking for 44 Parity Lane. Is this the place?”

  Jake had to stop and think. “Yes, it is.”

  “You need to put a number out somewhere so’s people can find you. Are you Mr. Sanford?”

  Jake admitted to that as well.

  “I got a call that you need a tree taken down.”

  “Yes, it’s out there.” He gestured in the right direction. “My neighbor, Mr. Whitfield, is handling all the details.”

  “Yeah...well, he’s not home and anyway I need to get you to sign this before we get started since it’s your property and everything.” He thrust out a clipboard; a pen dangled at the end of a short metal chain.

  Jake glanced down at the paper. There were only two pages, but it seemed like much more. The print was small, some paragraphs numbered, others bulleted. Blank lines intersected the code—no, the words—in various places. He tried to read it, but it didn’t make sense. The coding was too subtle; it had to be a trap.

  “Where do I have to sign?” His mouth was dry and his voice barely rose above a whisper.

  “At the bottom of each page. Hey, mister, are you all right?”

  Jake sweated profusely. “It’s awfully hot, isn’t it? I’m probably a little dehydrated. Let me sign this for you so you can go.” But he didn’t reach for the clipboard. In fact, he retreated a step.

  “Maybe you should have a drink first. Gatorade or something. It’s got some kind of chemicals in it that your body needs.” Jake thought about chemistry, molecules and atoms, all parts of the programming of life, organic and otherwise, and felt sudden terror.

  He turned, intent upon bolting back to the sitting chair even if that meant leaving the door open, but he tumbled over his own feet, lost his balance, saw the carpet runner on the stairway rushing toward his eyes, and then felt nothing at all.

  • • •

  Jake was lying on his back. He understood that before anything else, before he even remembered how to open his eyes. And there was movement, forward a lot and side to side a little. Sounds, too, but he couldn’t process these yet. He opened his eyes cautiously, saw a pale blankness passing overhead. It was refreshingly simple, but then a light fixture went past, and then another, both identical, suggesting a pattern. Jake turned his head away, saw he was lying on a gurney and that he was being pushed along a corridor. He tried to raise a hand and found he couldn’t. In fact, he couldn’t move any of his limbs, although he thought he could still feel them.

  There was a loud thump and the light became brighter, more intense, more artificial. Faces passed through his field of vision, and voices projected meaningless strings of syllables. Jake closed his eyes and tried not to listen, but then someone was calling his name, over and over, and that was a pattern, too, and he wondered if responding might interrupt the code, create a programming flaw.

  “Where am I?” he asked unnecessarily, but it seemed the right thing to say.

  “University Hospital. I’m Dr. Clark. You’ve had an accident, Mr. Sanford. It’s not life-threatening, but we need to get you into surgery as soon as possible to prevent any permanent damage. You’ve struck your head and there are bone fragments that we need to remove. We’re already doing the preliminary blood workup and you’ll be in the OR in about thirty minutes.”

  Dr. Clark smiled, perhaps trying to be comforting. “We don’t want you to lose consciousness until we’re ready with the anesthesia.” White-coated men and women were suddenly all around him and Jake saw them doing something to his left arm. His face must have changed because Dr. Clark was quick to reassure him. “Don’t worry about that. We’re just attaching some monitoring equipment and a saline drip. You’re perfectly safe. You can trust these machines to look after you better than any nurse.” He chuckled lightly. “It’s almost as if they have minds of their own.”

  Dr. Clark disappeared from his field of view. At first Jake felt fine, but then there was pain, intense pain, and he tried to cry out but something was wrong with his throat. He couldn’t make a sound and it took all his concentration just to flutter his eyelids. Help me! The words were in his mind, but he couldn’t set them free.

  And then a nurse was hovering over him and her eyes went wide and she turned and shouted for someone to come. “Get the crash cart! Something’s wrong with the monitors. He’s going into cardiac arrest!”

  They were the last words Jake ever heard.

  Don D’Ammassa is the author of seven novels, three reference books, and well over 100 short stories. He reviewed for SF Chronicle for almost thirty years and now maintains a review website at www.dondammassa.com. He lives in Rhode Island.

  MULLIGAN STEW

  by Brian Rosenberger

  He felt like a mouse, trapped

  By his greed for cheese.

  Or in this case, cheesecake,

  A dessert named Melissa.

  He’d been dying to play Mickey to her Minnie.

  When she offered the dinner invite,

  His appetite could not be denied.

  Nerves not withstanding, unfamiliar situations

  Provoked an idiosyncratic itch.

  The Mulligans had a reputation;

  Rumors swarmed like summertime gnats,

  Adding to existing insecurities.

  Ruthless in business and personal matters,

  It had been said, stuck in their ways,

  Outsiders unwelcome and unwanted.

  Not rich but certainly well-fed, Melissa’s beauty

  Only exceeded by her relatives’ waistlines,

  A curse she’d been spared, the runt of the bunch—

  But what a body on that runt.

  Rumor said she was a virgin, a rumor he was

  Determined to refute, one way or another.

  The invitation accepted, he had his own reputation

  To uphold, family dynasty be damned.

