The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction - July/August 2016

by Various

  When we got to the farm, Ma hadn't budged from where I had left her on the Mount Rushmore pillow. Doc checked her eyes, listened to her chest, held her hand.

  "She's had spells before," I told him, "but never like this."

  "Help me, Audrey," he said, and we got her up and onto her bed.

  "Is she gonna be okay, Doc?"

  "Her heart sounds good, her temperature is normal. Her breathing is a little shallow, but not dangerously so. Has she been working hard lately?"

  "Been painting pretty much nonstop."

  "Then it's likely she's suffering from simple exhaustion." He removed a muddy brown bottle from his bag. "I'm going to give her a sedative so she sleeps through the night, and then first thing in the morning I'll come back and check on her."

  "In the morning?"

  He smiled like doctors do. "She'll be fine, Audrey. All she needs is rest."

  Doc left then, although I wish he would have stayed longer. Like the rest of the night. I'm ashamed to say I was afraid to be in the house with my own ma. I ran upstairs and hid in my room. Shut the door tight as a nut. Got into bed and pulled the covers up to my chin.

  My thoughts rolled back to the Three-Armed Man. The killer man. The gun hand. Said he'll be coming for me at dawn. Gonna run out on his trial. Go find the oceans blue. What if he wants to kill me, too? I can't leave Ma behind, can I? Doc said she was gonna be okay. He'll be here in the morning. But where will I be?

  Guess I wore myself out worrying because sleep found me long before I thought it would.

  Later on, I wasn't sleeping. Wasn't one of those wake-ups that happen slowly, peacefully, naturally. Woke up for a reason. Didn't get up right away, just lay there with my eyes wide and my heart wondering.

  It was light out. Had I slept that long? Was it morning already? How could that be?

  If it was morning, the roosters would have clued me in.

  Was Three-Arm ready to take me away? Shining a flashlight in my window? A signal to start our new life?

  I crawled out of bed and went to the window.

  It was still full-on night, except for the golden light that was emanatin' from behind the barn. Almost like a halo over the barn roof. Made the rooster weather vane look like the real thing.

  I went downstairs. Ma was right where we had left her. She hadn't budged a bit, was snoring lightly now.

  I walked across the farmyard, wet clover poking between my toes.

  I hesitated when I reached the corner of the barn, afraid of what I would find on the other side. Afraid of what I would find inside myself.

  I poked my head around.

  Ma's paints and brushes were scattered everywhere, as if her brush had been in a frenzy.

  I made a wide circle as I came around so I could see what she had wrought.

  Dropped to my knees at the sight, my eyes watery with wonder. It was mind-jiggering. It was heart-attacking. It was the greatest mural ever. No wonder she was exhausted.

  Ma had painted over all her other murals. Replaced them with one giant super-mural. Only it didn't look anything like her other murals. It wasn't a mural, it was a world. It was a maze. A maze of corn. Endless rings of cornstalks, each one smaller than the last, nested inside one another like the hypnotism spirals I saw a magician use at the County Fair.

  I felt mesmerized by it. I felt drawn to it. I felt like it was calling my name.

  I approached the mural. Reached out for it. The paint didn't even look dry. No, that was wrong. It's not that it didn't look dry, it didn't look like paint at all. It almost looked alive.

  I reached out.…

  And I fell in.…

  Or maybe the mural fell into me. That might be a better way to write it.

  It wasn't night anymore. The sun was high and the air cried summer.

  I was in the green maze, ripening corn rising far past my shoulders. I followed the path, the circle, deeper into the maze. Deep enough that I couldn't see a way in or a way out. There was only one way. I had run into the corn rows before and lost myself, found the exit by following the sun. But I couldn't see the sun here. All I could see was corn. It sucked in everything, the same way it got me. Just a hole that grabbed everything it could. Like quicksand that was alive.

  I felt like something was being stripped away from me. From inside. Like something was being unwound. I don't know if that's the right way to explain it. I couldn't explain it. It was just one of those feelings without a name.

