Shock Totem 9: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted

by Shock Totem

  Danny cut the line. The man fell the last five feet, crashing down in a heap in the cold mud. Rain made a quiet pat pat pat pat noise on their jackets. The man loosened his noose and tried to speak, but his crushed larynx wouldn't allow words. Instead he took in a long, rasping breath. And another. And another. Danny had saved his life. He had pulled a man back from the void, back into the world.

  10

  Kate was the one who caught the flash of red in her peripheral vision before it dropped out of sight. She grabbed the back of Rick's jacket and pulled.

  “Hey what's—”

  “Mr. Clover,” she shouted at the memory of the streak. “Skip Clover! Is that you?” She jumped off the trail and began bounding through the woods as fast as she could, scrambling and slipping over sodden deadfall and slick underbrush.

  “Brattle Police, Mr. Clover! Your daughter sent us to find you. Mr. Clover?”

  They ran ahead heedless of roots that jutted up, threatening to trip them, break their ankles, dash their heads against hidden stones. They felt the pull of need. Oh, please, just a few seconds. Hang in there for a few seconds more, Skip, Kate thought. No matter how hard it was to pull a body out of the woods, it was nothing compared to having to sit down with a wife, or a child, or a parent, and explain that someone they loved was never coming home again. Every time she did it, she felt like a piece of her died. It was a death of inches, each grieving family bringing her closer to her own day in the woods. She pushed harder, ran faster, jumped farther, closing the distance between her and the red. Her own voice became a distant echo as her ears went dull and began to ring at the sound of the shot.

  11

  Danny stared at the man lying face down, bleeding into the earth. From behind the trees he heard them coming. They shouted. They pounded with their feet. But nothing they did or said could bring down the mountain. Nothing could wear it away. There was no answer to its summons but one.

  “What have you done?” shouted a man with a shining badge on his chest.

  Danny tilted his head at the cop, trying to understand why he couldn't see. “I gave him to the mountain. The mountain wanted him and I gave him to it.”

  “Put down the weapon!” The woman pointed her own gun at him. She wasn't ready to do what needed to be done. Not yet.

  Danny raised his pistol to show her how.

  12

  “I.A. is going to call it a clean shoot, Kate,” Captain Wright said, holding out his hand. “But I'm still going to need your piece.” She unclipped the holster from her belt and handed it to him before resting her forehead back on her palms, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. The posture eased her headache, but more than that, it blinded her to the scene around them.

  Still, she couldn't help but hear when they zipped up Rick's bag.

  13

  While she waited for the call, Mandy thought about the night before with her father. Although he looked the same as he always did, somehow he seemed heavier, as if gravity was pulling at him harder than it did anyone else. His normally square shoulders slumped and he stared at his plate, never making eye-contact. She thought of asking him what was wrong, but she already knew. He struggled daily to pull himself out of the hole her mother had dug. Some days he got up over the edge of it and the sunlight shone on his face and he was the man he'd been before. Before it all came apart. And then some days she could see, he just lay down, deep in the pit, and prayed for the rain to come and fill it.

  She'd made small talk about her classes and professors, about her plans for the summer, and all the places she'd love to see. She talked about spending a semester abroad in Spain or maybe southern Italy—somewhere warm. Somewhere they grew lemon trees on apartment balconies and she could tour vineyards and taste wine out of the barrel. She told him she was changing her major to Agricultural Sciences. “You know, since U. Brattle doesn't have a Viticulture and Enology department like UC Davis does down in California.” He'd encouraged her to transfer to a school with a wine program, but she'd refused, saying that U. Brattle was good enough for her undergrad. She'd get a summer job on a vineyard and then do her masters at one of the big wine schools after that.

  “Why don't you go now?” he'd asked. “Why put it off?” She told him she wanted to stay close to home for a while—another couple of semesters at least.

  “I'd miss you too much, Daddy,” she said, squeezing his hand. He'd smiled and squeezed back. His shoulders straightened a little and he looked her in the eyes as she told him something else meaningless while they finished up dinner.

