by Clint Smith
GHOULJAW AND OTHER STORIES
Hippocampus Press Fiction
W. H. Pugmire, The Fungal Stain (2006)
———, Uncommon Places: A Collection of Exquisites (2012)
Franklyn Searight, Lair of the Dreamer: A Cthulhu Mythos
Omnibus (2007)
Edith Miniter, Dead Houses and Other Works (2008)
———, The Village Green and Other Pieces (2013)
Jonathan Thomas, Midnight Call and Other Stories (2008)
———, Tempting Providence and Other Stories (2010)
———, Thirteen Conjurations (2013)
Ramsey Campbell, Inconsequential Tales (2008)
Joseph Pulver, Blood Will Have Its Season (2009)
———, Sin and Ashes (2011)
———, Portraits of Ruin (2012)
Michael Aronovitz, Seven Deadly Pleasures (2009)
Donald R. Burleson, Wait for the Thunder (2010)
Peter Cannon, Forever Azathoth: Parodies and Pastiches (2012)
Alan Gullette, Intimations of Unreality (2012)
Richard A. Lupoff, Dreams (2012)
———, Visions (2012)
Richard Gavin, At Fear’s Altar (2012)
Jason V Brock, Simulacrum and Other Possible Realities (2013)
S. T. Joshi, The Assaults of Chaos (2013)
Kenneth W. Faig, Lovecraft’s Pillow, and Other Strange Stories (2013)
John Langan, The Wide, Carnivorous Sky (2013)
Simon Strantzas, Burnt Black Suns: A Collection of Weird Tales (2014)
Ghouljaw
And Other Stories
CLINT SMITH
Hippocampus Press
————————
New York
Copyright © 2014 by Hippocampus Press
Works by Clint Smith © 2014 by Clint Smith
Introduction © 2014 by S. T. Joshi
These stories first appeared in the following publications:
“Ghouljaw,” genesis, the Art and Literary Magazine of IUPUI (Fall 2009).
“Benthos,” Weird Fiction Review No. 1 (Fall 2010).
“The Jellyfish,” Indiana Science Fiction (2012).
“Double Back,” Something Wicked, Volume 2 (2013).
“Don’t Let the Bedbugs Bite,” British Fantasy Society Journal (Summer 2011).
“Like Father, Like . . .” Denizens of Darkness (2012).
“What Happens in Hell Stays in Hell,” Hell (2013).
“The Tell-Tale Offal,” Weird Fiction Review No. 4 (2013).
“Dirt on Vicky,” “What About the Little One?”, “The Day of the Earwig,” “The Hatchet,” “Retrograde,” and “Corbin’s Gore” are original to this collection.
Published by Hippocampus Press
P.O. Box 641, New York, NY 10156.
http://www.hippocampuspress.com
All rights reserved.
No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher.
Cover art © 2014 by Jared Boggess.
Cover design by Jared Boggess.
Hippocampus Press logo designed by Anastasia Damianakos.
First Ebook Edition
ISBN: 978-1-61498-098-8 (Kindle)
ISBN: 978-1-61498-099-5 (EPUB)
For Jess. More than words.
“‘There are stories,’ he said, ‘tales. There’s all that nonsense.’”
—Susan Hill, The Woman in Black
“The presence before him was a presence, the horror within him a horror, but the waste of his nights had been only grotesque and the success of his adventure an irony. Such an identity fitted his at no point, made its alternative monstrous. A thousand times yes, as it came upon him nearer now—the face was the face of a stranger. It came upon him nearer now, quite as one of those expanding fantastic images projected by the magic lantern of childhood . . .”
—Henry James, “The Jolly Corner”
Contents
Introduction
Benthos
Ghouljaw
Dirt on Vicky
Don’t Let the Bedbugs Bite
Retrograde
What About the Little One?
Double Back
The Tell-Tale Offal
Like Father, Like . . .
