* * * *
Grant flashed back to his youth, perhaps to the age of four or five, the earliest Samhain he could remember. Himself and his mother and chuckling Daddo, building a bonfire and fuelling it with carefully hoarded chicken and lamb-chop bones.
"Samhain,” said Daddo, “is a celebration of the harvest, the end of summer. It is also a time for remembering those gone from us. It is a festival for the dead."
The flames seemed to reach out for him as the humming and muttering of the ghosts and desert creatures intensified, mingling with the music. And now he saw, for the first time, the music's source. Strange that he had not noticed it before. There was a man inside the fire. An old man, with a wrinkled face, sitting on a small stool in amongst the flames. The old man was playing on a hand-made flute, and watching him.
Grant let out an utterance of blended joy and grief and recognition, and stepped into the flames.
* * * *
The last Bushmen have long since vacated the area, but if you ask some of their descendants, now relocated to the Northern Cape, they will recount a story of a white man and woman who led soldiers into the desert, built a fire out of their bones, and performed terrible magic there, of which it is not safe to speak.
* * * *
Contrary to Grant's belief, Shelley had not looked back after he got out of the car. She had turned off the radio, which he had insisted on listening to, and driven in silence. Once, after thirty minutes or so, she had sobbed, then shaken her head and cleared her throat. None of that.
She drove all the way to Beaufort West without stopping, the little car shuddering and panting from exhaustion as she pulled into a petrol station. After filling up she found her way to the Karoo Lodge Guest House, where she'd booked her bed. She dumped her overnight bag in the room and was tempted to go straight to sleep, but it was too early. Her blood was thrumming in her wrists and temples. Outside was Samhain, All Hallow's Eve, the Great Sabbat, and no one here knew it or cared except herself. Well, not no one; only one other, yet to come.
She ate dinner in the guesthouse restaurant and then sat in the adjacent bar, pretending to watch television. She nursed the same double Bushmills for three hours. People came and went. As expected, no one spoke to her or appeared to notice her existence.
Near midnight there was a minor commotion at reception as a late, rowdy party arrived to check in. Their voices clattered and rolled through the sleepy interior, and one voice among these made her heart skip. Not a voice she'd heard before, and yet she knew its qualities. Ten minutes later the party had entered the bar for night-caps, and the voice's owner stood beside her ordering, too loudly, too self-consciously, a complicated cocktail which he had to explain to the bewildered bartender.
Drink in hand, he looked at her: “Happy Halloween,” he said. As she had known he would.
* * * *
Evan Morris is a full-time corporate drone who intends to become a full-time novelist, film-maker, poet, magician, indian rope trickster and rogue of the high seas.
He lives in Centurion with his wife and two children and spends most of his spare time plotting their escape from quotidian reality, so far with only minor success.
His children have some promising ideas, though, and the whole family is committed to a life of high adventure involving, at the very least, balloon rides to the moon, aquatic jeopardy, and frequent swashbuckling. There might also be bodice-ripping. And international intrigue in which the lives of billions hang in the balance. Possibly also a thousand elephants. Nothing has been ruled out entirely.
When not so occupied, Evan reads, writes fiction, poetry and screenplays, broods, muses, ruminates, and every now and then rails against the injustice of it all. He also memorizes classic English verse. Don't get him started.
This is Evan's third story for Something Wicked. The Protector, and The Breeding Season, appeared in Issues 1 and 2, respectively.
[Back to Table of Contents]
MARK SYKES’ SIX TO EIGHT HUNDRED WORDS ABOUT ANYTHING
Or Mark Sykes’ Sixth Sense of Humour—
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* * * *
Film actor, world traveller, model, novel writer, piano and violin player, ballroom dancer, deep-sea diver—Mark Sykes is none of these things.
Actual achievements include the odd play or musical, avoiding death by starvation through singing to people around London, and completing both Halo games on ‘legendary’ level.
Literary influences include Philip Pullman, Carl Hiaasen and Iain M. Banks.
