Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2012 - Issues 10 through 20

by Tanzer, Molly

What was Michael supposed to do now?

  He was terrified at the thought of stepping outside of the bus, but he couldn’t stay in here forever. For some reason, his mind went immediately to food. He didn’t pack a lunch today, and the fear that had settled in the pit of his stomach had eaten up his measly Pop Tart breakfast. Whether the hunger was real or imagined, Michael’s stomach growled. Why was he so hungry all of the sudden?

  Survive, Michael thought. He couldn’t explain why that word had popped into his mind, but there it was.

  He was in danger. His body had already come to this conclusion, and a growling stomach was his body’s way of sending that message to his brain. Now that his brain had finally received the message, it sent a critical question back to his body.

  How?

  A realization swept over him like a cold ocean wave. His cell phone! One call to his mom, and she would rush to school to pick him up. Forget the checkbook. She would be here in a heartbeat. Michael grabbed his phone, flipped to the call screen, and his breath caught in his throat.

  No signal.

  He tried dialing anyway, knowing full well that it was a pointless gesture. To his amazement, the phone started to ring on the other end. His call was going through! Michael heard a click as someone answered.

  “Mom?”

  The sound that came from the other end was terrifying. If Michael had been asked to describe the sound, he would have started with the word inhuman, but he would have stopped to correct himself. Inhuman didn’t do the sound justice.

  Instinctively, Michael threw his phone across the bus. It crashed through a window and landed on the pavement outside with a splintering crunch. Inwardly, Michael was relieved. Better to have a broken phone than to hear that sound again.

  Michael frowned. Something outside had changed, but what? He looked outside the window, and it struck him like a speeding car.

  Someone had turned on a light inside the school.

  Michael steeled himself. He had to move, and he had to move now. If he could get to the light, he would be safe. He couldn’t explain how or why he knew that, but he was absolutely sure that was the truth.

  If he could get to the light, he would survive.

  “Now,” Michael told himself, building up his courage. “Now!”

  Michael was on his feet and out of the bus. He raced across the sidewalk and slammed into the front doors of the school. He yanked on a door handle so hard that he nearly dislocated his shoulder, but the door didn’t budge. He tried another door, and another, but the result was the same each time.

  Locked. They were all locked.

  Michael pounded on the door, frantic.

  “Hey! Let me in! Let me in!”

  Deep inside the school, the light went out. Michael stopped banging on the door long enough to peer into the darkness.

  Something slithered down the hallway. It was too dark to see it clearly, but it was big. Monstrously big.

  Michael turned around, determined to head back to the bus, just in time to see the bus door close. He heard the engine roar to life and then slip into gear.

  Michael took one step forward and froze.

  The bus driver was back, perched in his seat, and he was staring down at Michael. The scowl was still in its usual place, but now there was something sinister behind it. Michael watched in horror as the bus driver’s eyes rolled out of their sockets and fell to the filthy bus floor. Small tentacles emerged from deep within the bus driver’s skull and wriggled out of the eye sockets. At the end of each tentacle was a tiny mouth full of razor sharp teeth.

  The tiny mouths were smiling at Michael.

  As the bus rolled away into the mist, Michael didn’t even try to follow. He stood paralyzed on the sidewalk in front of the school, unable to move, unable to even scream.

  A screech in the sky brought Michael back to his senses. He looked up and saw the shadowy outline of a creature gliding through the mist. Michael thought of hang glider videos he had seen online, how small they seemed compared to this thing flying overhead. Michael couldn’t make it out clearly, but he thought he could see broad, leathery wings, and a long scaly tail whipping back and forth behind the creature.

  Tears filled Michael’s eyes. His entire body began to tremble. Frantically, he looked all around, hoping and praying for an escape.

  Unbelievably, he saw his dad’s car rolling down the road that ran by the school.

  Dad was supposed to be away on a business trip in Utah or Florida or who knew where, but that was definitely his car. Michael’s mind was still reeling from the horrors he had seen, but his legs didn’t need his mind to tell them what to do.

  AS Michael blinked away his tears, he realized he was sprinting toward his dad’s car.

  “Dad! Dad!”

  The car stopped. The driver side window rolled down.

