The light from the trailer shone down on the ancient friends. To the uninitiated, out here in the wash of high moonlight, it would seem as though two very old men were standing admiring the abundance of stars in the southern California night. It would take a closer inspection to realize the condition of the thinner man, the pallor of his face and his leathery sunken looks, the cobalt dead-fly stare of his open eyes.
Brother Ed had never really gone to rot. Sure he was an 105 year old corpse, his flagging skin had peeled pretty much to leather and what hair remained on the man’s head, though unusually thick and shiny given the state he was in (dead) grew to the consistency of straw. But his body was so well preserved one would believe the man was just recently deceased. True, Ed had been embalmed but still a body would never keep as well as Ed had if not for some other element in the mix … mainly the mojo of Mama Bell’s spell those many years ago. The old half-gypsy woman truly was determined to have Joshua McKinney wander the backwoods and alleyways searching, so his body had stayed pretty much intact.
“Give a look,” The Wizard said standing then with Brother Ed at his bathroom window.
Through it they could see the bathroom door, left ajar by The Wizard only a half hour before. Beyond the doorway, lying on the bed, tied and gagged, lay a brown-skinned girl, naked save for the red bandana The Wizard had bade her wear after he paid her the requisite hundred dollars for what the waitress assumed would be this old man’s quick fun.
Jeanne was not a working girl, far from it, but she’d let an ancient harmless man have his way if he bought her dinner (which he had), drove her around all night to bars and friend’s houses (which he had) and begged her enough, for one hundred dollars, to “just strip and let an old man feast his eyes on what he used to be able to put his hands on.” Sure, she’d tie the bandana around her neck; fuck, Jimmy had never been this polite or sweet and he had taken a lot more off her, that’s for sure! Maybe this was even a way she could make some extra cash, the guy seemed to have enough of it and truth be told she had always fancied herself pretty enough to be a model … Christ she had the tits for it and hers were at least real!
What the seventeen year-old girl did not count on though was the old man’s agility and his damn quick way with ropes!
* * * *
In the second decade of the new century a carnival such as Preeson’s never stayed in one place too long. The stories about the odd man in the box and the ladies who met him retreated like so much locomotive steam as the popular carnival jumped from town to town. Business was good, as good as could be expected with movies an all-too-new and all-too-present-booming entertainment.
Counting ragged receipts was one thing for the prematurely graying magician, but it wasn’t long until he tired of procuring lovelies for Ed. Of all things the carnie owner was jealous, jealous that his once ashen, slightly mysterious looks had gone to seed with the tensions of running his enterprise and jealous of how quick women took his money for his odd ‘request’. These ladies, some not even prostitutes, would barely ever even bat an eye his way unless more silver was forthcoming.
In his roiling rage, soon Preeson allowed the unthinkable! The very thing the family Seasons warned could never pass; Preeson began to let Brother Ed out on his own!
While no lady was actually hurt during Ed’s midnight wanderings and he’d usually be content to trawl only once or twice a week, Preeson still turned a mighty blind eye to the idea of a sex-cursed zombie walking into the latest town to steal some time with an underage lass or a budding bride-to-be! Rumors abounded, stories followed, there was even once a reporter who managed to catch up with them in Oregon, but Preeson managed to dissuade actual fact into innuendo so he could spend the few days with his carnival, bilk the marks for as much as possible then be on his way as the story of ‘the man who visited’ became part of the folklore, a ‘maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t’ fright time story one would tell their children as they walked the midway or made their way back home.
Preeson sold the carnival and all its possessions to Arny ‘The Little Wizard’ as his last bequeathed request to his best worker, in that dusty hellhole season of ‘48. Arny took to Brother Ed as he did the acquisition of the rest of his old boss’s carnival, dropped the ‘Little’ from his name and Brother Ed soon had a new owner and friend. The Wizard came to understand and subsequently sympathize with his new, most famous charge more then the men who had owned Brother Ed ever could. The Seasons’ men had brought prostitutes and joked as Brother Ed took his need, Preeson grew resentful, too horny for his own good and let the zombie loose on his own, but The Wizard felt a kinship to Ed. He knew he owed it to this ‘man’, his alter ego, to provide the best he could on the special nights when the moon was full and The Wizard could take his time to find a lady.