Corbin’s Gore
The Hatchet
The Jellyfish
What Happens in Hell Stays in Hell
The Day of the Earwig
About the Author
Introduction
It was, I believe, in 2009 that Clint Smith sent me his story “Benthos.” Finding it a remarkably powerful weird tale, I expressed approbation but at that time could not think of any publication in which it could appear. Soon thereafter, Jerad Walters of Centipede Press asked to edit an annual magazine, the Weird Fiction Review, devoted both to original fiction and to articles about weird fiction. I could not think of a better vehicle for the publication of “Benthos” than this, and it duly appeared in the first issue of 2010.
Then, curiously, I heard no more from Clint. Could he be, I thought occasionally, just a one-shot wonder? I will confess that my own canvassing of contemporary weird fiction—in magazines, websites, and other venues—is not exactly wide-ranging, so I was unaware that Clint was in fact placing his stories in any number of other journals, print and online. Then, about a year ago, Clint submitted to me this collection. I was thrilled. While in no sense do I credit myself with being Clint’s “discoverer” (the title story of this collection had already appeared in 2009), I was delighted to be able to offer an entire volume of his work to the reading public.
Clint Smith’s virtues as a writer are easy to detect: a fluid, mellifluous prose style that conceals its artistry by its seeming effortlessness; a power and originality in weird conceptions that grasp readers by the throat; a sensitivity to emotional pain, domestic trauma, and interpersonal conflict that mainstream writers would envy. Every story bears the mark of his distinctive literary style: you could not possibly mistake one of his stories for someone else’s work.
I know little of Clint’s literary influences: the pungent twist on Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” that he effects in “The Tell-Tale Offal” says no more than that he has taken to heart Poe’s dictum on the “unity of effect” in the crafting of a short story. Clint’s work is bracingly modern, but with a sense of the heavy hand of the past weighing upon the present (most evident, perhaps, in “Like Father, Like . . .”). Also like Poe (but like many others too, ranging from Ambrose Bierce to Laird Barron), Clint knows how to dance elegantly on the borderline of supernatural and psychological horror; indeed, his best stories fuse these ordinarily disparate veins of weird fiction. “Benthos” seems on the surface to be a cheerless story of drug taking, easy sex, and gang violence, but a supernatural undercurrent raises its head at the most unexpected moment. “What Happens in Hell Stays in Hell” uses the war in Afghanistan as a grim backdrop to unthinkable horrors unleashed in the parched sands of the Middle East.
I have no doubt that Clint Smith will be heard from in the future as a leading practitioner of the modern weird tale. The stories in this collection testify not only to his literary potential but to his already significant accomplishments. His subsequent tales (and, let us hope, novels) can only enhance his standing.
—S. T. JOSHI
Seattle, Washington
September 2013
Benthos
From the Indianapolis Times, September 15, 1997, Metro section, city edition:
IMPD continues to search for twenty-two-year-old graduate student Amy M. Campbell (Indianapolis). Campbell was last seen Saturday evening, and was first reported missing Sunday morning. Campbell�
��s landlord notified police after several neighbors complained about an odor coming from her apartment. Authorities searched Campbell’s living quarters, and were later seen collecting evidence from the residence and nearby stairwell. Police have yet to comment on their findings. While not yet considered a suspect, investigators say they are now searching for Campbell’s twenty-four-year-old boyfriend, Max W. Kidwell (Indianapolis), also missing since Sunday morning.
It’s after midnight and the rain is steady as Max Kidwell stumbles off an empty downtown sidewalk and into an alley. It’s late summer, but the brisk, night wind holds colder currents of autumn. Max has traced this course dozens of nights before, almost always after leaving a bar—too drunk to drive, too broke for a taxi. With octopodal panic—like a small, soft creature seeking safety in the shadowy corridors of coral—Max weaves through the darkness of the alley: a shortcut to his girlfriend’s apartment, to Amy’s apartment.