  The air grew stovepipe hot and the cornstalks wilted. I kept going, deeper and deeper into the maze, until all of a sudden I got the feeling that I wasn't alone.

  At first I thought it was just a lost breeze playing with the cornstalks, or me muttering to myself, then I realized that someone was calling my name.

  "Audreeee.… Audreeeee.…"

  I tried to follow the voice. Couldn't tell where it was coming from. Every which way. I pushed ahead.

  "Where are youuuu.…"

  Boy, it was hot.

  "Wait for meeeeee.…"

  Then the voice seemed to shrink and go away, like a puddle on a two-popsicle day.

  How hot was it? I began hallucinatin'. I saw the cornstalks as arms—thin, freckled, familiar arms.

  Took me back to that first mural, the original mural, the mural where all this began, my life before I met up with that durned combine. A maze, a circle, a world.

  Drunk in the sun, seeing things, I whirled and stumbled and panicked and pinballed, and suddenly, somehow, there I was back behind the barn again.

  I felt dizzy in the head. Didn't remember much of anything. Had I got lost in the field? Stroked by the sun? Knocked off my bike?

  I weaved back around to the farmyard. Where was Ma? My stomach felt like I had gone on the Zipper ride right after Sunday dinner. I cupped my hands to my mouth and called out her name. Didn't think there was anything peculiar about it at the time.

  I crossed the yard to the house. Was meaning to go in and look for Ma but an Amber White, one of our best egg-layers, had wandered out into the middle of our rural route. Her sister had gotten run over by the mailman last month. My mother-hen instincts came through again.

  I ran over to the road, clapped my hands, making a brittle, dry sound, and shooed her back to the safety of the yard.

  Clapped my hands!

  Who doesn't!

  I felt the motorcade before I saw it.

  Just a little trembling beneath my feet.

  I waited, saw the dust cloud, then the cars.

  Speeding hooky-fast down our little lane. What were they doing? Where were they going? I worried about the neighbor dogs, those wanderin', poker-playin' souls. And my chickens.

  The caravan approached, the dark cars of the day, kicking up dirty clouds as they rolled, passing by me in a thunder line.

  Ma had painted Vishnu to warn me, painted the corn maze to protect me.

  In the rear window of a car in the middle of the pack, I saw a man wearing a red scarf, turning his head to look back at me.

  I hesitated, then took a deep breath…and yanked off my left arm.

  His eyes met mine, moved over to my missing arm. He smiled in a quiet, amused way, waved, then turned back to the road ahead. The rest of the motorcade tore by, a monster cloud of gravel dust sweeping over me, a big swirl of darkness blocking out the day. I bowed my head and dropped to my knees. I could feel the grit in my teeth.

  As the sun broke upon me again, I stood.

  There was a dry-looking cornstalk at my feet, the tassels like long fingers.

  The dust from the motorcade lingered in the road. I ran through the ditch and back into the yard, finding my bike on the ground by the pump house. I used my feet to start it rolling, got my balance, then pedaled up the driveway to the road and followed that big ol' dust cloud all the way into town.

  * * *

  The Thing on the Shelf

  By David Gerrold | 15149 words

  We've been sitting on this story for a while, waiting for a
special occasion to share it with you. That occasion has arrived and we'll tell you about it at the end of the story.

  David Gerrold informs us that "The Thing On The Shelf" is a grateful homage to the Horror Writers Association. "In 2013, they handed me a Stoker award for 'Night Train To Paris'," he writes. "It's a beautiful trophy, designed by Harlan Ellison and artist Steven Kirk. It's in the shape of a haunted house, with various eldritch horrors creeping up its sides. While I was admiring the exquisite detail work, I began to suspect that this weird little mansion might actually be haunted. After that, the story was inevitable."

  DEAR GORDON,

  Here's my report on what happened at the World Horror Convention. And afterward.

  To be honest, I'm not sure why you wanted me to write a report on it. I've never been to a horror convention. I wouldn't know what to look for, let alone what to say.