And while prostitutes would suffice, ‘real’ women, not those ‘in the show’ were what The Wizard wanted for his best friend.
Of course there was simply no way a woman who had been tied down, forced to copulate with a zombie, wouldn’t tell her tale. But with his skill with ropes, his still flexible sinewy muscles and carnie wit, The Wizard found he could procure women about as easily as he could dispose of them. Even with those who managed out of the bonds from time to time (usually after Brother Ed had had his way) The Wizard was there to dispose of a flaying, running girl before she got past his trailer door.
With Brother Ed satiated—at least for that month—Arny could sleep contented knowing he had provided his cursed partner with the very best he could afford and allow. Sure he would have loved to have done more for Brother Ed but it seemed that as the years slowed The Wizard down they had also slowed the curse in Joshua McKinney; one woman a month seemed enough for him now.
They came to the front door of the trailer, these two old men, one dead, one close enough he smelled of it. The Wizard opened the door for the zombie shuttering next to him, the single stone step challenging most of Brother Ed’s brittle resolve. But for what lie within scared and unknowing on The Wizard’s bed, the zombie would muster the strength. He had done so all these decades on the nights of the first full moon as he would continue to do until no one came for him anymore, to open his box. The Wizard practically beamed as he stood in the doorway, watching the achingly slow progression of his friend, executing tight paper steps down the hallway to the woman-child who lay beyond.
This was truly the very best part of the anticipation The Wizard knew, as he stood there in the hall, unzipped his fly and released his now raging member. As old as he was, The Wizard would still sport quite the erection as these scenes unfolded: the girl began to thrash as she saw the bedroom door open even wider and assumed the ‘game’ was now afoot; then there was that quick squeaky sensation of the bed moving, then muffled squeals, the bed rutting against the wood floor once again and the sensation of utter horror seeping through the walls as the girl tied to that bed saw Brother Ed and realized she would not be indulging The Wizard’s need this night … but something quite a bit more sinister!
What the Wizard would love to know, but would go to his grave not knowing, was whether these women knew they were going to die? Did they think Brother Ed was The Wizard playing dead-man dress-up? Did they even conceive what it was that was actually bending down there to roll next to them? Could they even imagine what the next few minutes would be like?
Did they even ever see the flash of The Wizard’s blade after the zombie got off them?
The Wizard imagined Brother Ed’s movements as he heard his old bed groan with the added weight of the dead man. The living man grabbed his purple stump-of-a-cock and began pumping his fist wildly to what he imagined was happening in that room beyond. But The Wizard wasn’t on himself for more then a minute when he felt a clutch across his chest. His eyes tearing, his left arm thumped his side as he heard a soft intake of female breath from his bedroom … then the old carnie fell dead from a massive heart attack.
“And this is where …” Benny said to the wind as Teresa Ri
ner turned to him. “… nah forget it. Just one of those urban legends.”
“Where what?” she said.
With blue eyes that lustrous Benny was hard pressed to ignore any request this woman made and truth be told he had purposely taken this moment, here in the buzz and scrape of the bulldozers below to entice the lady architect with some horrific folklore.
“Benny, we go back a long way,” Teresa said. “You got some good gossip, you just got to spill it.”
Truth be told, although Teresa’s architectural firm had hired Benny’s builders (that was actually the name of his contracting company, “Benny’s Builders”) for this very expensive and expansive condo site, the red haired lady had yet to be out here at the site. Now that she was, Teresa felt a strange chill she was damn sure did not emanate from the breeze blowing off the near ocean. She pulled her arms tight to herself, silently reveling in the fact that her covered, yet ample cleavage pushed up at the handsome foreman facing her.
“The way I heard it,” Benny said, leaning in so close the heat between the pair was palatable. For simply too many years Benny and Teresa’s firm had worked together and an attraction had always bubbled unrequited.
“There was an old trailer here, shed too I think, that the locals burned after that night.”
“That night? What night?”
“The night that girl came runnin’ out, the night they found the two old guys raping her,” Benny said.
