Damned Lies!

by Dennis Liggio

  Can Dane and Abby brave the dangers and the strangeness to save the city of New Avalon? Find out in Manic Monday!

  The Case of the Dead Girl in my Apartment

  When Jake arrives home to find his not-quite-girlfriend Melody murdered in his apartment, things seem like they couldn't get any worse. But when the killer, a ferocious man turned monster, is still there and looking for something of Melody's, Jake fights for his life, just barely getting out of the apartment to safety. Now he's on the hook for the murder of Melody. To clear his name, his college friends put together a reluctant Mystery Gang: Anna, the mystery-obsessed Criminal Justice Major; Eva, Jake's best friend and escapee from New Avalon's high society; Nathan, cynical Philosophy Major; and Thomas, the weird Physics grad student from across town. Together they investigate the murder and the object they murderer was looking for, stumbling onto something bigger and stranger than they ever imagined. Monsters, memory wipes, magic, men in black, and a secret war of Good versus Evil for the fate of the city and possibly the world. Mysteries have never been this strange.

  The Lost and the Damned

  There is a darkness waking up in the Bellingham mental hospital. Around this evil, the building is twisting and distorting, becoming a place of monsters and murders. With each death, the darkness grows stronger. Doors are opening to other times and other places, reality is shifting.

  Into this comes John Keats, a private detective more accustomed to catching infidelity than missing persons. In pursuit of a half a million dollar bounty, he has tracked down missing rock star Katie Vanders to Bellingham, but he has no idea what waits inside. It should have been easy money: go in, get the girl, and leave. But now that he is in the hospital, he has no way out. The exits are blocked, the hospital is falling apart, and something is chasing him. Even after finding Katie, there is no escape from this trap. His rescue mission has become a game of survival as the hospital twists apart across time and space.

  As deadly secrets are uncovered, a malevolent intelligence is awakening. Can John and Katie figure out how to stop it and escape the hospital, or will they find themselves forever lost in darkness?

  Voices of Madness

  Compelled by screaming voices, sorcerer William Drake travels across America in a desperate attempt to free himself from his misery. But the end of his pain may mean the resurrection of a god long banished from our world. Ripped apart and trapped, this god has gone mad over the centuries.

  As Drake carries out his plans, there is collateral damage. People die, prized possessions are stolen, vengeance is sworn. His actions disrupt the lives of four unlikely heroes who band together in an awkward alliance to stop him. Armchair occultist, Taoist exorcist, college dropout, and punk rock musician - they are a strange set of companions, but they're all that stand between Drake and the mad god.

  Will these four heroes stop Drake in time? Or will the voices spur Drake on to the resurrection of a cosmic madness?

  Cowards and Killers

  "In the end, most of humanity are one of two things: cowards or killers."

  When Michael died, there was no eternal rest waiting for him. He woke up in his own bed and started receiving calls from a mysterious voice. That voice has a deal for him: become their assassin and kill the targets they ask him to. Refuse and they'll remove the power that keeps him in the world... and he'll go straight to Hell, as was intended after he died.

  He accepts their deal but never stops hating himself for accepting. In a black suit that conceals his identity and a black gun that never runs out of bullets, he kills when they tell him to do. However, he is not alone; there are other agents with the same dilemma. They all get calls from the voice and must kill their targets before the timer winds down.

  But Michael won't accept his fate. Together with another agent, he plots to rebel against the voice and the deal. But can they really fight against their fate when the voice holds all the cards? With each kill, their humanity is slipping away. Is there a way to escape this dilemma, or do all roads lead to Hell?

  Cthulhu, Private Investigator

  Cthulhu's partner, Dagon, has been found floating dead in the water at the docks. The Elder Gods have given him three days to find Dagon's killer, or Cthulhu is going to take the fall for it. Starting on the trail of a femme fatale that had hired Dagon, Cthulhu begins searching for the Pnakotic manuscripts and finds himself on everyone's hitlist. Navigating a web of lies and betrayal, he becomes involved with a rogue's gallery of untrustworthy Old Ones who are after the coveted Silver Key. As things hurtle towards their inevitable confusion, he discovers to what deadly lengths the others will go to obtain the Key.

  Excerpt from Damned Lies Strike Back

  Home Sweet Home

  Present Day

  The walls were bleeding.

  I arrived home from the hospital to discover that the walls of my apartment were bleeding. The walls didn't exactly gush blood all over or squirt with great force like an arterial spray, but the blood did drip down the walls pretty consistently. I wasn't at risk of drowning in blood at any point, but my carpet was ruined and I wasn't getting my deposit back.

  Though my carpet was stained, I didn't think it was real blood. For one thing, it lacked any smell. For all the blood that had spilled from my walls, it should have smelled like a charnel house, but honestly the apartment didn't smell different than usual. An apartment stinking of blood would have been a deal breaker and I would have had to vacate the apartment immediately. But without smell, the blood was more of an annoyance. It certainly didn't scare me.

