One Buck Horror
Volume 1
edited by
Christopher Hawkins
Kris M. Hawkins
featuring stories by
Ada Hoffmann
Julie Jansen
Mark Onspaugh
Mike Trier
Elizabeth Twist
cover art by
Shawn Conn
ISBN: 978-1-937346-00-3
Copyright © 2011 Coronis Publishing. All rights reserved.
www.onebuckhorror.com
Contents
Jenny's House by Ada Hoffmann
A Lullaby for Caliban by Mark Onspaugh
The Last Nephew by Elizabeth Twist
The Cornfield by Mike Trier
The Ginger Men by Julie Jansen
Jenny's House
by Ada Hoffmann
For show and tell today I brought a G.I. Joe covered with slime from the slime monster in Jenny's basement. You can see how it's green and gooey and light goes right through it, and if you squeeze the ziplock bag, it moves like this. Squish. I'm not going to open the bag because it smells bad. It smelled worse at Jenny's house.
I was over there playing G.I. Joes with Jenny and the whole house smelled awful, and I held my nose and I said, Pee-yu! And Jenny said, Sorry, that's the slime monster. We can't clean it up.
I told Jenny I wanted to see the slime monster, because slime monsters are awesome and you guys would want to hear about it. But Jenny said, No, it's dangerous. I said, If it's so dangerous why do you live here? Can't you move somewhere else? And Jenny said, Mom doesn't want to. A man came in trying to steal the TV and it ate him, so Mom says it's safer to stay. I said, That’s cool, even if it smells bad. It’s a superhero. Slime Monster Defender Man!
So we tried to play with G.I. Joes but everything smelled bad. I said, All my G.I. Joes are going to stink when I bring them home. And Jenny said, Sorry. When she talked about the slime monster her face got all screwed up and nervous like this. Meeeugh.
I said, Did the slime monster ever try to eat you? And Jenny said, I don't want to talk about it. Let's just play G.I. Joes.
Jenny made her G.I. Joe fall off a cliff and land on a lion so he survived but then the lion ate him up, and I laughed and laughed, and Jenny's face got all screwed up and she said, Don't laugh so loud, that makes it mad. And when my Lego knights attacked the G.I. Joes in a big Lego cart I had them yelling like this, Kyaaaaa! And Jenny said, Ssh. It'll hear you.
I didn't want to let the monster boss us around when I couldn't even see it. So when Jenny went to the washroom I snuck downstairs. The smell was so bad. I held my nose and held my G.I. Joe in the other hand. This one had a broken leg so I didn't care if he got hurt. At the bottom of the stairs there was this green slime all over everything but it wasn't moving. I figured the monster left slime all over, like a slug. So I said, Hello, Mister Slime Monster? Are you there? I didn’t hear anything, so I took the G.I. Joe and used him to scoop up a little of the slime.
Then there was this big sucking sound, Kshoooo. All the slime in the whole downstairs piled up and started to move. So I ran back upstairs and I said, It's moving! Jenny was out of the washroom by then and she said, Oh god, oh god. What did you do? It's going to hurt us. And then the slime came all the way up the stairs, and Jenny said, Run! She yelled it really loud so I ran out the door even though all my other G.I. Joes and Lego guys were still in there. I ran all the way home and then I put the G.I. Joe with the slime on it in the ziplock bag because I knew you guys would want to see.
I started to miss having my other G.I. Joes so I went back to Jenny's house. Nobody answered the doorbell. It looked like there was nobody inside, just green slime covering up all the windows. I guess she's still there. That's why she’s not in class.
I bet she pretended to be scared of the slime monster so she could chase me off and take my toys. But I know better. I know it’s really Slime Monster Defender Man, and it protects her.
A Lullaby for Caliban
by Mark Onspaugh
It seemed to take forever for Carson & Bloch’s Traveling Carnival and Curiosities to shut down for the night.
Finally, about 2 a.m., the last trailer went dark. A portly guard occasionally patrolled the grounds, but mostly slept in a folding chair near the entrance.