  “Michael?”

  At the sound of his dad’s voice, his REAL voice, Michael ran even faster.

  “Hurry, Michael,” his dad cried out. “Don’t look back!”

  Michael suddenly knew with absolute certainty that something was chasing after him. Maybe the slithering creature had escaped from the school, or maybe the giant flying bat-lizard nightmare was swooping down from above. Or maybe, just maybe, it was something he hadn’t seen yet. Maybe it was something much, much worse.

  Michael ran faster.

  “Hurry, Michael! Hurry!”

  The back driver side door opened. Michael couldn’t see inside, but it didn’t matter. The car was safe. His dad was safe. He had to make it to the car before the creature chasing him could catch up.

  He had to survive.

  He was panting now. A stitch had formed in his side. Every time he took a breath, it felt like someone was squeezing his lower ribs, trying to crack them. He closed his mouth in an attempt to to control his breathing.

  That’s when he heard the thing behind him, huffing, snarling, growling.

  Something was definitely chasing him, and it was getting closer.

  “Faster, Michael!”

  Michael dug deep down and did the impossible. He ran even faster, fueled by fear and pure adrenaline.

  The open car door before him got closer, closer, closer.

  The evil behind him got louder, louder, louder.

  “Jump!”

  Michael dove into the backseat. The car door slammed shut, and something rammed into the car so hard that Michael was afraid that the car would flip over.

  Michael’s dad threw the car into drive and slammed on the gas. Michael didn’t even consider sitting up to look at the thing that had almost caught him, almost… what? Eaten him alive? Tore him limb from limb?

  Michael took deep, gulping breaths. He waited until he was back in control of his body before he even tried to speak.

  “Dad, what’s going on?”

  Silence.

  “Dad?”

  “Relax, Michael,” his dad said. Something about his voice was different now. It sounded… wrong.

  Michael’s dad adjusted the rear view mirror. Reflected in the mirror, Michael saw his dad’s smile. Only it wasn’t his real smile.

  It was his pretend smile.

  His dad’s mouth opened impossibly wide. Michael stared, terrified, as one tiny tentacle slithered out of his dad’s throat. It was joined by a second, a third, a fourth. Michael wanted to look away, but he couldn’t, not while the tentacles continued to appear.

  Michael stared, helpless, as a wriggling, writhing mass wrapped around his father’s head and danced before Michael’s eyes. When the mouths at the end of each tentacle spoke to him in unison, Michael’s blood ran cold in his veins.

  “Everything’s going to be just fine.”

  Jerod Brennen is a multiplatform storyteller. A number of his horror screenplays have been produced as short films, playing at film festivals all around the world, and the first issue of his horror comic “Fragments” is available online at IndyPlanet. You can visit Jerod’s website for more information.

/>   Story illustration by Mike Dominic.

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  Starry… Yet…

  by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr

  [for Starry MoonBunny Wizdom]

  coda summer-hot street:

  lonely continent of skin.

  time, silhouetted by distance, trembling with incompleted gestures. missteps can’t erase . . . or halt . . . or turn. still a weapon too heavy to carry.

  no easy way or. sounds—city mortar. rank churns, breaks another mistake. hunger, result of bent tests crushed by indiscretions, arriving . . . a game waiting for a knock on the door . . . laughing elbowing laughing about the ROOMS FOR RENT sign . . .

  taxi drove slowly.

  set her shoulders. stride . . . Starry MoonBunny Wizdom (bus fare in her pocket) walks by without stumbling into goodnight.

  hands on the stoop lean in . . . even with liquor they stay away . . . sure she’s lovely, legs and eyes—lovely, captivating, even if they are dark, and that bust offering dreams from the low-cut black dress with the spaghetti straps. full. could bring joys . . . but she’s Her—Starry MoonBunny Wizdom. the witchy woman . . . spells and echoes of arcane hooves bathed in dead . . . all the rings, crystals, and bracelets and the jet-black chokers, with skulls and strange faces . . . she reads strange books like the ones on doom and Hell (all of them!) and witches and nightmares and weird words written long ago by men damned by god and goddamn strange music roars from her windows when the moon comes down. makes jazz noises, dark underground sounds filled with or jacked up on chemicals on her old piano . . . they would. like to. want her, every soft round part of silk and devil dancing. all night long, naked as feverish velvet color . . . but she’s dangerous. everyone ‘round here says so . . .