Favourite activities include vacuuming, buying stationery, applying sun lotion to total strangers, and catoptromancy.
Mark Sykes lives in London and has no life.
* * * *
Chapter 1: Always Something There to Rewind Me
* * * *
What the hell is wrong with me?
Why do I love watching people getting eaten alive by zombies?
I wouldn't step on an ant. No, I mean it literally: when I'm walking on the pavement, I'm always looking out for insects, slugs and similar helpless fauna so that I don't step on them, thereby ending their few days on earth in a meaningless and no-time-to-say-goodbye death. This could be interpreted as a quasi-Buddhist love of all life and I guess that's true (I also don't need mashed slug in the tread of my shoe)—but if I love life so much, then why, in horror, fantasy and sci-fi movies, do I find myself mesmerised by the ghastly and repulsive demise of the characters?
* * * *
Why do I rewind the bits in films where people are getting stabbed, beaten, eaten, skewered, bitten, cleaved, cudgelled, crushed, maimed, punctured, pulped, buried alive, incinerated, flogged, flayed, dismembered, tortured, decapitated, or thrown into bottomless pits or off some terrifyingly high precipice? In fact it's not just the rewind button—I slow the bastard down and watch, unblinking, as these things are happening at a quarter of the speed.
* * * *
You think I'm kidding? When I bought the Jackson King Kong DVD I immediately went to the giant insect scene half way through the film, and watched it about six times in succession, taking particular icky pleasure (if that's the word) in the wretched, nightmarish and downright disturbing demise of Andy Serkis at the, er, hands of a seething mass of ravenous giant worms. Mmm...
* * * *
Other things that have me diving for the rewind button: Willem Dafoe's head scoring 9.1 for its half-twist and double back flip after accidentally finding itself on the wrong end of a double-barrel shotgun in Wild At Heart; various Starship Troopers getting sliced ‘n’ diced, melted and mulligrised while on tour on Klendathu; Samuel L. Jackson kindly providing a late supper for the sharks in Deep Blue Sea; and the last thirty minutes of Braindead. Fan-bloody-tastic. But does this mean I'm de-bloody-praved?
* * * *
Am I a serial killer in waiting? Will I one day escape from a gothic mental asylum, don a pair of overalls, and adopt a gimmicky weapon with which to pick off my hapless victims? Or could it be that these things are perfectly normal, and that I'll go the rest of my life without sinking my teeth into the flesh of another human being, moaning ‘Braaaiinnnsss...’ Well, I can always hope, can't I?
I really hope that there's nothing inherently aberrant about me, but I would like to know where the love of all things grisly actually came from. Going back to my boyhood (Actually, that's technically inaccurate, since it's a stage of my life that I consider still very much ongoing ... so I'll amend that to ‘Going back twenty-five years'), I only went through the briefest ‘ants-in-the-magnifying-glass’ stage; it was something I'd heard about so I tried it ... but it wasn't for me. So, I'm happy to say, I found no pleasure in the taking of life—but now I'll happily watch various creatures and psychos do it on film (preferably in horror and sci-fi settings than, say, war and true-life dramas). Must be some kind of surrogate thing. Damn, wish I'd pursued that psychoanalysis course.
* * * *
I'm not talking about the love of being scared, mind—a
lthough I do love it, presumably just like all the people who go to enjoy a good horror flick—but during certain scenes, say of a maniacal masked killer hacking away at a luckless teenager like he's chopping down a sapling, I'm not scared—in fact, not only is there a total absence of fear, but more often than not my arms twitch involuntarily in synch with the maniac's, as though momentarily possessed. I need help. No I don't, I need love. Hmm ... maybe I wasn't held as a child.