On the outskirts of Adlai Meadows, three shapes emerged from behind a small hillock and crept silently toward the sleeping carnival.
Kirby Owens, who was eleven, wished that the tall grass was still there to offer cover, but it had been trampled underfoot over the last three days. He looked over at his big brother Ty, who was fifteen and seemed to know everything. Ty had just gotten a wicked cool tattoo that their parents knew nothing about, a heart on his upper bicep with the name “Mary Jo.”
The third kid was Ty’s friend Randy Herskovic, who was big for his age and had a crew cut that he continually scratched.
The boys slipped past a row of chemical toilets that stood like silent sentries. Beyond these were the thrill rides, their screams silenced, the lingering odor of puke and adrenaline still hanging in the air: the Hammer, the Dizzy Disk, the Zipper and the Typhoon. Their strange shapes loomed like the skeletons of prehistoric beasts. Kirby was particularly nervous edging past the Tilt-a-Whirl, because its clamshell cars looked like giant crabs in the dim light.
Ty moved with confidence to the midway, and they followed him.
The midway booths were closed, sheets of canvas tied down to keep out the elements and trespassers, their garish banners vying for attention in the darkness.
Without bright lights and music, without the crowd, the midway seemed sinister, as if something weird and malevolent waited within each shuttered booth.
Ty stopped, then motioned frantically for them to get out of sight. Randy and Ty quickly slipped in between Boss Ring Toss and the Wack-a-Mole booth.
Kirby was alone on the midway, and could tell someone was coming.
He felt frozen, but knew that if he got caught, Ty would never forgive him. He also knew that running was sure to bring pursuit, even though his jangled nerves seemed to be screaming at him to run, run, run!
Kirby moved carefully but quickly into the space between the Wack-a-Mole and the Spin Art booth. He hunkered down and tried to merge with the shadows and the darkness, his heart hammering in a deafening staccato.
Someone was coming.
Not someone, he realized, some thing, something so wrong, so utterly alien that even now some atavistic sense was urging him to bolt from his hiding place and dash off into the woods.
You do that and it will get you for sure, he thought.
He waited, wondering if Ty or Randy were scared. Probably not, and they’d laugh at him later if he admitted how terrified he was.
Suddenly, a tall and gaunt man appeared. He was dressed in heavy denim pants and an athletic tee-shirt. His shoes looked ragged and misshapen.
It was not a man.
Rather, it was what a man might be if humans had descended from reptiles rather than primates.
He was well muscled, his skin covered with bony plates, largish ones on his chest and abdomen, a smaller mosaic forming his sides and back. A double row of rough protrusions marched down the middle of his back, starting at the top of his hairless head and disappearing somewhere below his belt.
His shoes were not shoes at all, but scaled feet ending in sharp talons, just as his hands did.
He turned toward Kirby and Kirby had to bite down on his hand to keep from crying out.
The creature’s eyes glowed greenish-blue in the moonlight, like fires glimpsed far out in primordial marshes. Its nose was two deep slits, and its mouth seem
ed far too wide for its head.
It sniffed the air in his direction, its mouth opening as it did so, perhaps trying to taste him, as well. Its teeth were numerous and cruelly pointed, and a couple looked like they had broken off, leaving jagged remnants.
That’s from chewing on some kid’s bones, Kirby thought, and suppressed a shudder.
The Alligator Man stared at the darkness wrapped around Kirby, then moved on.
After a moment, Ty touched his shoulder while simultaneously clapping his other hand over Kirby’s mouth. He succeeded in muffling a shriek that would surely have brought the Alligator Man and the rest of the carnies running.
Ty released him and slugged Kirby in the arm. “Retard,” he said.
“Did you see him?” Kirby asked.
“See who?” Ty asked, rising and brushing sawdust from his jeans.
“The Alligator Man,” Kirby whispered, sure that merely mentioning the thing’s name would bring him back.
“That guy?” Ty suppressed a laugh. “That’s makeup, Kirb, like in the movies.”