  And she’s friends with Him. Thomas. Not Tom. Not Tommy. Thomas. He reads too. A lot. Responds in strange ways when she gets close to his ear or window. Thomas. Dresses strange, like she does. Always wears those hats. The black ones. Never seen ‘im in a baseball cap. See him out and about all the time with Kyon and Nancy, they always wear all-black too, capes and shit—Goth, pagan stuff; all of them—like they’re triplets. Like they are from Further. Everyone say they went there. And came back from the edge where it states Here Be Dragons. Singing strange new songs, about idols and chains and void muttering about time and death that’s hungry and desperate. Speaking in strange new words. Long words. Broad. Hard for tongues to fathom. But they do.

  playing statue should siege let down its hair to score, Starry MoonBunny Wizdom slips into the business of the streetlight, waits on the corner for the bus. almost out of reach of the stoned glued to their hard. no place to hide.

  Jake says she smells like dust, hacks as he lights another bent cigarette from a crushed pack. Sam agrees. Agreed last week when Jake spat it into her wake. Did add, nice ass, but . . . Sam, even half-drunk, leaning into the tiger, says, no fuckin’ way. I’m not offering it to a crocodile. Ally was high, just a little crank, said she saw a little black dragon in her pocket. Swore to it. “Had red eyes and shit. Bitch’s full of witch-shit.” That’s what she said. “Probably fucks weird too. Starry MoonBunny Wizdom. Weirdass name. I heard she was a rockstar, or something . . . They all fuck weird.” Then she went inside and fucked Sam for 20 bucks and some dope.

  Ally put her shorts back on, hadn’t bothered to take off her t-shirt, or even lift it. Left Sam inside half-nodding. Sat back down on the stoop. Took a hit of the whiskey bottle Jack was backin’. “Bet she was a stripper or a porn star. You can tell by the tits, way she shows them off. Shakes her ass like it too.” Fuckin’ bitch. She opens her mouth for the same reason I do.

  sometimes they talk of poets when they pass the stoop . . . she does . . . poets whose mistress is the moon, poets who shouted “Louder!” at the moon. her poets . . . she trained them all . . . everyone knows it was her . . . took them up in her tower and gave them wine and stars and head-on to birth flashing with grapevines of requiem . . . downstairs in her shop she sells their hand-fashioned books . . . sells them with her skulls of bird and constructed things and wake-up dust, feathers, vessels, nails, wintergreen soap, and all the screaming black art shit—altar stuff and relics from the Old Places. Dracula lived there, so did other monsters, and Starry has herbs and hand-painted mirrors, and she’ll make you spells to fix your guts or your heart or your the-lonely-in-your-bedroom or how to get women or men or money or powerful things, read your fortune, read you all the way to Gone . . . some say she uses blood . . . drinks it too, or did . . . that’s what they say . . .

  Thomas knows it’s all true, knows what’s in her crystal ball. Starry is the Goddess herself, pure, awash in language-immortal—damn their disgusting persecutions. She’s fire’s hearth, the moon’s mouth. She’s an ornament of cherries and apples and mistletoe, Starry brews the seasons that feed the clouds. His heart tells him, has for a while now, moved his borders with her bushels of shine. Heart stuck on SOLD lassos him with starts. The aspirations. The way she smiles. The way she laughs and understands. She brought alive to his thin, soiled garden, kissed its knotted-mane with biscuits and jam. Basket-hands glowing gentle moments, with open eyes she’d agree to his skycastle and the sun would climb. No more storm-fraught identity chained to the headlights of shy he’s going to ask. Grabs gravity, holds tight to the ladder, his new avatar.

  another coda:

  club töln. silk. skin. serious. about things. all the studies, all the speech. all the concerts of barked occultations. close your windows lock ‘em tight as shit, it still comes through. like some heart. beat. earth solid as hell. can’t push it down. can’t step on it, heel it dead.

  black on black.

  reds.

  lipstick &

  corsets. some will give you back sight. a few should have stayed home.

