by Неизвестный
FRIGHT MARE - Women Write Horror
©2016 DM PUBLISHING
First Edition
Edited by Billie Sue Mosiman
Cover art by Jeffrey Kosh Graphics
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living, dead, or otherwise, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to my old friend, Kat Yares. We lost her suddenly in 2015 and so many of us in the writing community miss her fiction, kind words, and great reviews. Here’s to you, Kat. I think you would have liked this idea. I’ll always miss you.
I want to thank C.W. Lesart, known as Caren, for her helpful first readings of some of the submissions. I couldn’t have done it without her.
Women in horror. I have made this for them. Many are young and new, but talented all the same. I love new talent and it’s a privilege to encourage it with an anthology. I’ve also included old hands, known names in the field, so there is a mix that I like.
I have nothing against male writers of horror, none at all, but we all know most anthology tables of content are heavily weighted toward male contributors. I cannot say why that is. From the number and quality of submissions to this book it’s not evident that women don’t write horror. They do. It’s not evident these stories they write aren’t up to standard. They are. I feel there’s some bias and if we’re being truthful I think we all know this is true. Yet women write horror just as well as men. You just can’t prove it by the preponderance of male authors to female in 90% of today’s anthologies. I keep seeing them with eight or ten stories by men, two by women. Or close to that. Sometimes there are no women authors represented at all. These anthologies are all different, but none of them have an equal number by gender. I’m not saying anthologies have to be equal by gender. I’m pointing out they aren’t, rarely if ever, and I can’t see how that would be right. Or how it would even make sense. In a logical world, there is no logic in this reality for women writers.
Nevertheless, this is the world and we are here, women like me and the contributors to FRIGHT MARE. We are here, present, writing, and we won’t be ignored. I hope you enjoy these works and spend a few hours in reading pleasure. That’s what all writing is about anyway. Not who wrote it. Not the gender of the author. It’s the story. It always was and always will be. These are good stories, even superlative. They are all written by women because I felt they needed their own place this time. I’m proud of them, proud of these stories, and if nothing ever changes in the ratio of men vs women in anthologies at least I brought a bit of spotlight onto the problem. And ladies and gents, don’t miss the big picture here. It IS a problem.
Now I turn over the stage to the Women Writing Horror. Fire up your imagination and give them a read. I leave it up to you to keep a light on, but I suggest you do.
Billie Sue Mosiman
2016
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Cover
Dedication
Introduction
Contance Craving - Raven Dane
The Goblin Box - Hillary Lyon
Tintype - Elizabeth Massie
The Whole of the Wideness of Night - Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Snow Angel - Amy Grech
Secrets of the Sargasso - Morgan Griffith
The Ouroboros Bite - Marie Victoria Robertson
Here I Lie - Lorraine Versini
Sakura Time - Loren Rhoads
Promises, Bliss, and Lies - Rose Blackthorn
Backslide - K. L. Nappier
City Girl - Kathryn Ptacek
What Storms Bring - KC Grifant
Pegasus - Mara Buck
Third Time’s a Charm - Tonia Brown
Ballerina - Sarah Doebereiner
One Hour Before the Dark - Mary Ann Peden-Coviello
Dead Messengers - Lucy Taylor
Sin - C.W. LaSart
Sense Deprived - Kristal Stittle
About Billie Sue Mosiman
Billie Sue Mosiman’s Books
CONSTANCE CRAVING
by
RAVEN DANE
The rock face was cold, slimy and jagged with shards of knife-edge flint. There was nothing Constance could do, not when her life depended on hiding in a narrow opening in the hillside.
She pushed back hard against the surface, trying to flatten her body so no part of her showed to the outside, wishing the grey stone could absorb her flesh, camouflage her from whatever had pursued her for the past hour. Her breathing had been laboured but as her heart rate slowed, she tried her best to be silent, to imagine herself as part of the rock. Constance fought the impulse to close her eyes, like a child wishing away an imagined monster in the closet. She had to remain alert; this time the closet monster was real and now stalked her through a silent pine forest. Where were the other survivors of the coach crash?
Too much pain, too much fear to mistake this as a nightmare, she knew this was not something she would wake up from. Her real world was the dream, one fading by the minute. Like the memory of earlier that morning when she had woken to a shrill alarm and wondered whether to bother to getting up. It was Sunday, a supposed day of rest and she was cosy in bed with Diva, her grey cat, curled up and purring by her side. Did she really want to go on an outing with some local church group? A day spent mainly on a coach, overcrowded with the dullest people on the planet, well-meaning but tedious company. They would probably sing hymns too, those jolly modern ones full of simplistic platitudes that all sounded the same.
‘Get out more, mix with people,’ her mother had urged after Constance’s messy, spiteful divorce, ‘take up a hobby at evening classes or join a local social group.’