  That night, he hugged and kissed her goodnight before she went to get some sleep in the room where she'd grown up. She lay there in the dark wishing he'd come to tuck her in like he had when she was little. He used to pull the covers as tight as he could. Her mom would complain and say that he was going to suffocate her, but Mandy always giggled and lay flat, letting the covers get tighter and tighter like a hug. And he would bend down and kiss her forehead and say “Sleep tight,” and they would both laugh.

  She clutched her phone, afraid that she'd miss the call from the police saying that they'd found him and that he was all right. That he was just out for a hike and got lost and it was all a big misunderstanding. You knew all the time that you were going to write that fucking note and leave. Just like Mom. She looked out her window at the mountain. It called and people answered, leaving everyone they loved—that loved them—behind. She hoped that what Skip had told her so long ago about entropy was true. That the wind and the rain would wear it down and leave it flat someday. I hope it never stops raining here. Not for a billion years.

  She walked back into her bedroom and slipped under the loose covers. Waiting.

  Bracken MacLeod has worked as a martial arts teacher, a university philosophy instructor, for a children’s non-profit, and as a criminal and civil trial attorney. In addition to Shock Totem, his short fiction has appeared in Shotgun Honey, Sex and Murder Magazine, LampLight Magazine, Every Day Fiction, The Anthology: Year One and Year Two: Inner Demons Out, Reloaded: Both Barrels Vol. 2, Ominous Realities, The Big Adios, and Beat to a Pulp. He has a story forthcoming in Issue 6 of the DIY horrorzine, Splatterpunk.

  He is the author of the novel Mountain Home, and most recently a novella titled White Knight, from One Eye Press.

  He lives in New England and is currently at work on his next novel.

  ANTEROOM

  by Peter Gutiérrez

  it’s not precisely night when the moon moves dimly cloudward, though the world

  From end to end is thick with 3 AM smoke that can’t be breathed or banished.

  that’s when the great house lets down the hair from its eaves so that the robed ones

  May brush it; their adoration makes perfect sense, given that so little else remains

  To cherish.

  in truth, the sun never fully rises, yet all the wriggling things flourish;

  in truth, then, the days are equally imprecise, with only this brightless present

  To show for all our troubles, this balancing point

  Upon which those acolytes will pierce us too slowly.

  a newly hatched legend in this vein is never spoken aloud, less so now that so few

  Have the lips or ears to celebrate, but it can be sensed from each of the tremulous

  Which one comes across: the house of evenings has always existed, absolutely

  Not consequent to the molting of buildings and the sheering of crops that bestowed

  On the winds, as they ranged, only the faint scent of aftertaste.

  indeed, all of those other structures long draped in menace and speculation

  Were but the tendrils, rising, modestly, from the spreading roots of this place;

  We were always just the caretakers of the house, all the known lands and seas

  Merely its yards and vistas, all human constructs simply its tenants, suffered

  To reside within the province of its stationary splendor, home only to itself,<
br />
  Until that moment when it rained down its claims, triggering shifts in our smiles

  as the deep bell tolled and all was shattered in our candy glass cathedral.

  Peter Gutiérrez is a long-time contributor to Rue Morgue. In addition, his weird/dark fiction has appeared in publications such as Apex Magazine and Southern Pacific Review, and in anthos such as Read by Dawn; his weird/dark poetry has surfaced in the pages of Shantytown Anomaly and Anti-Muse, both now defunct--which, he supposes, is not such great news for Shock Totem. Decades ago his collection of Japanese ghost stories, “Shi: Kaidan,” was nominated for an Eisner Award.

  STRANGE GOODS

  & OTHER ODDITIES

  After the People Lights Have Gone Off, by Stephen Graham Jones; Dark House Press, 2014; 308 pgs.

  The irony of the title of this collection is that, after reading each of its fifteen frightful stories, you probably will do anything to make sure your lights to stay on, long into the night. Not only for the more obvious terrors that you might glimpse out of the corner of your gaze in every open doorway and under your desk, but literally to shed some light on the weird mysteries and even distorted beauty found in this book.

