by Ledger,John
The shape then descended from the apex of its ascension and as it did, it bit off the old gentleman’s kick-stand, balls and all.
The last thing Old Dave saw was the pool of blood at his feet as he dropped his gut and slowly tumbled toward the watery grave where afore so many of his shipmates had gone.
THE GHOST IN THE OYSTER BED
Dona Fox
“The walls so are thin you can almost see through them,” Shari mumbled as she wedged the white chair under the motel room’s door handle–a quite effective lock, she hoped, in addition to the key and the chain. She had already checked the closet, under the bed, behind the pale shower curtain, and made sure the windows were locked.
“Maybe I’ll be safe if I leave a light on; if my back’s against the wall; if my toes don’t hang over the edge of the bed.” She paced the room covering the litany of ways to make herself feel safe, finally safe.
She would stay awake as long as she could; sleep would have to catch her unaware. She could not turn out the light and simply roll over with the intention of falling asleep.
The curtain was too small. If she pulled it far enough to cover one side it left a gap on the other side. If she squatted down she could just barely see outside, “What if someone peeks in the window? What if they can see in? What if they see me? They’ll know I’m here alone. I can’t let them know I’m here alone. Better if they don’t know I’m here at all.”
Finally she decided to sleep in the white porcelain bathtub, without blankets, so that if someone, somehow, saw into the room they would see an unmade bed–no indication of her presence.
She laid in the tub and looked at the drain. Spiders. What if spiders crawled up out of the drain while she slept?
She plugged the bathtub drain with toilet paper.
She stretched out. Her toe was on the faucet. What if she fell asleep? Her toe could hit the faucet and turn the water on. She wasn’t afraid she would drown, that was stupid, but it would make noise. Someone might hear it. She plugged the tap.
Shari heard the ocean through the thin motel walls, or was it was the freeway? Highway 101 ran down the western coast of the States–the freeway and an expanse of pale sand were all that separated her from the Pacific Ocean. It was summer–the ocean and the freeway sounded the same.
Maybe the white noise would help her sleep.
Shari imagined the ocean.
A tsunami that rushed across the freeway during the night, would obliterate the small room she was hiding in.
Shari imagined the freeway.
She imagined an accident on the freeway; a semi flying off the road before it crashed right into her room. She saw herself running through the sand, sinking deep into its free flowing depths, unable to breathe.
Shari had fled to this small seaside town to escape her husband; they called him Ghost. He had a shiny white scar that started at the widows’ peak above his forehead and ran down the center of his nose; the result of getting jumped in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. The fact he came out of the encounter alive with only the scar was a badge of pride to him. He was a tall, wiry son of a bitch. He said he’d been a White Beret. Shari didn’t know what that meant. She just knew he was crazy and mean.
Well, he wouldn’t be her husband in six months when the final decree came through. She didn’t even have to be there. Her lawyer would file the papers, it was a done deal. Meanwhile, she couldn’t let him find her; he had postured and intimidated her in court. He growled in her lawyer’s ear as they left the courtroom–a guard had pulled him aside.
When she came out of the courthouse he was waiting in his white Lincoln. She ran up one way streets and down alleys until her lungs were burning in her chest.
When she was sure she had lost him she jumped on a bus headed out of town.
Fortunately Ghost hadn’t thought to strip her of her jewelry; Shari talked the driver into taking her wedding rings for her fare.
Ghost would bully and threaten her until she backed out of the divorce. She wouldn’t have a chance if he caught her.
He knew she was afraid of the ocean so she was hiding in this little motel beside the ocean, in another town, in another state. And she was afraid. But not just of the ocean or of Ghost. She was afraid of people, of going outside, of the dark, the night, strangers, spiders, everything; she was afraid.
She stayed in the room for three days, drinking water and eating the four bags of chips she’d bought with all the cash she had left over after she’d checked in and paid for a week.
She was rationing the chips–breaking them in fourths and laying them out on the bathroom counter. Maybe one chip per day…if I just eat ¼ at a time…I’m not as hungry as I was at first…oh, but I am. I’ll fill up on water. No, then I’ll have to flush the toilet and it will be obvious there’s somebody here. I need to keep a low profile.
She was getting restless. She paced the room, then she opened the drapes an inch and peered out.
Shit, oh, dear. That looks like Ghost. It is.
She pulled the drapes together, overlapped them.
Why was I even looking?
Ghost was in the courtyard. Smoking, angry, pinching his cigarette between his nails. He was peering up and down the road. He didn’t know she was already there. He was watching the highway.
He’ll know. He’ll just know I’m here.
She was stuck in the room. Her food was running out. Before she even realized what she was doing, she ate three whole chips.
Damn.
Teenagers were milling about in the courtyard. All of them were dressed in white, as if they were taunting her. Many seemed to have their skin powdered and hair bleached white. Shari jumped back and shut the drapes. Her heart was hammering in her chest.
What the hell. Why the blasted white? Didn’t all the kids wear black now? Were they supposed to be ghosts? Or was this a giant wedding ceremony? Were some of them brides with bouquets and veils? Were they vampires with bloody fangs?