In Amy, where there was commitment and loyalty Max saw only suffocation. In Amy, where there was patience Max saw innocent gullibility. Over the past few years, Max has learned that if he sincerely reminds Amy that he does love her—and that he will finish school, that he will grow up, that they will get married someday—that there is nearly no limit to the things Amy would allow. And in her commitment and patience, Amy allows Max many things.
Tonight, Max’s inebriation is unique.
Max—his flannel shirt soaked and his hair clinging to his forehead in dark tendrils—winces through nausea and blinks through the rain needling his face. Despite his attempts to focus, things have taken on an aquatic quality—he watches himself moving sluggishly, slowly, languidly. His head throbs. His eyes hurt, as if slowly and fluidly pulling away from each other.
Tonight, Max has subdued these symptoms with the sedatives of alcohol and smoke; but they’re wearing off, and he’s beginning to focus on the feverish realness of irrevocability.
With his shoulder against a brick wall, Max shuffles to the end of the alley, eventually catching sight of Amy’s apartment building. Almost there, he assures himself, but the thought—the voice—gurgles up from the echoey depths of his mind. And while the internal territory is familiar, the voice is not.
Jerry McWilliams picked Max up around six o’clock, and when Max heard the phlegmy tick of Jerry’s car outside in the driveway, he’d hustled out the door of his mom’s house without saying goodbye. Max dropped into the passenger seat, the interior of the car smelling of stale cigarette smoke. Max, rolling up the sleeves of his flannel shirt, smiled and said, “Let’s get this show on the road.”
Jerry waited until they were safely out of Max’s affluent neighborhood before producing and lighting a freshly rolled joint.
Jerry had made plans to attend a party in a neighborhood on the outskirts of downtown. And while Max was always glad to tag along, he suspected Jerry’s motive was to go somewhere to sell the rest of his dope. Jerry McWilliams had recently come into a large supply of marijuana. Pounds of it, Max estimated, by the amount Jerry had been selling and by the amount the two young men had been smoking. They’d gotten high nearly every day since Jerry had luckily acquired the drugs several weeks before; and Max only asked once about where it had came from. “None of your goddamn business, man.” Jerry had replied, squinting and grinning through a blue cloud of smoke. “Just enjoy it and be glad I’m not making you pay for it.”
Although having gone to the same high school, Max and Jerry had never spoken to each other as classmates. And while both young men were essentially the products of comfortable, middle-class families, Max privately viewed Jerry McWilliams as his suburban antithesis. What the two had in common, as far as Max could admit, was their status as college dropouts and their affinity for mild hell-raising. What Max could not admit (out loud, at least) was that they were both spoiled kids, unwilling to grow up and grow out. Max considered Jerry his drinking buddy, but was, by and large, ashamed to accept him as a friend. Max never dared ask about his hopes and dreams, and rarely posed such questions to himself. They simply occupied each other’s mutually wasted time.
Max took a long drag from the joint before passing it back over to Jerry. “So where is this place, exactly?” Max asked.
Jerry cleared his throat and blinked rapidly, apparently stirred from his own thoughts. “It’s in The Swamp, close to Creely Park on the southside, close to the city.” Max nodded, vaguely picturing the run-down neighborhood.
Max was comfortable with the stoned silence that had settled into the car and turned his attention out the passenger window. As he savored the haze of losing lucidity, he watched the subdivisions and manicured lawns give way to warehouses and streetlights. He looked out west, where the salmon pastels of sunset were being overrun by a mass of storm clouds.
Max registered his inebriation by the slow-motion quality of what he was seeing. Only recently, when Max’s mind began to drift, he saw the world as watery, peacefully listless; but the pleasant sensation would invariably be transformed into something uncomfortable, something foreign. His head would begin to throb and joints began to ache. In those moments, Max toyed with the impossibility of his skull—his bones—gelatinizing, turning into soft, malleable cartilage. In those moments, Max’s anxiety translated directly into the image of an agitated black eel, straining against the flimsy walls of his midsection. The worst was when he thought about it too deeply or too solemnly. And if he did either, he could almost coax the creature into reality.