  Perhaps you’re thinking to yourself, Wait, you mean this isn’t a horror collection? Worry not: some truly disturbing tales to worry at your soul have been gathered in here. The opener, “Thirteen” takes the reader for a slow waltz through teenaged urban legend, tragedy, and terror in an old movie theater. “Solve For X” is a horrifying tale of torture and wonder à la the 2008 French film Martyrs. And as someone who’s never had a tattoo in his life, “Welcome To the Reptile House” was one hell of a squirm-inducing tale—with a curveball plot twist more potent than any ink needle.

  Did I mention “distorted beauty?” Oh, yes—there’s plenty of that to be found here, too. “The Dead Are Not,” despite having one of the creepiest titles ever, is a heartbreaking tale of life and death, and all the Great Big Possibilities between (and above, and beyond) them. “Snow Monsters” was a deeply moving story that asks hard questions that can be most difficult to answer. And “Second Chances,” which follows a scientist’s observations of a most memorable cycle of metamorphoses, is actually quite touching, even if its tune ultimately ends with screeching notes of horror.

  Other stories transcend all categorization, however, ultimately leaving the reader wondering as to the journey they’ve just traveled, and where they’ve ultimately been deposited. “Brushdogs,” previously printed in the Laird Barron tribute anthology The Children of Old Leech, is a hallucinatory woodland-set mystery of hunters as the hunted. “Doc’s Story” is an edgy narrative that is in part about werewolves (this is no spoiler – the opening line is, “My grandfather was a werewolf.”), but is really more about family and the power of childhood belief. The title novella and “Uncle” are melancholic pieces of heartache and regret, but even as the narrators’ sorrows are recounted, terror creeps in with such subtlety that you barely know it’s there until it drops its clammy hand upon your shoulder.

  There is also an interesting pair of meta-stories in here that are spins on previously existing tales, which can be read wholly independent of their original counterparts. “The Spindly Man” is a meditation on mood in the form of a reading group’s latest assignment—Stephen King’s “The Man In the Black Suit” (from Everything’s Eventual). “Xebico” takes this idea even further, by revisiting an obscure short story from an even more obscure ‘20’s pulp writer named H.F. Arnold, “The Night Wire,” as the narrator describes the story’s adaptation for the stage—and subsequently, the terrifying events that begin to unfold…

  Mr. Jones has a fine way with words (as any fan of his work, new or long-acquainted, could attest), and this collection is a fine showcase of his talents. Emotion, mood, tension, suspense, horror - he does all with ease, but such crafts are peanuts for him. He has a unique approach to his narrative structures in that, unlike many a more “trendy” author’s attempts at style, is accented by little verbal digressions that often feel more like a vocal delivery than a stream of consciousness; some readers may find this distracting, but I found this to be one of Mr. Jones’ more clever touches, often weaving complex arpeggios of non-sequiturs. “But still.”

  After the People Lights Have Gone Off is also quite a beautifully formatted book, with thematic illustrations at the beginning of each tale by Luke Spooner and a feverish, even claustrophobic, page layout by Alban Fischer. Throw in a humorous introduction by a big fan named Joe R. Lansdale, and a candid (and at times tongue-in-cheek) series of author’s notes at the end, and you have one of the most unique, weird, dark, upsetting, disturbing, and unforgettable single-author short story collections of the year.

  And your lights? Yeah, don’t bother keeping them on after you’re done reading this book. They won’t help.

  –Barry Lee Dejasu

  Coffin Up Blood, by The Bloody Jug Band; Self-released, 2012; 13 tracks; 43 min.

  I’ve been a fan of country music and its mutations for many years now. From the original criminals of Hank, Cash, Haggard, and Waylon to the newer crop of offenders like Sturgill Simpson and Scott H. Biram. I like it when someone gets their country in my rock or mixes bluegrass with punk. Hoo-whee!