  You do know I'm trying to lose weight, don't you? I keep a spreadsheet to track my progress. I weigh myself every morning and the spreadsheet does its stuff and tells me how much I've lost, how much I still have to lose, how many days more to reach my target, and that my moving average loss is a tenth of a pound per day, or usually just a smidge less. I'm surviving on soup, salad, and tuna sandwiches. It's frustrating as hell because I'm determined to get my weight down far enough that I no longer have to shop at Big, Tall, and Grotesque.

  The reason I do not want to attend a convention—any convention—is simple. It disrupts my progress. Even a three-day weekend at a convention will trigger a gain of three pounds. A five-day convention, five pounds. Even if I make a rigorous effort to stay on my diet—skipping meals, only ordering salads—I still gain weight.

  I can only assume I'm living inside some kind of transmetabolic morphic field. The farther I travel from my metabolic center, the more mass I accumulate. Something about a rolling scone going straight to my ass. I'd prefer to stay home, resting comfortably on the aforementioned glutei, and write.

  Which is why I found your suggestion that I attend the World Horror Convention so puzzling. It appeared to come out of nowhere. Have you been talking to Dr. Morgan behind my back again?

  But as it happened, I did have an incentive to attend. Somehow, that little adventure I had on the night train to Paris—and the story I wrote about it—had found a place on the final ballot for the Bram Stoker Award, the Hugo of horror.

  I don't have much experience winning awards. I have a lot more experience saying it's an honor just to be nominated, but I usually end up at the award ceremonies anyway, because if something of mine ever does snag a trophy, I'd be really annoyed with myself if I weren't there to pick it up in person.

  Besides, I have a friend in the area. Dennis had moved to Portland from Seattle. I hadn't seen him since the last misadventure, the one we don't talk about anymore. I could spend a couple of days with him. He'd pretend to be happy to see me. Dennis is one of the few people I know who can talk enlightenment and mean it, so the trip wouldn't be a total loss. I could justify the effort.

  Anyway, that's how I motivated myself. I grabbed the laptop, found some clean underwear, threw a pair of socks and some black shirts into the suitcase, gassed up the car, and pointed it north toward Portland. But before I even turned the key in the ignition, I knew I was heading for a weird weekend. Portland? Really?

  There are two things you have to know about this trip.

  First, the fact that I packed socks should prove I intended to be serious about this event. I haven't worn socks since my mother's funeral, and that was under protest.

  Second, even though it's a fourteen-hour drive, that's still better than an hour drive to the airport, an hour spent going through security, another hour waiting for the flight to board (if there are no delays), three hours bouncing around the sky in a seat that would be too cramped even for Peter Dinklage, and another hour on the ground waiting for luggage to survive the conveyor-belt trip to the baggage claim. And, in this case, not being a guest of the convention, the added expense and hassle of renting a car. I'm not even going to mention what passes for in-flight food service.

  Fly? No thanks.

  If I drive, I can pace myself. I can pick my own snacks, I can eat food that won't kill me at restaurants that Yelp users have survived long enough to post a review, and mostly, I can set the cruise control and listen to all the music I want—as loud as I want.

  Usually, I go with show tunes. I can sing along without the embarrassment of alarmed neighbors knocking on the door. After a few hundred miles, I will have murdered The Lion King, Cabaret, Man of La Mancha, and Annie. (Yes, Annie. So what? Everyone has their own dark secrets. The trick is to own them.)

  But this trip I decided to do something different. Perhaps that was a bad idea. I chose thematic collections of Bernard Herrman, Max Steiner, and Michael Hoenig. Not exactly the most cheerful and upbeat accompaniment. Departure from the Northern Wasteland (Michael Hoenig) includes the howling of hungry wolves as a thematic counterpoint.

  And yes, before you ask, yes, I did stay on I-5 the whole drive. No more adventures on back roads. Not after what happened last time. (Although the business loop through Dunsmuir looking for a restaurant was a little disturbing, but that's another story.)