  Also, the blood was thicker than I'd expect. I admit that I don't have a ton of experience with blood, knowing mostly my own, the few splatters I've caused to come out of my enemies, and the thin blood in frozen packets of meat from the supermarket. But this wall blood seemed off. It was thick like jam, maybe a good strawberry jam. Unfortunately, it didn't taste like strawberry jam - something I learned to my dismay. When I tasted it, I found it was very salty, like a salty jam. It was also then that I wondered if I should get myself tested for diseases transmitted by blood. What a story that would be, huh? "Yes, I have vampirism. I caught it through blood to blood contact with my wall."

  The living room was the worst offender for blood. The walls bled at random spots all through the apartment, but most of it was coming from a particular wall in the living room. Written on that wall in bloody gashes was: YOU WILL DIE SOON. Each of those letters was bleeding profusely. I moved some furniture and put down some towels to sop up that blood, but the living room looked to be permanently stained.

  For those keeping track, there had been two attempts on my life recently. So I wasn't really sure if that bloody statement on my wall was a statement of fact, a warning, or a prophecy. If it was a prophecy, I wondered if changing the words would change the prophecy. I was pretty sure I could take a knife and carve a T into that sentence. YOU WILL DIET SOON would be far less scary, and I'd then think the bleeding walls were just nagging me to get into better shape. My apartment sees me naked most often, so I guess it knows best how out of shape I am. I didn't think I was that out of shape, but I guess my apartment knows best.

  It was when I picked up the kitchen knife to scratch in that T that more paranormal activity occurred. Cabinets opened and closed themselves. My laundry hamper spit out all of its clothes onto the bedroom floor. The wall behind my bed seemed to now be made of jelly or something similarly soft, as random limbs kept reaching through it, groping blindly at my pillows.

  When I entered the kitchen, the lid of the cookie jar flew off and a cookie flung itself at me. Luckily I caught the cookie in my hand and seconds later discovered that ghost-propelled chocolate chip cookies were still delicious. I wondered if we could find a way to implement and market ghost-propelled cookie jars. The convenience factor was off the charts. Want a cookie? "Ghost, cookie me!" A cookie would fly towards you, dripping with malice, and you could pluck it from the air to feed your face. Luckily, as I had just found out, malice has
no adverse effects on taste.

  I admit that I had no idea if it truly was a ghost that was causing these issues. You might ask, "Are you serious? Your walls are bleeding, a threat was carved into your wall, your cabinets are opening and closing, arms are reaching through your walls, and someone just threw a cookie at you, how could your apartment not be haunted?"

  Dear Reader, I am not disputing any of these claims, only the cause. A lifetime of television, movies, and strange life shit has honed my mind into a sharpened piece of reasoning apparatus. Ghosts are just one of the possible causes of these phenomena. Other such causes include, but are not limited to, the following: poltergeists, psychic children, magic, aliens, hallucinatory drugs, an alternate dimension analog of my apartment, a Hollywood special effects team, intergalactic space wizards, LASERS, ninjas, demons, vengeful deities, mischievous deities, uncaring impersonal but very clumsy and unapologetic deities, Silent Hill, that little kid from the Twilight Zone, Old Scratch himself, a curse, trapped spirits and/or demons, a building with hemophilia that cuts itself, one really really pissed ex girlfriend, a dimensional portal to Hell, an erection lasting more than four hours, a manifestation of a horror movie into the real world caused by a djinn or other bad wishing, fever dreams, a sentient building, Bizarro Elvis, the Antichrist, the Best Little Demonic Whorehouse in Texas, mental illness, brain damage, living downstairs from a cut-rate blood bank, a vision from God, or even a cursed sword.

  I pulled up my floorboard and checked my cursed sword. It was secure. It was sheathed, the straps clasped, covered in oilcloth, and its box tightly locked. That was one thing off the list.

  I looked out the window and noticed my normally pleasant view of downtown Austin was covered in flames. Not a gigantic dark plume of smoke that would occur if the city was actually on fire or a bomb had occurred. No, this is more if Austin existed in Hell. Every building was covered with roaring flames, the sky was full of red rolling clouds, and Town Lake was now full of boiling blood. I'm sure if I pulled out some binoculars, I could see the souls of the tormented or the demonic employees of Hell, but I wasn't that interested in accuracy or attention to detail.

  I opened the glass doors to my porch and hobbled outside. I had broken my leg in my car accident and was in traction for weeks. My leg got out of traction a week ago, and my doctor was amazed at the progress my healing has taken. There's a reason for that, but none that I could tell my doctor, and none that I could tell you without a long story. Suffice to say, I heal very quickly. Because my leg was improving so much, I managed to be sent home with only a cane to use, rather than the typical crutches. My leg was still in a cast, so I hobbled everywhere I went.

  From my porch I could actually hear the cries of the damned echoing from downtown and it wasn't even Saturday night. I chewed my cookie for a minute as I contemplated my new view. I returned to my apartment and decided to go ask a neighbor if they also had a picturesque view of Hell. When I stepped outside my apartment, I noticed that there were no screams of the damned. I very slowly hobbled downstairs and around the side of the building to where my window faced. Downtown looked how it usually does: non-fiery, sparse, and photo-worthy. I climbed back up to my apartment and was greeted with the same fiery view of downtown Hell. It was a neat trick, at least.