  Being the great friend he is, Ken Wood knows I love this shit and for my birthday last year, he sent me the entire catalog from The Bloody Jug Band. I hadn’t already loved him, I would have then.

  The Bloody Jug Band are everything you need in good music, more so if you lean toward the dark side.

  They take a traditional sound, forged in the 1920s and earlier, the simple Americana jug band sound, saddled with darkly horrific lyrics about the Devil and dark deeds. ‘Nuff said, really. The vocal interplay between Cragmire Peace and Stormy Jean goes as smoothly as spit and blood. The other seven members of this troupe bring a wide scale of instrumental variety.

  The stellar Coffin Up Blood opens with “Graverobber’s Blues,” a warning of sorts of what you’re in for. We then chug, swagger, and hoof through songs with titles like “Chained to the Bottom,” “Blood Train,” and “Black Tooth Growl.”

  These cats like their horror with humor as they give us a sort of tongue-through-cheek tribute to the Cash classic “Boy Named Sue” in “Boy Named Lucy,” one of the catchiest and most fun odes to the Son of Satan this side of Woodbox Gang’s “Anne Dydde.” “Roadkill Boys” is a fine little ditty in tribute to carrion birds. And they close with an incredible haunted-trailer rendition of an AC/DC classic, “If You Want Blood (You Got It).”

  If you are a person who prides yourself on listening to great music that no one else knows about, buy this disc and all their others. If you like what the radio shovels down your gullet, buy this disc and save yourself before it’s too late.

  –John Boden

  Parasite, by Mira Grant; Orbit, 2013; 510 pgs.

  Medical science has come a long way since 2014. SymboGen, a powerful pharmaceutical company, has figured out how to cure the world’s medical problems. After many years of secretive research, they came up with a solution by splicing several types of DNA to a specific species of tapeworm, which is then ingested in pill form, where it thrives in a human’s digestive tract, regulating anything from insulin creation and diabetes, to migraines, to arthritis. It appears, on the surface, like a miracle. As more people are implanted with these tapeworms, medical issues become a thing of the past.

  Sally Mitchell was officially declared brain dead after a horrible car accident. SymboGen purchases her machine-assisted body to implant their latest medical marvel. One day she simply revives, only without any memory of who’d she once been, nor anything about what had happened to her. As Sally—or Sal as she prefers to be called since being ‘reborn’—has the task of relearning how to do everything her former self was able to do. In the process, she falls in love with one of the doctors whom she meets at SymboGen, and they embark on a relationship. Little do either of them know that Sal may very well be a
secret weapon that SymboGen has been creating, and it’s not until the advent of “sleepwalkers” (those whose bodies and brains are taken over by the tapeworms) that both Sal and her boyfriend begin to suspect that something is amiss.

  In Mira Grant style (whose name is a nom de plume for bestselling author Seanan McGuire, of the October Daye urban fantasy series), she presents us with another mega-corporation whose process and future goals include controlling the masses, this time through pharmacology. To say that their efforts go terribly awry is an understatement. Positing a different take on the medical thriller/zombie apocalypse genres, Grant takes us on a deeply disturbing journey through Sal’s new life of intense paranoia (but it’s not paranoia if there are actually people out to get you, is it?) and failed attempts at putting together puzzle pieces that seem not only cut from different puzzles, but created on completely different planets.

  There are numerous twists and turns in Parasite, this first installment of the Parisitology trilogy. Grant knows her stuff here, and doesn’t hold back. While Sal’s character can come across as overly whiny and victimized, she understands far more than she lets on—a kind of “Columbo-esque” approach to problem solving—and her seeming naiveté is a good tool for her to glean as much information as she can in order to save all those whose tapeworms have not yet taken over.

  Using accurate and detailed medical processes and research as the basis, Parasite is a germaphobe’s worst nightmare come true. Grant easily picks up the mantle that Michael Crichton left behind, and turns it into a compelling story of the dangers of genetic manipulation.