  California is called "the Golden State" because there's nothing green south of Sacramento. It's all brown and yellow. If there are trees in Los Angeles, they're either palms from Hawaii or eucalypti from Australia.

  There are no real trees native to Southern California, only imposters and shrubs with delusions of grandeur. It isn't until you get far enough north that you start to see real trees—oaks and pines and even the occasional willow. Right there, the feeling of unease starts to settle in. Green is not a familiar color to me. Or to anyone from south of Santa Barbara.

  The farther north you go, the worse it gets. After green, there are other colors that defy easy description. You can call them green, but they're darker, deeper, and suggestive of things going thump in the knight—like armor-piercing arrows going thump into the rib cage of the knight.

  Gordon, you've known me for a long time. You know I can tell the difference between delusions and reality. Reality is the stuff that everybody agrees on—except not always, because sometimes there are things that only a few people can perceive. Like tetrachromats—people with four kinds of cones in their eyes instead of three—they see colors that the rest of us mere mortals can't. What if there are other senses that only a few people have? The one-eyed man in the country of the blind? Not a king, just insane.

  No, I'm not claiming any kind of extra-sensory-perception ability, but sometimes I get feelings. And when I don't listen to my feelings, I usually end up paying a price.

  That's the point. I've always felt that there's something strange going on in the northwest corner of this continent. Like those green man sightings I told you about a couple years back—and before you ask, yes, I am staying on my meds, and the doctor gave me permission to skip my regular meeting and go to the convention—but just the same, putting my own concerns aside, what if there really is something strange going on in the northwest corner of this continent? Personally, I think Portland might be the local focus.

  We already know there's an east-to-west psychological incline. It's been tracked and measured in several independent and peer-reviewed studies. All the crazies roll westward, most of them piling up against the Rocky Mountains like tumbleweeds against a fence. They settle in Colorado—either Boulder or Colorado Springs. But the ones who are really determined, the ones who are crazy enough to build up serious momentum, they're rolling fast enough and hard enough to get over the Rocky Mountains. They keep going until they hit the Pacific—and that explains Venice Beach, Santa Monica, Malibu, and most of San Francisco. For the longest time, you couldn't find anyone in any of those cities who'd actually been born in California. It's still a rarity.

  I don't have a lot of experience with either Seattle or Portland, but the few times I've been to either city, I've had the same f
eeling—that the tumbleweeds of eccentricity are piling up here. Seattle feels like the place where the '60s went to die. If that's true, then Portland is the place where the '60s have joined the undead, still staggering around like a confused zombie in search of the last uneaten brain.

  This cultural chronosynclastic infundibulum, this refusal to be buried under the avalanche of Velveeta-processed corporatism, is probably the reason why Portland has so many unique and marvelous restaurants— and Powell's Books, one of the last great bookstores on the left coast of the continent. Powell's may be the best justifications for any trip to Portland. (Incidentally, Powell's is expanding ! So there's a lot to be said for a city that can still support a store that sells printed books.) You don't need to file a missing-person report in Portland, just go to Powell's to find your lost genre fan.

  But.…

  Somewhere in the middle of Oregon, where you actually start seeing signs that tell you how far it is to Portland, that's when you begin to feel it.

  The change.

  That's what I call it, anyway.

  It's a warm chill at the back of the neck. Yeah, I know that doesn't make sense. You have to experience it to undestand. Maybe it has something to do with the weather. The closer you approach, the gloomier the world becomes. Somewhere past Eugene, California's puffy white marshmallow clouds give way to Oregon's overhanging gray curtain. It's a permanent thing.

  Nobody in the northern half of the state has ever seen the sun. Sometimes at a gas station, if they notice you have a California license plate they'll stop you to ask if there really is such a thing as the sun in the sky. Then they'll ask you to describe it, but the more you try the more you get looks of puzzlement and confusion in return.

  Portland itself is a city that hasn't yet decided what it wants to be when it grows up. It's all rivers and bridges and highways, oversized and mismatched, all of which appear to go everywhere but where you want to go. Any trip longer than two miles, you have to get on a freeway and drive over a bridge.