  It was a potluck dinner, and damn his luck

  If he didn’t forget the planned

  Green bean casserole.

  Now the appetizer just an afterthought.

  A pot, roughly the size of a Japanese import,

  Simmered in the kitchen, assaulting the olfactory.

  The broth, ambrosia a misnomer,

  Men having died for lesser glories

  than its flavor.

  The Mulligans—Melissa, too—

  All salivating smiles,

  Forgave his oversight.

  Their kindness bordering on the desperate.

  He came empty handed.

  Two sharp cuts made sure he left

  The same.

  Two rumors laid to rest:

  Melissa, an untouched beauty,

  And now for him,

  Forever untouchable.

  The second, there are cannibals

  Living on Seventh Street.

  Brian Rosenberger lives in a cellar in Marietta, GA and writes by the light of captured fireflies. He is a member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Werewolves and a staunch supporter for equal rights for the Undead. Upcoming publishing credits include the anthologies Vile Thin
gs, Dead Bait, Tooth Decay, The Book of Tentacles, and Side Show 2.

  STRANGE GOODS

  & OTHER ODDITIES

  Monsters, Giants and Little Men From Mars: An Unnatural History of the Americas, by Daniel Cohen; Doubleday Books, 1975; 233 pgs.

  Somewhere around 1979, when I was in 4th grade, I decided I liked to read. I liked Wednesdays, as that was library day. My Podunk elementary school had a library the size of a celebrity’s closet, and there were only a handful of books that piqued my morbid interest. One day I found a gem titled Monsters, Giants and Little Men From Mars: An Unnatural History of the Americas. I checked it out and read it that night. I checked it out every week, for a while.

  This book was magical to me. It fueled my young imagination and seeped into my first stories and drawings. It was full of strange folklore and was inhabited by critters like the Hodag, Iceworms, Giddyfish, the Whirling Whimpus, and the Su. It touched on myths like Bigfoot, the Mothman, and UFO lore. There were giant squid and the Loch Ness Monster. The one that stuck with me the longest was the Ax-wielding Bunnyman. All of them nested in my brain, but, at some point, went into hibernation...

  A few years ago, I was at a book sale and saw a copy of the book, and everything about it burst back to full-colored life. I got giddy as I handed the lady my $2. I took it home and read it in an hour. The giants, the sea serpents, the giant birds, Yetis, the Men in Black...they all shook my hand and welcomed me back. This was like an encyclopedia of the bizarre to me. And I treated it as such.

  The book was written by Daniel Cohen, the man who also gave us Southern Fried Rat and Other Tales (yeah, I had that one practically on permanent checkout as well), and is sort of a youngster’s warm up to Charles Fort’s Book of the Damned. But I’m nearly 40, and still yank this off the shelf and read it a few times a year. If you can find it...it’s a damn nifty thing.

  –John Boden

  The Bell Witch Legend, by Zac Adams (director, writer); 2008; 42 min.

  The Bell Witch Legend is a documentary that tells the story of the strange events surrounding the Bell family, who lived in Tennessee’s Red River Valley in the 1800s. Beginning in 1817 and ending sometime around 1821, a malicious presence tormented the family. Unearthly animals were spotted on the farm, disembodied voices taunted the family, pigtails were tied to bedposts, and ultimately the patriarch of the family was poisoned by the spirit.

  The legend of the haunting has survived because the legend was published in book form in 1894. Authenticated History of the Bell Witch, by M.V. Ingraham, catalogued the oral history of the haunting and is referenced by all of the historians appearing in the documentary. And it tells the story in painstaking detail.

  The tale begins with the marriage of John and Lucy Bell in 1782. It meanders along as they have babies, buy land, sell slaves, fight with relatives, get excommunicated from the community church, and then, ultimately, die. And somewhere in the middle of the begettin’ and the fussin’ and the feudin’, some weird shit happened.

  The first 20 minutes of the documentary are interesting, detailing the migration of the Bell family from North Carolina to Tennessee and other events that preceded the haunting. The story is told through interviews and voiceovers by historians and locals, with actors in period dress depicting the beleaguered Bells. After the entity supposedly prevents the marriage of Bell daughter Betsy to an unworthy suitor, the hauntings ceased.

  The second half of the Bell Witch Legend documents the strange goings-on in and around the town of Adams, Tennessee, where the Bell farm is located. A descendent of the family is interviewed along with more historians and local residents. Here, the documentary becomes disjointed. At one moment a local is telling stories of odd things that happened in a house on/in/near Bell land, and the next moment the curator of the Bell Witch museum is telling a story about a guy in a Camaro desperate to return a cursed rock to the haunted Bell cave. Then historian Bo Adams stands in front of the Bell family cemetery and rambles for about 10 minutes about…well, I’m not sure, but he has a lot of books and he mentions Dinah Shore.

  The problem with a 42-minute documentary about the Bell Witch legend is there really is not enough information to warrant a documentary at all. It’s an interesting piece of American folklore, right up there with the New Jersey Devil and Sasquatch, but the story is almost two hundred years old; there’s nothing that can be said about the legend of the Bell Witch that hasn’t been said already.