Only hours ago, the outing had been Constance’s idea of a nightmare. A daytrip to a disused Welsh slate mine, turned into a whimsical tourist attraction. It had sounded ghastly. What was she thinking? Was she that lonely? Had life been so desperate after escaping that manipulative and abusive little shit, Phil? She had ended up on the coach anyway, if only to keep her nagging mother quiet and escape her voice for few hours. She had even deliberately left her mobile phone behind. Escaping to some grotty theme park in Wales was hardly her idea of an escape, but with no Thelma to her Louise, it was the best she could do that weekend.
There had to be something better in life … just had to be. Constance had no hobbies, no outside interests. The nearest thing to friends had all been that scrawny rat Phil’s. Yet she craved something more, something intangible, a yearning that kept her awake at night but had no name.
Within minutes of departure, the earnest, well-meaning fellow passengers had indeed broken into song, a mixture of cheesy show tunes and yes, bland modern hymns. Constance switched on her E reader and using headphones, listened to an audio version of 50 Shades of Grey … a little act of rebellion amid so much virtue. She kept the volume up high too, amused to think the tight-permed, cardigan-clad ladies in the adjoining seats could hear. Perhaps she had fallen asleep or been knocked unconscious, whatever had happened leading up to the crash had been lost behind a screen of brain fog.
The idea that a church coach trip was a nightmare? She wanted to laugh at the irony but fear had closed up her throat, tightening it like a noose. Thirsty too. She inched back, enduring more pain and pressure from the flint blades, a trickle of water had seeped down the rock fa
ce. By stretching up and twisting her head, Constance managed to get her mouth beneath the water. Vile! She spat out the first mouthful of brackish liquid, made coppery by mixing with a rivulet of her own blood from an open head wound. How had she got that? And the larger gash on her side, a bloody mess of torn flesh, as if it had been bitten and savaged. Why didn’t it hurt? Was shock such a good anaesthetic?
All thought froze. She heard movement approaching, a disjointed shuffle and wheezing breath. Whimpering, she bit down hard on her hands to inflict silence. Did this thing have an acute sense of smell? Could it detect her fear?
‘Please pass by - please, please go away.’
It made a mewling cry, plaintive, something hurt and in pain? Constance forced such thoughts aside. No doubt a clever ploy to lure out its human victims, moved by pity and compassion. It had plenty of easier prey, a crashed coach load of big hearted bible thumpers to feast on. She was no fool, remaining silent and motionless in her refuge. But for how long? It was still early afternoon, the autumn sun dappled through the cover of pines onto a forest bereft of birdsong, of rustling from small mammals, squirrels and foxes. Constance was a townie, had no idea how a forest should sound but surely not this silent. The sound of the unknown pursuer died away as it passed through the glade and deeper into the forest, Constance remained in the crevice. It could be another ploy to lure her out of hiding.
She had no memory of what caused it but there was no doubt about the catastrophic crash. Constance had vaguely remembered crawling away from twisted, burning wreckage, through a scattering of wounded and dead fellow passengers. Of something wrong, something terrible blundering among the casualties. Then blackness. She had come to, unsure how long she had lost consciousness but it must have been many hours. There were now more dead around her than living and flies and carrion crows had begun their feast. Why were there no rescuers, no emergency services?
Somehow she had struggled to her feet and staggered around the smouldering wreck, hoping to find another survivor. Or a mobile phone to call for help. Her gorge rising, Constance rummaged through the flyblown corpses, pausing to be sick several times. Her search rewarded by four undamaged and unlocked phones with plenty of battery life…but no signal. She cursed, violently enough to raise the God-fearing dead around her. This was Wales, not the bloody North Pole. Lobbing the useless phones away in disgust, she sought out the front of the stricken coach and its driver…maybe he had one of those radio things, the CB radios so popular years ago.
The front of the coach was remarkably undamaged despite the long fall down a ravine. For the first time, she was aware just how far it had plummeted, the winding mountain road above barely visible and heavily screened by pines. She bellowed a desperate cry for help but the sound was lost, muffled by the dense cover of trees around the mountainside. Constance returned to her search and clambered up into the coach, now lying on its side, trying her best to avoid injury from the tangled metal and shattered glass.
She found the driver’s body slumped up against the front windscreen which had not shattered into blade-like shards like the coach windows. The force of the impact had crushed him, compressed his body into a crumpled mess of broken bones and misshapen, bloody flesh. Constance no longer felt nauseous at the sight of a grotesque body and pushed it over to look for a CB radio, surprised at her strength. The driver had been a big man in life, a considerable weight in death. She found nothing beyond another useless mobile phone and another mystery. The driver’s throat had been torn open, a ragged wound as if mauled by a raging beast. There was nothing close by to have created such a horrific injury, no twisted metal or shards of glass.
Wales did not have savage beasts unless you counted angry rugby fans when their national team lost badly. Constance paused, unwilling to leave the illusion of safety. Something had ripped that man’s throat open. Had that caused the crash? She could not remember anything. Some wild animal breaking into the coach would have still registered…the injury to her head was causing her mind to fog over. Why was she here? She should be at home. Where was home?