Kirby was sure that what he had seen was genuine, but didn’t want to contradict Ty, especially with Randy present.
“Come on,” Ty said, and hauled Kirby up.
They looked out into the midway, but there was no sign of the Alligator Man. Ty motioned and they followed him to the ten-in-one, a large tent with a small raised stage just outside of it. Behind the stage were a dozen garish paintings, an errant July gust causing the canvas images to snap and flap like sails and giving the appearance of life to the hideous creatures and monstrous beasts.
NATURE’S CRUELEST MISTAKES!
THE ALLIGATOR MAN!
THE GLASS GIRL!
THE PANAMA MERMAID
THE PORCUPINE BOY!
ALL LIVE! ALL REAL!
Kirby thought of his room at home, his bed familiar and safe. He could be reading a comic book right now or playing a game.
But Ty had asked him if he wanted to come, and Ty never asked.
Ty and Randy were trying to get into the Daredevilz, a group of local teenagers who wore cool tee shirts and hung out at the Rocket Burger.
Kirby was too young to be a Daredevil, and wasn’t sure he’d ever want to be one. Several times they had chased him and his friends off from their table at the Rocket, or taken their seats at the cineplex.
Ty and Randy thought the Daredevilz were beyond cool, and so had submitted to a painful initiation of Indian burns and a gauntlet of ping pong paddles and switches.
That left this little piece of business to seal their membership as “Daredevilz for life.”
Their mission was to steal a pickled punk, and give it to the Daredevilz for their clubhouse, a tumble-down shack in Farson Woods.
Ty told Kirby that a “pickled punk” was a fetus, usually deformed, kept in formaldehyde. Most carnivals no longer exhibited such things, and those that did usually displayed a rubber fake, or “bouncer.”
But Will Seaver of the Daredevilz had it on good authority that the punk at Carson & Bloch’s Traveling Carnival and Curiosities was the real deal.
Ty and Randy looked around, and were satisfied no one was watching them. Ty bent down to Kirby and grasped his shoulders.
“You stay out here and be lookout,” he said. “If somebody’s coming, whistle like a blackbird, can you do that?”
“I can do a nightingale better,” Kirby said.
“Jesus, kid, just do a fucking bird,” Randy said, scratching his scalp and grimacing.
Ty glared at Randy, then looked back at Kirby. “Nightingale is fine. If you can’t whistle, yell ‘Mary Jo’ and we’ll split – you do the same.”
Kirby nodded, feeling nauseous.
Ty clapped him on the back roughly. “Couple more years and you’ll be a Daredevil, too.” Then he and Randy walked past the stage and slipped into the tent.
Kirby thought they might run out, or maybe start screaming, because surely the Alligator Man was inside, waiting for them. Maybe the Alligator Man would feed on Randy first, he was bigger and slower. While the creature was tearing into Herskovic he would grab Ty and they would run for the woods. Ty would call him a hero and would respect his opinion on everything.
The canvas paintings fluttered behind him, and he turned to see the representation of the Alligator Man. The flapping canvas created the illusion that it was walking toward him. The painting was scary, but far less so than the real thing. Kirby wondered if all the inhabitants of the freak show were worse than their paintings, and decided he was glad not to know.
For a moment, he thought that the eyes of the Alligator Man glowed in silent menace, then realized that someone was coming with a flashlight.
Kirby turned, and saw the portly guard about five hundred feet away. He had pulled the canvas aside to peer into the shooting gallery.
Kirby tried to whistle, but his throat had gone dry. He wanted to yell “Mary Jo”, but suddenly thought that the name of Ty’s girlfriend might be just the clue the police would need to track them down.
The guard, seeing something of interest in the Wack-a-Mole booth, squeezed in awkwardly between the support pole and the edge of the canvas.
Kirby stayed low and skirted the ten-in-one stage, then darted into the tent.
Inside, it was as dark as a cave. Kirby pulled a penlight out of his pocket and flicked it on.