She hadn’t noticed. Cautiously, she peeked again. No, no bouquets. No bloody fangs. Ghost was still standing by the road apart from the group, taller than the teens, a sentinel– watching for her.
Shari pulled the drapes shut and sat down on the bed. She didn’t run the water or flush the toilet or even rustle a chip bag until she saw Ghost’s white Lincoln leave the parking lot at twilight.
There was a chapel next to the motel. Light glowed through the stained glass of the windows. She locked her room and, clutching her room key, she ran to the safety of the church. The small white chapel glowed faintly.
As she walked up the path to the chapel the white stones beneath her feet reflected the setting sun as did the huge white stones that served as benches along both sides of the path. The double doors of the chapel were made of a glimmering pure white stone, smooth yet faintly rough to her touch as she pushed them open.
Thick carpet absorbed every sound. The room was chill and quiet. Outside light came through the stained glass windows highlighting the various poses of the Madonna featured in each window. Interior spotlights shone on the child in her arms.
Shari approached the closest window. The child was a giant pinkish pearl, in its formation the strata had overlapped, causing it to appear to be a small babe, when in reality the child set into the window, the child in the Madonna’s arms, was simply a pearl the size of a cat.
“Hello, we don’t get many tourists.”
Shari twirled quickly. A priest stood behind her.
“I see you are interested in our pearls. We are very proud of our pearls. No one knows how old they are. The old folks tell us a legend. Long ago it was believed if a young woman became with child that she could not have she had but to walk into the white, chalky tide that comes but once a year and she would be relieved of her burden. Much later, in the child’s place, the ocean would return a pearl to the shore. The woman then would bring her pearl to the church to thank god for delivering her from her troubles.”
They hea
rd the teens outside.
“Now the teens go to the chalky brine thinking if they make love in that water there will be no consequences.” He shook his head. “We lose several every year. They drown. The chalky water? I believe there is a simple explanation.
We have giant clams and oysters here; they are unnaturally large. When the oysters are especially aggravated, as they are by grains of sand that slip into their shells and cause the formation of pearls, they may open and exude their milk. The milk finds its way to shore in streams that do not mix easily with sea water.
Often, on opening, along with milk, the oysters may release a pearl they have been holding so that one’s milk, or the milk of another, finds its way to shore as another one is just releasing the pearl it has been creating. Thus are folk tales born.” The priest laughed.
“That’s, that’s fascinating. Uhm, I’m sorry. I need to go now.” Shari smiled at the priest. “Thank you for the, uhm, tour.”
Shari was anxious to return to her room before dark.
She stepped out the door and was immediately caught up in the ghostly mass of teens flowing to the ocean. As they pushed her across the freeway headlights blinded her, she could hear car horns honking.
When they reached the beach, teens were lying about on the sand. They drank white wine from clear bottles. The wine flowed down their faces and their chests as they swallowed with wild abandon-the wine was forced on her. The wine dried her mouth. Her head spun.
They grabbed her, twirled her, and gave her more to drink. They were roasting clam meat. A young diver come up with more meat, it was huge–draped over his shoulders. They hung the meat on a spit over the fire and brushed it with a pungent garlicky sauce.
A wheelbarrow passed her, full of a violet-black raw oyster that jiggled as the wheelbarrow was forced through the sand.
Someone pushed Shari into the water. She was afraid of the water. She couldn’t swim. Hands were all over her body. She struggled to get away. Rough hands like prickly pears grabbed her ankles tightly and pulled her, down, down.
She passed out. When she came to she had some kind of apparatus over her head. She was able to breathe, and to see out of a tiny window that was so foggy she could not swear to the reliability of what she saw.
The creature next to her was, for lack of a better word, a mermaid. But it was not a mermaid from her dreams or from a sailor’s dreams–no, rather it was a nightmare mermaid of harsh angles and spiny planes, covered with sharp features and claws and teeth where these protrusions were never meant to sprout.
The creature pointed to a giant clamshell as large as a wading pool and, as Shari watched, the clamshell drifted open. Curled inside was a young man. Shari wiped the outside of the window in front of her eyes. Indeed, the young man’s thigh had a soft glow seen only, yes, only on a pearl.
Shari reached out and touched him. His thigh was cold and had the rough, smooth texture of a pearl. The shell began to close and she drew her hand back.
Shari looked around the ocean floor, there were dozens more like that shell. They all opened and each held the same grisly prize in different stages of pearly formation. Then she saw an empty shell. Was that why she was here? Was that for her? She kicked and scratched. She screamed within her helmet.
The mers converged upon her. They grabbed her arms and legs. She freed one arm and poked her fingers into the nearest mer’s eyes. She freed the other arm and did the same.
Free of two of the mers and having both arms to fight with, she threw herself upon the mer at her left leg. She grabbed the mers’s hair and wrapped it around the scaly neck at a place just under the chin where she had noticed a thinning of the scales. One final wrap and she hooked the hair through the mer’s mouth and yanked it up–hard. The mer’s neck popped.
Then Shari turned to the last mer just in time to see this one, the smallest mer, push away. She barely had time to catch her breath, however, when her arms were pulled together from behind. She twisted to look at her assailant. It was one of the mers. Which one, she had no way of knowing, except one of the mers’ eyes was red.