Involuntarily leaning even closer, the couple spied the progress of the machines and men down the hill from them. Mixed with Teresa’s undetectable pheromone secretion was the sweet “Oliva Bath Perfume” she had added to her bath the night before. But that odd chill, just what was it exactly that was gnawing at the deepest pinpoint of her belly?
This combination of the woman’s scents and reactions worked its unique spectrum of brightness though the stale smelling development on this California shore and down to the hidden grave not three feet from the man and woman. Below, eight feet down just to be sure, now covered in concrete and mesh and a new condo water pipe system, lay a man who could smell the welcoming scent, even though he was in the box that had been provided by a shocked yet sympathetic populace.
That sad and cursed ancient man smiled to the possibility of a visit sometime in the future.
About the Authors
* * *
JOHN BRUNI—John Bruni’s work has appeared (or will appear) in Shroud, Cthulhu Sex, The Monsters Next Door, All Hallows, Trail of Indiscretion, Detective Mystery Stories, The Nocturnal Lyric, Niteblade’s Lost Innocence anthology, and a number of other publications. He was the editor of Tabard Inn, and you can visit him at www.talesofquestionabletaste.com. He lives in Elmhurst, IL, and he much prefers whiskey to mescal.
GARRY BUSHELL—Garry Bushell cut his teeth on the Socialist Worker before writing for the UK rock weekly Sounds. He compiled the first four Oi! albums, fronts veteran punk band The Gonads and has interviewed everyone from Joe Strummer and Jerry Dammers to Debbie Harry and Ozzy Osbourne. His books include pulp fiction crime novels The Face and Two-Faced, Cockney Reject (the authorized story of Jeff Turner), Dance Craze—the 2-Tone Story and Running Free (the authorized story of Iron Maiden).
RAMSEY CAMPBELL—The Oxford Companion to English Literature describes Ramsey Campbell as “Britain’s most respected living horror writer”. He has been given more awards than any other writer in the field, including the Grand Master Award of the World Horror Convention, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association and the Living Legend Award of the International Horror Guild. Among his novels are The Face That Must Die, Incarnate, Midnight Sun, The Count of Eleven, Silent Children, The Darkest Part of the Woods, The Overnight, Secret Story, The Grin of the Dark and Thieving Fear. Forthcoming are Creatures of the Pool and The Seven Days of Cain. His collections include Waking Nightmares, Alone with the Horrors, Ghosts and Grisly Things, Told by the Dead and Just Behind You, and his non-fiction is collected as Ramsey Campbell, Probably. His novels The Nameless and Pact of the Fathers have been filmed in Spain. His regular columns appear in All Hallows, Prism, Dead Reckonings and Video Watchdog. He is the President of the British Fantasy Society and of the Society of Fantastic Films.
Ramsey Campbell lives on Merseyside with his wife Jenny. His pleasures include classical music, good food and wine, and whatever’s in that pipe. His web site is at www.ramseycampbell.com.
RANDY CHANDLER—Randy Chandler is the author of Bad Juju, Hellz Bellz, and co-author of Duet for the Devil (with t. Winter-Damon). He's the author of numerous short stories which have appeared in such books as Shivers IV, Damned Nation, Exit Laughing, and Darkside: Horror For The Next Millennium.
Randy's very first horror tale was published under the title of “Fungoid” in 1986 in Doppelganger, a small-press zine with a tiny readership, but it was a completely different story. He says the first “Fungoid” is probably best forgotten and that he resurrected the title when he had a story funky enough to do it justice.
TIM CURRAN—Tim Curran lives in Michigan and is the author of the novels Hive and Dead Sea from Elder Signs Press, and Skin Medicine from Hellbound Books. Elder Signs Press will also be publishing the next three volumes of the Hive series. Upcoming projects include The Corpse King, a novella from Cemetery Dance, and Four Rode Out, a collection of four weird-western novellas by Curran, Tim Lebbon, Brian Keene, and Steve Vernon, also from Cemetery Dance. His short stories have appeared in such magazines as City Slab, Flesh & Blood, Book of Dark Wisdom, and Inhuman, as well as anthologies such as Horrors Beyond, Flesh Feast, Shivers IV, and Hardboiled Cthulhu.