  –Cholena Maegda Yoop

  Seas of Blood, by By Blood Alone; Jericho Hill Records; 2007; 8 tracks; 50 min.

  A few years back, I was fortunate enough to review By Blood Alone’s Eternally EP. Here is an excerpt of that review: “Like the legendary Bauhaus (arguably the most famous gothic rock band ever) stylistically mixed it up in the 80s, By Blood Alone have combined many different elements on Eternally, from rock, metal, doom, gothic romanticism, and even a little pop, and created a tapestry that is undeniably gothic in style but also much more, if you can listen beyond the free-form, minimalist nature of the songs.”

  And so comes Seas Of Blood, By Blood Alone’s first full-length album.

  Not a lot has changed since Eternally, in terms of style. I’ve read some call this a progressive gothic album, but I disagree. The band still mixes it up pretty well, but they keep that musical sea a bit calmer than the term progressive suggests. The album does, however, boast some very interesting, style-shifting pieces that also have the metal and symphonic elements kicked up a few notches. This is immediately evident on the opening track, “Serpentarius,” which starts like a lost 80s-metal classic before shifting into a keyboard-heavy masterpiece. “Wants Me Dead” (re-recorded from their 2004 demo) continues to carry the proverbial metal torch, its fire fed by John Graveside’s galloping “fist in the air” breaks. However, the song’s heaviness seems to come not from the guitar but from the subtle yet chilling keyboard work of Jenny Williamson. “Lovely Lies” and “Nidhogg” embrace a similar style, slowly exuding a sense of dread and foreboding.

  With four of the album’s eight tracks walking a relatively similar path, it could have been very easy for the band to get bogged down in a well-traveled rut. Fortunately, By Blood Alone understand balance. The creepy “Undead Friend” plays like a burial waltz for the recently departed—if it were the 1800s. And the twisted and quirky “Little Lady Lillit”—with Cruella doing her sadistic best at sounding cute and downright devious—reminds me of Emilie Autumn’s post-Enchant foray into her self-dubbed Victoriandustrial style. A new recording of “Deny Yourself”—which was on the Eternally EP—is the album’s heaviest track, relying more on the crunch of guitar and double-bass than the atmospheric veil of keyboards. The epic—and arguably best—of the album is “Seas Of Blood,” a graceful and expansive track that evokes a sort of sad beauty. The music rises and falls with the slow intensity of an ocean swell, Cruella’s voice lightly but passionately rocking on its surface.

  By Blood Alone isn’t a flawless band. Part of me wishes the guitars had a fatter tone, and others have mentioned that Cruella’s vocals aren’t as strong as some others. While those might be valid complaints for most bands, I think it actually adds to the character of the band’s music. There’s something real and warm in its imperfections. And there’s nothing bad about this band, especially when it comes to the songs. A band like Linkin Park might have the luxury of spending two years doing pre-production, two more years of studio recordings and even more overdubs, for what ends up a thirty-minute album with not a note out of place; but it loses the human element in the process—it lacks the passion and defined character of something real. While not flawless, By Blood Alone is a band that is nearly so, in spite—or possibly because—of its flaws. Seas Of Blood is an outstanding album.

  –K. Allen Wood

  The Burrowers, by J.T. Petty (director, writer); starring Doug Huchison, Clancy Brown; 2009; R; 96 min.

  Hmmm...a horror film set in the Dakota badlands of 1879? A rescue party beset by mysterious
monsters? This could either be an inventive tour de force or a cure for insomnia.

  Put on some coffee, because that’s the only way you’ll make it through this film.

  It starts out well enough with some nice scenes of a budding romance between an awkward suitor and a shy young settler who has just the right amount of mascara—frontier life is pretty rough, after all. Unfortunately, the young girl’s family is found murdered. This puts quite a damper on the love story, especially after she disappears. But this sets up the next best thing—a quest!

  Our love-struck hero sets off to recover his lady fair; battling marauding Sioux and another mysterious tribe known only as the Burrowers. Odd holes in the ground—sometimes filled with blood and decaying body parts, and sometimes not—lead our hero onward as he catches glimpses of these otherworldly creatures. Some depth is attempted, here, exploring social issues such as racism and ecology, but it’s rather heavy-handed and too much modernism is injected, taking us out of the story and making it seem as though we have stumbled into a sensitivity training class.

  Poor acting, stilted dialogue, and ridiculous fake mustaches aside, this is a monster movie. We want to see these Burrowers!

  And that’s the most disappointing thing of all. While the monsters look cool enough and there are some neat effects, in the final analysis, the Burrowers are a mutant human/mole hybrid that are easily dispatched with sharp sticks and conveniently-placed bear traps. Oh...and they melt in the sun like vampires. Lovely.

  The ending seemed very abrupt as well. Or perhaps I just dozed off.

  –Nick Contor

  Quarantine, by John Erick Dowdle (director, screenplay), Drew Dowdle (screenplay); starring Jennifer Carpenter, Steve Harris; 2008; R; 89 min.