She squirmed, she twisted, and she kicked behind her. She knew she was fighting for her life. Or, maybe not. If they wanted to kill her, wouldn’t they have done that in the first place?
Shari relaxed. Then, using all the strength she had left, she pushed the merthing from her and propelled herself to the surface. She threw off the helmet and struggled in the water until she reached a rocky shore down the beach from the teenagers’ revels.
Exhausted, she slept on the beach that night. She had escaped by her own strength and wits, she was no longer afraid.
Shari woke to the face and breath of the merthing. She was pinned down. She struggled enough to know it would do no good.
“Szzz. Szzz.” The merthing seemed to be hushing her.
Shari stilled.
The mer looked her in the eyes, released one arm. With its long spiny finger it drew a line from its forehead down the center of its nose, then it picked up a tiny stick of driftwood and began to mimic Ghost angrily pinching a cigarette.
Fear forgotten, Shari watched in fascination.
The mer pointed to the motel, then to the water. To the motel, then to the water. Again mimicked Ghost, then pointed to the motel, and again to the water.
Shari looked up to the motel. Sure enough, Ghost was still there, standing tall in the courtyard, peering up and down Highway 101, watching for her.
The mer wanted Shari to bring Ghost to the water!
What a gorgeous giant pearl he would make.
They were striking a deal.
Shari nodded.
Shari stood up. Her body was sore. The muscles and tendons in her legs were stiff. She struggled to stand up straight as she hobbled toward the white, sandy beach.
When she reached the ashen streams of water she walked out into the ocean until the pale water covered her thighs. She could see the mers circling in the water beside her. She turned to face the motel.
She stood up straight and stretched her arms over her head.
“Ghost! Ghost! Is that you? Have you come to take me home?”
She saw his body stiffen as he heard her voice, then curve as he peered at the ocean. A twitch as he flicked his cigarette away. Then his car came across the freeway and lurched to a stop on the sand.
Ghost slid out, left the door open. He approached her cautiously; afraid she might bolt.
“Are you okay, baby? Shari? You ready to come home, now?” He held out one hand, palm up. He smiled, nodded.
“Yes, Ghost. I’m ready.”
“Well, come here then.”
She smiled, started unbuttoning her blouse, “You, come here.”
“Shari, dammit. Honey, come to me, now.” He held out both hands.
“You want to take me home?” She turned her back to him and started walking deeper into the water. The mers lay flat on the sand beneath the chalky streams.
“Dammit, Shari, okay. Here I come.” She smiled when she heard his keys land on the sand.
First it was probably just Ghost stomping through the water, but then she saw the mers push off from the sandy bottom and Shari knew the horrible thrashing wasn’t just Ghost walking to her.
When the noise settled down she turned around. They were gone. Ghost and the mers. Not a hair floated on the water.
He’d thrown his wallet onto the sand along with his keys. She smiled again as she picked them all up and climbed into the white Lincoln.
Back at the motel she realized her toe hurt. Her shins and her arms, she had angry scratches on her where she had fought with the mers. She washed herself with the motel soap, rubbed the soap into the scratches until it burned.
In the morning, her legs were whiter. The callus on her little toe seemed to have built up. As the sun rose she opened the window above the shower; daylight streamed in.
She had no doubt now, her legs gave off a pearlescent glow. She was hobbling, her ankles wouldn’t flex. She
dressed and hobbled to the chapel.
The small building was blinding in the sunlight. The stepping stones, the benches, even the doors she had planned to run through for refuge.
Shari felt her knees stiffen, then her hips. As the smiling priest approached, her throat tightened.
MARSHLANDS MALICE
Jim Goforth
To begin with, it seemed almost too good to be true. A once in a lifetime opportunity, a fantastic prize that would have other Drowning In Gore fanatics green with envy, something not to be passed up.
However, the more things progressed, the more Brooke started to have serious misgivings about the entire concept.
The horror metal band Drowning in Gore surfaced every couple of years to release a new album of horror-soaked, blood-dripping, feral, lyrical nightmares dredged up from their obsession with everything horror and everything heavy in music. Their tenure in the business was a relatively short one thus far, with a career spanning six years, but the three albums they’d released and their outrageous, splattery, visually spectacular stage shows earned them a cult following.
And when it came to the recording sessions of each consecutive new album, the band held a competition for their rabid fans, who commonly referred to themselves as Drownatics, Gorepunks and other creative variations on the band’s moniker. This competition generally resulted in eight or so lucky fanatics being invited along to take part in said recording sessions, hanging out with the band members and being involved in filming for videos later to be used in clips hitting heavy metal music shows in constant rotation. It was genius marketing, since one had to purchase some form of Drowning in Gore merchandise, be it albums, logo emblazoned apparel, concert tickets or anything else the band had stamped their name on. With the increasing fanbase steadily building up, it meant they shifted a fuckload of merch to prospective contest winning Drownatics. It was some Charlie and the Horror Factory shit on a grand scale, and the zealous Gorepunks lapped it up, keen to stake their claim on history, being not only part of their favourite band’s upcoming musical offering, but everything else the prize entailed.