RALPH GRECO, JR.—Ralph Greco, Jr. is an internationally published author of short stories, plays, essays, button slogans, 800# phone sex scripts, children’s songs and SEO copy. Ralph is also an ASCAP licensed songwriter/performer and Internet radio D.J. He lives in the wilds of suburban New Jersey, where he attempts to keep his ever-expanding ego in check.
C.J. HENDERSON—CJ Henderson is the creator of the Teddy London supernatural detective series, and the author of such varied titles as The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Movies, Black Sabbath: The Ozzy Osbourne Years, and Baby's First Mythos. The first book in his new series, Brooklyn Knight, will be coming from Tor/Forge in early 2010. He is also the author of hundreds of short stories and comics and thousands of non-fiction articles. For free short stories, a chance to tell him what you thought of his story in this anthology, or just a chance to waste more time on-line, feel free to visit him at www.cjhenderson.com.
Z.F. KILGORE—Z.F. Kilgore is a retired police detective. He is currently writing and compiling a collection of short stories centered around the character Cord Bergen, paranormal investigator. “The Devil Lives in Jersey” is the first of the series. Z.F. lives in the pine barrens of New Jersey with Brock, a one-eyed German Shepherd and retired police dog, who now spends his days chasing rabbits instead of crooks. They have both actually seen the Jersey Devil.
SEAN LOGAN—Sean Logan’s stories have appeared in more than a dozen publications, including Black Ink Horror, New Traditions in Terror and The Vault of Punk Horror. He lives in northern California with his lovely wife and a shockingly handsome rottweiler. Aside from writing unpleasant stories, he enjoys skateboarding, going to sleazy punk rock shows, and anything else that is A) likely to end in an injury and B) totally inappropriate for someone who’s nearly 40 year’s old.
GRAHAM MASTERTON—Graham Masterton is the author of more than 100 novels, including thrillers, historical sagas, disaster novels and horror novels. His first horror novel The Manitou was filmed with Tony Curtis playing the lead role. He has also published more than 100 short stories, several of which were televised by Tony Scott for his “Hunger” series. He was the first Western horror novelist to be published in Poland after the collapse of communism and has a plaque in the foyer of the prestigious Bristol Hotel in Warsaw. A former editor of Penthouse magazine, Graham has also published a series of best-selling “howto”
books on sex. He was awarded a Special Edgar by Mystery Writers of America for Charnel House, and shortlisted by the MWA for best original paperback for Trauma. Numerous other awards include the Prix Julia Verlanger, the Tombstone Award and the International Horror Guild award. He has constantly pushed the boundaries of horror fiction: his story “Eric the Pie” was banned by British booksellers. “Sepsis” was written to push the edge even further. Graham Masterton currently lives in England with his wife and agent Wiescka. His official website is www.grahammasterton.co.uk
ANGEL LEIGH MCCOY—Angel Leigh McCoy lives in Seattle, where the long, dark winters feed her penchant for horror and dark fantasy. Her short fiction has appeared in several anthologies. Over the years, she has designed RPG material for companies such as White Wolf, Wizards of the Coast, FASA, and Pinnacle Entertainment Group. She worked for Microsoft Game Studios, writing articles as Xbox.com correspondent Wireless Angel. Currently, she is a game designer at ArenaNet, where she is part of a vast team effort to make the coolest MMORPG ever: Guild Wars 2. In her spare time, she serves as head editor at WilyWriters.com.
C. DENNIS MOORE—C. Dennis Moore has been called 'an author worth keeping an eye on' and 'one of the suspense genre's best kept secrets.' His fiction has appeared in over 50 publications and this glamorous lifestyle has allowed him to indulge in his true passion, which is inventory control, for at least 40 hours a week. To further your CDM experience, please go to www.cdennismoore.com.
STEFAN PEARSON—Stefan Pearson is a founding member of Edinburgh-based spoken word performance group, Writers’ Bloc. His fiction has appeared in Nova Scotia (the Scottish speculative fiction anthology), Read by Dawn Vol 1, and Ruins Terra. Further fiction and journalism has appeared in the Scottish arts magazine, One Magazine.
Vile Things: Extreme Deviations of Horror Page 27