* * * *
I suppose that what I'm really attempting here, under the guise of writing a column for Something Wicked, is the equivalent of lying down on a nice comfy couch and unloading my inner demons to anyone who's willing to listen, so that hopefully I'll be told that this is all perfectly normal, and that yes, there are many people who harbour the same fascination for these obscenities of the psyche. (There's no doubt that I have, through the readers of this magazine, a fairly good chance of communicating with kindred spirits.) Or maybe instead I should get out there, like the Raimis, Savinis, Cravens and Cronenbergs of the world, and express my attraction to atrocity as cinematic art.
* * * *
That may or may not happen ... but even if I never make a film where I get to throw people off insanely high cliffs and get to show them meeting the ground far below with that unimaginable sound known only to those who make it; even if I never get to call ‘action’ on a scene where Brad Pitt and Sienna Miller actually don't save the earth but are instead joyously and bloodily crunched up by the Zogmatrons of Slagpoopia 9; and even if I never direct a horror movie containing such scenes of depravity and hideous pain and torture that Satan himself would cover his eyes and watch from between his fingers, I'll always have the work of Raimi, Savini, Craven and Cronenberg—and I'll always have that rewind button.
* * * *
[Back to Table of Contents]
CRAWFORD TOWNE DIENER by Karen Runge
illustrated by Pierre Smit
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* * * *
* * * *
Alright, I'll tell you about it, and I'll tell you the truth, but first you have to stop looking at me like that—you have to promise me that you're going to try to understand. Nobody ever has before, you know. You could be the first.
It won't be long now before the sun sets, won't be long now before long shadows stretch out like enormous clawed hands over our heads, and each step that we take brings us nearer to the clearing in Mann Valley woods, to the shed that stands locked and abandoned between the trees.
Not many people know about Mann Valley woods—too far off the beaten track for them, I suppose; though I don't see why—it's only an hour's hike out of Crawford Towne. Do you know Crawford Towne? Nice place, nice small town. I lived there a while back, once. I was the town diener, in fact—you know, the morgue assistant. Yes, I see you've heard of me—then have you heard of Jessie Balout?
Well, all the more reason for you to listen then. But try to remember from the beginning that it didn't happen anywhere near the way people in Crawford Towne have been making out over the years—I would never have hurt her, not like that. You must try to understand; I loved her. Maybe more than I've ever loved anyone in my life.
* * * *
From the first day I arrived in Crawford Towne to take the job at the morgue—almost four years ago now I think it was—she and Marjorie were the only people around who ever took the time to talk to me, to show an interest in me. I was just eighteen back then and still too scared to talk to strangers, so with all my fumbling and bumbling and awkward-voice and acne-face, I guess I didn't give myself the best of chances, even right from the outset. The curse of first impressions. I'm sure deep down you agree, and I don't think I'm wrong to say that everybody else took me for a fool, or as some slightly idiotic version of a madman in the making. Worse, it didn't help that I had come to their town to do morgue work.
If you already come across as weird and insecure like I always have, then there really is no way people can understand why you would want to work with corpses—and they don't want to understand. They figure you have to be sick in the head or something, and from there they don't want anything to do with you.
But it isn't that. I've had enough troubles already trying to get along with living people, throughout my life. And when you really come down to it, bodies can't move, can't talk, can't pick on you or shout at you or tell you how useless and degenerate you are. I can't talk to people, you know; I get flustered and awkward and I stammer a lot. People laugh at me behind my back, I can feel it punching into me like knives—they like the idea of the quiet acne kid who can't get anything right. I guess it makes them feel superior, having someone to look down on.
So with that in mind, I guess it makes perfect sense that I've always liked people best when they're dead. They're so tolerant. I can talk to them for hours, when I'm alone in the cold room. And they lie in utter peace and calm, eyes respectfully closed, hands limp and submissive at their sides.
There's something about death that has always struck me as perfection. In fact I've always marvelled at how serene corpses look on the body block—from their perspective, I sometimes think it must be the greatest kind of peace, having someone cut you up and not feel any pain. Ironically, at first I thought this was especially true for Jessie—her dead body was the picture of purity, of beauty, of innocence frozen in time. I think I stood for about twenty minutes, just staring, that first night when they brought her in.