  streaks to black. human. less.

  hair adheres to similarity.

  try this page.

  try this bottle.

  ghost-written working on nowhere with a lullaby in the empty corner light won’t navigate, not even for the promise of a tryst with aflame.

  a hub that know of death and are not ashamed by it stand beside drunk, turning away from his moment of distress.

  leather &

  bobbing heads.

  slim. bare backs. breasts, horizons of urges. some for her NOT YOU, faces weren’t shy with the clarity … redhead whose chest clocked-in at WOW terrorized a corpse-paint barbarian (at his worst) with one false move and you—

  a spilled beer on the bar. a street-curse follows it.

  necro dance—legend—1st-time eyes decree WFT—

  Mina tragedy—Lord Extremo “All beauty must die.”

  blood wake

  babe deathwolfCHRISTOS

  mode-paranormal

  distain-virus and moonspell

  theatre of body

  Du musst DARKNESS werden

  black necro black necro black shadows black blood

  Adrienne I’m your favorite icing. Location: Rhode Island DOB: 12/04/1986 Zodiac sign: Sagittarius Stats: 5’ 11” Hobbies/likes: the right stockings, cute animals, seasons, cities at night, philosophy, being careless, riffs on Warhol, books, David Lynch, cigarettes, “I like stupid, inked flesh-pots !” Occupation: Model/Dancer, painter Favorite Music: Depeche Mode, Bat For Lashes, Leonard Cohen, Hole, The Cure, Iggy, Krypteria Phobia: Heights Creed: I will if it’s interesting!

  midnight-ink makes all sculptures

  “please.” hungry child to the mouth and teeth of misadventure. DJ Blindlight spinning shadowy saint-music, etched punitive high-speed in the sweat beaming with flux. edges meet. form and reform. some make an awful shape, some delve deep.

  the uncensored species . . . ready (two leave to smoke a joint/two leave to fuck/one, bored as shit, just leaves. she’s got a gallon of ice cream and her cat at home. she’ll spit murder when Sleepless In Seattle is all that’s on, but) if they didn’t have to take off the disguise and confess . . .

  what act
ually happened:

  Patient #1 Roger O: Saw her with him. Talking, drinking. They were close, like any other couple. You could see how they felt about each other . . . The shitheads at the bar staring at them were full of disgust, jealous as hell was more like it. I could hear them. Muttering threats. Kick his ass. Rape her? Sounded like they meant it. Looked like it too. Scared me . . . Did I say they were close. Swaying a bit. Not dancing, but like it. Anne, the chic I was there with, said they should get a fucking room. Like that. Ya’know?

  Patient #2 Nancy F: They were so cute together. It wasn’t them. The predators at the bar started it. Rill, I don’t know his real name, one of your officers took him into custody, he told his weasely, little flunky he wanted to sniff and extract her efforts. They shouted a couple of things at them. Nasty things. Thomas didn’t like her being disrespected. And the black metalers never got along well with those of us who have gentler spirits. Add drinking; add maybe some chemicals, things got messy.

  Witness Kyon P: It was their first real date. They didn’t do anything wrong. You have laws for self-defense, right? That’s all it was.

  Witness Michael D: The metalhead guy pulled a blade. Cut the poor kid—blood, man. Thought his guts were gonna pop out—never had a chance. Not that he looked like a fighter. Then the woman just . . . Freaked. Fuck. She was . . . Appalled, pissed too. Just went like nuts. She turned, changed. Her hand did something. Looked like a tentacle, not a hand on an arm. Arm had—blades on it. You know how the suckers on tentacles are? Change them to little blades, like that. Fuck. Whipped out. Dead just like that. Slashed to shit in a sec. Pieces were on the floor . . . I’m not that drunk. Only had a few.

  Patient #2 Nancy F: There was a lot of smoke, or something like it. Like fog. It was hard to see clearly. It wasn’t from a fog machine. I don’t think it was. It was all so hard to see. He had a knife and cut Thomas. Starry screamed, lot of people did. Then there was all the smoke and the tentacle-things, and blood everywhere. It was so fast . . . People were standing there, shocked, but . . . You’re trying to detail incomprehensible . . . I just can’t give you a rational account of what happened.