The interior looked like a revival tent, with folding chairs set before another raised stage. To the left of the stage was a canvas flap that read:
ABANDON HOPE, ALL WHO ENTER HERE
Kirby moved as quietly as he could to the side entrance, hoping he wouldn’t kick some beer can or trip over a chair.
He went through the flap, unaware that he was holding his breath.
He entered a small side tent, barely eight feet square, the ground covered with sawdust. There was a placard on an easel, and two stanchions with a velvet rope that cordoned off something displayed on a wooden column about five feet high. Beyond was an exit, clearly marked.
Ty and Randy stood transfixed before the object, shining their flashlights on it with the slack-jawed wonder of acolytes who have been visited by something divine.
“You guys, we gotta go,” Kirby hissed.
They didn’t acknowledge him, and so he moved around to stand next to Randy.
The placard was boldly lettered in black and red:
LUCIEN, THE DEVIL’S BABY
The twin flashlight beams illuminated a glass jar as large as a Sparklett’s bottle, topped with a shining chrome lid. Inside, floating in a golden liquid, was a human fetus. Its head was grotesquely swollen, and the convolutions of its brain could be seen under the skin, like a mutant from a science fiction film. It had a second head emerging from its left shoulder, but the second head was a misshapen lump with only a rudimentary sketch of facial features.
The dominant head had its thumb in its mouth.
Kirby thought it was the saddest thing he had ever seen, a baby forever prisoner in a jar, to be gawked at, ridiculed and feared, never knowing love or nursing, never growing up to have friends or…
But what kind of friends could such a child have? Maybe this was home for it… Maybe the Alligator Man fed it tiny fish while the Panama Mermaid sang it lullabies in some aquatic language.
Maybe the other freaks talked to it, and told it stories.
And who knew how long it had been here… A year? Ten? Fifty?
Kirby nudged his brother, who turned on him angrily, then softened when he saw it was Kirby.
“Pretty cool, huh Kirb?”
“We gotta go, there’s a guard coming.”
Ty nodded and nudged Randy, who acted like he had just been awakened from a deep sleep.
“Help me get it down,” Ty said.
Kirby grabbed Ty’s arm. “You can’t take it.”
“Who says?”
“This is… the carnival is his home,” Kirby said.
Randy snickered and Ty backhanded Randy across
the chest. Ty looked at Kirby, his face both compassionate and disappointed.
“Go on home, Kirby, we got this.”
Kirby felt his face flush. Ty only called him Kirby when he was pissed off.
Ty propped his flashlight on the easel and unhooked the velvet rope. He and Randy reached up, both of them as calm as kids borrowing books from the library.
They lifted the jar carefully, and, as it cleared the column, the formaldehyde solution sloshed.
Lucien opened his eyes, eyes that were a startling blue.
They all saw this, and Ty and Randy both gasped as they let go of the jar.
The jar hit the sawdust and did not break, but the chrome lid flew off, and the Devil’s Baby was borne out of its prison on a wave of foul-smelling liquid.
The three boys stood there for a moment, horrified and unable to move.
Then the baby shrieked, and Ty and Randy bolted for the exit.
Kirby stared at the child, and it began to cry in harsh, hitching sobs.
Kirby hesitated, then reached down and picked it up carefully, afraid the child might bite him. It continued to make a mewling sound, and he tried to brush some of the matted sawdust from its skin.
The skin felt just like any baby’s, soft and unblemished.
He cradled it somewhat awkwardly, mindful of its large brain which could be very vulnerable to injury.
“You’re okay,” Kirby said softly, “I’ve got you.”
Lucien quieted and regarded him calmly. Its thumb went back in its mouth, its other hand caressing the face of its twin.
Kirby tried to rock Lucien as he had seen TV mothers do, but the baby’s oversized head made this difficult. He decided to it would be better just to wait, so he softly sang the only song he could think of, a lullaby that was barely a whisper.
Lucien closed his eyes and seemed to sleep, and Kirby thought the baby was even smiling a little.
A shadow fell over him, and he looked up to see the Alligator Man, the portly guard behind him, hand resting on his holstered gun.
One Buck Horror: Volume One Page 1