No, don't tell me I'm sick in the head. It wasn't like that, not in the least. If you want to talk about sick in the head, then let me tell you a few things about my Uncle Stuart—now he was sick in the head. He spent hours every weekend working on that shed of his, perfecting its contraptions, adding his little touches. He knew how much it terrified me—that small black shed, painted with pitch to fill the holes in the slats of wood, the door bolted with chains and locks. He didn't punish me often, but when he did it was obvious how much he savoured doing it. Real relish. And then, when it was over, he would be back to good old Uncle Stuart again—rough but not unfair, and fatherly in the only way that he knew how; sharing all his wisdom on the nature of the world with me.
He always said I was stupid, though, no matter how good my school reports were. My Uncle Stuart, on his good days he would say, ‘It's no good trying to fight brawn with brains.’ And if I argued, he would point to the shed outside.
Every once in a while—but not very often—he would drink too much and lock me up out there even though I hadn't done anything wrong; strapped to the back wall with pins and needles stabbing up and down my arms and spiders crawling across my face. It was dark and cold in there. I still dream about it sometimes; only in my dreams, he forgets all about me and never lets me out.
When I was through with school and had at last got my certification in industrial first aid, I got out of that house and away from that shed as fast as I possibly could. When it came to my career, morgue work was the easiest and most obvious choice. It didn't require much in the way of qualifications, and at least, I figured, it would involve less talking. I even slept in the park while I was looking for my first job, because I hadn't had enough time to set myself up properly before I left home. I didn't mind sleeping in parks, though—I still don't. Rather open sky, wind and rain, than back in Mann Valley with him.
So one morning I saw a little advert in the district newspaper for a diener at Crawford Towne morgue, and that was how I found myself independent for the first time—with a job, money for food and clothes, even enough to rent that little room in Marjorie's house in Henderson Lane.
Marjorie—now there's a woman who might be able to tell you a thing or two about me. She was almost like a mother, for a while there. The room I rented wasn't a bed and breakfast or anything like that, but she'd always fry me a few eggs in the morning, just for a chance to talk—which of course I wasn't used to, and which of course made me all the more clammed up and shy. But she figured out a thing or two about me nevertheless, and what she couldn't, she'd
make excuses for.
"No wonder,” she would say to me, shaking her head. “No wonder you can't come out of your shell, poor boy, so young and spending every day around all that blood."
I didn't have the heart to tell her that blood was about the only thing vivid enough to make me feel.
I didn't tell her anything about that because Marjorie liked me, you see. And there haven't been that many people who have liked me, in my life. I'd always had to take what I could get—until Jessie came along.
* * * *
When I first properly met Jessie Balout, it was summer three years ago, not too long after her little brother Roan Balout drowned in the lake. You might remember that—it was quite a story, and was in all the district newspapers. It was a Saturday afternoon when it happened, with half the town gathered on the banks. He drowned right out in the open in front of everyone, a storm in the centre of calm, where everybody could see him and yet nobody noticed him.
It was the remains of an old, tattered fishing net that did it—held him in place where no matter how much he splashed, it only looked like a fluttering—and all the while his mouth strained uselessly a few inches below the surface of the water, his shouts turned into churning mouthfuls of muddy water. I remember that; that brown sediment we found in his lungs when we did the autopsy. He must have kicked a lot, too. When we got the body, the netting had lashed and tangled itself firmly around his ankles and feet—he had perfect, purple-red incisions wrapped around his legs over and over again, cut in flawless circles.
They said it was a tragedy, and I suppose it was, but I also think life is just like that, you know. It picks us out at random. Besides, people always get so bent out of shape when children die, even if it's accidental like this was. Uncle Stuart always said, ‘What's so special about kids anyway?’ I agree with him now. They're just people, like anyone else.
Something Wicked SF and Horror Magazine #5 Page 3