The dark gray rectangles of city skyline eventually appeared in the distance. His thoughts turned to Amy, and it suddenly occurred to Max that he should firm up plans for later.
“Do you mind dropping me off somewhere after the party?” he said.
Jerry was now smoking an ordinary cigarette. He frowned, exhaling a long stream of smoke. “Where the hell at?”
“Downtown, just off Broadway. It’s only about ten minutes away.”
Jerry frowned for a moment before his expression changed, as if suddenly understanding. “Oh,” he said, “that one chick.”
“Amy,” said Max.
“Yeah—Amy,” Jerry repeated the name delicately, as if the syllables had a flavor. “Jesus, man, she’s fine. Smart too. I thought you guys were history.”
“Nah,” Max said, smirking. “She’s still in the picture.”
Jerry was silent for a long time before asking, “Does she still let you crash at her place when you get fucked up?”
Max’s grin faded slightly. He blinked a few times and looked out the window. “Yeah, she does.”
Jerry snorted. “Well, when you’re all done with her you can send her my way.”
For the first time, Max seriously imagined Amy with someone else—someone like Jerry. And for an instant, Max felt the flutter of something like homesickness. But it was for Amy, a hersickness. He shoved the feeling aside. “Yeah,” he said. “Sure thing.”
The party-house was at the end of a dead-end street, choked with beat-to-hell, rust-scabbed vehicles, reflecting the shabby, counterpart quality of the houses which gave The Swamp its namesake. Because the narrow street was so crowded with cars, Jerry had to park around the corner.
When Jerry pulled the key from the ignition he said, “If anyone asks who we know here, tell them you know Winston, or that you’re friends with Winston.”
Max had his hand on the passenger-side door handle.
“Sure. Winston who?”
“Winston Kolb,” Jerry said. The name sounded familiar to Max, and it took him a moment to register that this had been a guy from high school. “Winston’s the guy who invited us—well, me; I didn’t tell him you were coming with me, but it shouldn’t be a big deal. He says he wants to buy—he said there’s some people here who want a couple ounces.” And as if that were that, Jerry pushed open the door.
The two walked down a cracked and weed-spiked sidewalk. Dogs intermittently barked from back yards and from inside the dilapidated houses. Dogs are like the deranged crickets of the cit
y, Max mused humorlessly.
The houses here appeared to have been, at one time, noble looking. Now they merely maintained accents and elements of their original refinement—the exterior moldings, the severely pitched dormer windows, the intricate stone work. Now, all the dwellings could have easily passed for a child’s idea of a haunted house.
The air was losing its humidity and the sky had darkened, both from encroaching nightfall and the approaching storm. The lavender tones of dusk were absent, having been replaced by thick, cobalt-gray clouds. Occasionally, they’d walk past a house with a large tree in the front yard—the leaves fluttering like shoals of fish, their pale palms twitching in pre-storm fits.
Max was beginning to hear the pulse of music now as they closed in on the cul-de-sac, and Jerry gestured toward a large two-story house.
A group of people were sitting on front porch, talking, their conversation falling silent as Max followed Jerry up the front steps. The darkness under the porch’s roof was dotted with tiny orange embers.
“What’s up?” Jerry said to the crowd. “Winston here?” Max thought Jerry sounded too smug for being an outsider.
Most of the heads turned toward a scruffy, hippyish guy sitting in a rocking chair—the homeowner, Max assumed—who was in the middle of passing a joint. “Who’re you?” he said, sounding uninterested.
“Jerry. This is my friend Max.” Max jutted his chin as a silent, collective greeting. The lethargic crowd appeared righteously fucked up.
The guy in the chair scratched his whisker-patchy cheek. “Jerry . . . Jerry,” he said to no one, scowling—but then his face lit up. “Oh, yeah—Jerry,” he said, pushing a thin lock of oily hair behind his ear. “Sure, man, go on inside. Winston’s in there somewhere.”