  My phone rang.

  "How do you like your apartment?" said the voice at the other end.

  It was my clone. He had recently started trying to kill me again after a twenty year hiatus. No reason had been given other than a cryptic note about killing me to help usher in the apocalypse. Not really an explanation I put a lot of stock in, but with bleeding walls, I was willing to be a little more open minded about his supernatural affiliations.

  "So I'm guessing you had something to do with this," I said. "I admit it's a really good prank, but it's still just a prank."

  "A prank?" he said, offended.

  "Well, I'll admit I'm not quite sure how you did it, but it does seem kind of weak. It's shocking, but it's not really dangerous. Not unless you have somebody hidden in the closet with an axe. Is there an axe murderer in the closet?" I opened the closet. "Nope, just my old clothes and a sleeping bag."

  "Aren't you scared?" he asked.

  "Why? I mean, I'm scared of losing my apartment deposit, but other than that it's not scary. Yes, it looks freaky, but it can't hurt me. It's all more inconvenient than dangerous. So far the biggest danger is getting hit by a cookie I didn't catch."

  "What? Getting hit by a cookie?" My clone was confused.

  "Oh yeah, the ghost or whatever is doing this threw a cookie at me from the jar. But I caught the cookie and just ate it."

  "That's actually pretty cool," admitted my clone.

  "I know! I was thinking we should find a way to market that! Ghost powered cookie jars are an untapped market."

  "Wait, wait, wait, let's get back to the matter at hand. I want you dead. We can't go marketing stuff together. You have to die for the ritual."

  "What ritual is that?" I asked.

  "Oh no, it's not going to be that easy for you," he said. "I'm not even going to be tempted to give a villainous monologue until you are in my clutches and I have some sort of classic death trap counting down. There can't be a possible way you would escape such a thing!"

  Clearly there had been some degradation in my clone's brain functions over the years. Or too many Bond films. Admittedly, it could be both.

  "You want to kill me," I reasoned. "Surely a condemned man gets to know the reason why."

  "Let's just call it revenge," he said. "Or unpaid debts. Or just that this world isn't big enough for two of us."

  "It used to be," I suggested. "It's been nearly twenty years. Why now?"

  "Things change," he said with a smile I could hear. Then he hung up.

  I sighed heavily and decided I needed something to eat. I hobbled back into the kitchen and grabbed a cookie that streaked towards my face and chewed on that while I made a sandwich. The mayo in the fridge had turned rancid, though I wasn't sure if that was paranormal corruption or simply due to my long stay in the hospital. The ketchup was fine though.

  As I chomped on my sandwich at the kitchen table while my cabinets furiously opened and closed themselves to try to get my attention, I realized I needed to call Bruce. This clone problem was just not going to go away. It was time to go on the offensive. And for that, we needed answers.

  Continued in Damned Lies Strike Back available now!

  Footnotes

  [1] It's not really guiltless. We're talking social guilt. To an external watcher or a live studio audience, you are still "in the right". Not guiltless in the way that there's still a dark, cold spot deep within you for the things you do, waiting to catch up to you and making you drink alone late at night.

  [2] Nobody knows why. The universe has many mysteries.

  [3] I did in fact discover I had an evil twin who went to my high school, but he was not the same as a clone, kind of a dick, and a story for another time.

  [4] Alas, that is a story for another time.

  [5] She wasn't.

  [6] I was actually hoping he’d kill Marina, that bitch had it coming.

  [7] Mexico’s hobos have their own system, so the “Protector of Mexico” has been dropped from American emperors.

  [8] Whether it's the Omega Man or Planet of the Apes, I still get to be Chuck Heston, so that's win-win for me.

  [9] “When’s the baby due, and will it come out a fan of Budweiser, or will you have to wean it onto Bud?”

  [10] “Do they make retail pants to make such a huge plumber’s crack, or do you have them custom made?”

  [11] The appropriate amount = when you think it’s too much

  [12] I checked with the waitress, I wasn't.

  [13] Unless we were dealing with Vampire Bach. I asked Sister Nancy this, but she rolled her eyes and shook her head before telling me to be quiet.

  [14] In about a year or so, I'd realize that zombies were going to be an easy
thing to check off.

  [15] Cerebratarians, to be technical.

  [16] Science!

  [17] Okay, science people, I admit for a scientific method, I would need to replicate my results. But I prefer to leave that for peer review.

  For those who are more science minded, add this line:

  I turned around and brandished my axe at the other zombies. "It's time for Peer Review, bitches!"

  [18] In half, that is, for our less classy readers.

  [19] Check the footnotes.

  [20] Ladies, I have no idea if a similar thing happens in your ovaries. If not, you'll just to imagine this feeling.

  [21] Metaphorically. I'm sure the nurses would have noticed if it actually was cold and I had transformed into some sort of lizard.

  [22] With far less embellishments than me, I might add, which I have to say was a much less entertaining story.