Something heavy and awkward moved at the back of the coach, pushing aside a pile of debris, its breath raspy and laboured. Constance threw herself out of the open door, landing heavily on her injured side. It did not hurt. Though winded, she scrambled to her feet, unwilling to be the thing’s next victim. Fear propelled her through the mangled debris, past sheets of twisted metal, picnic baskets, bodies bloodied and buzzing with flies. She headed for a narrow track through the forest, the going soft with a deep bed of pine needles that muffled her footsteps.
She could not pause to check if the beast pursued her, anxious to put as much distance as she could and find help or somewhere to hide. Walkers, birdwatchers, people walking their dogs…where were they? It was some sort of holiday weekend. The woods should be teeming with people. The municipal parks near her home would be. The track had brought her to the side of a hill where she found a narrow hiding place in the dark grey stone.
Hours had passed. Hunger pangs fogged her thinking. This was odd. Something terrifying was out there trying to rip out her throat and all she could think of was food. Standing up on her toes again, Constance drank more of the water. Her head wound no longer bled into the thin flow; it tasted bitter but less metallic. It also did nothing to curb her need for food. She remembered the tumble of wicker baskets at the crash site. All packed full of unused food; also the emergency teams must have reached there by now. The coach party would be missed; those passengers would have worried families and friends. Shuddering with the thought of spending a night in this hellish situation, she had to go back.
Her legs were stiff, not unexpected after standing so long in that narrow crevice. Constance lumbered awkwardly away from her makeshift sanctuary, her feet dragging through the forest floor’s deep, soft bed of pine needles. She would be easy prey for that beast now but she pushed the thought away. She had nowhere else to go but back to the crash site.
The numbness in her legs did not improve, she felt no pain, no sensation but had enough inner strength to keep going, driven on by the ever growing desperation for food. Indeed, she almost welcomed an attack by the beast. Anger within her built up alongside the hunger, anger at her own weakness and the time wasted hiding. Survivors did not cower, they fought back. Constance picked up a sturdy branch and carried it, ready to strike the unseen aggressor, spill its blood … hot, red and … Her mind clouded over again, as if blocking unbidden thoughts, dangerous thoughts that bordered on insanity.
Disappointment surged through her on reaching the coach. No one had come to rescue her. Nothing but a silence broken by the drone of dense black clouds of flies. Stumbling through the wreckage and its cargo, humans spilt and broken like overripe fruit, Constance seized the first picnic hamper, ripping it apart in a surge of strength. She threw aside unwanted plates, napkins, apples, grabbing a batch of sandwiches and ripping the foil open with her teeth. If this set her fillings on edge, she did not notice, her teeth sinking into the dried up bread and egg mayonnaise on the turn. Revolting. She spat it out with an irritated growl.
There were more lying among the bodies, already reeking after a day’s exposure to strong sunshine, that rare event, an August Bank Holiday that wasn’t ruined by rain. Constance found another basket, a sad, crumpled collection of sandwiches, fruit and smelly yoghurts. At least the sandwiches contained ham, paper thin and meagre in amount but it was meat. She discarded the bread and bolted down the ham, becoming frustrated. It did nothing to satisfy her cravings. The lack of sensation had spread beyond her legs and up to her waist. She was injured worse than she had realised. Food would help, proper food that stopped the need, so insistent now, it was filling her mind and body like a pounding drum. Making her forget. Forget so much.
By the time she had ransacked every hamper, knapsack and handbag, her haul of edible food … meat … yielded a pitiful and insubstantial amount, one that had done nothing to curb her body’s insistent demands. She had
attempted stuffing herself with bread but had promptly disgorged it, her body shuddering with revulsion. The same happened with liquids, even clean bottled water made her throw up. Her body needed something else. But what?
The lack of sensation had spread again. This time she was unafraid. It was not sickness, it was strength. Now she welcomed an attack from the creature in the wood. Let it come…she was ready. Constance bellowed a challenge towards the pine trees, a wordless roar that echoed through the eerie silence. A silence that remained when she had finished. If it would not come to her, then she would pursue it, show it she was not weak, that she was not helpless prey. Her limbs moved with more freedom though she could not feel them or the earth beneath her feet. She tore off her tattered shoes. One heel had already broken. They were a hindrance and she now could run back along the path with ease.
Smelling blood and sensing warmth, Constanc stalked the beast, easily following its trail. Something must have wounded it, for splatters and drips of now dried blood strewn the pine needles, gore-stained hand prints on tree trunks where it had rested. Every drop of lost blood would be weakening it…good. She wanted revenge for the earlier fear, the weakness when she was just ... Constanc ... Constan … She shook her head, hitting the injured side as if to restart her brain. She was aware her memory was going, her thoughts increasingly muddled and confused. This frightened her but then she heard a branch break close by and all fear was cast aside for hunger and the urge to hunt … to kill.