Madness & Mayhem: 23 Tales of Horror and Humor

by James Aquilone

  “What about the cave mouth I came through?”

  “It does not exist, not any longer. Perhaps another day, long from now, another will appear. But by then, you will not want to leave. Even if you did, no one will help you out. You belong here. With me.”

  “I belong getting drunk in my apartment, not in this hellhole,” Maxwell said, and sat on the ground.

  “You will be happy here. The Grimlorn would not have made the bargain if she thought otherwise.”

  Max’s body clenched with anger. It’s a done deal. “You made some deal with my brother Richard.”

  It wasn’t a question, but she nodded. “A mouth opened one day and there he was looking down. But the Grimlorn did not ask him to help her out of the mountain. She asked for a husband.”

  Max ran his hand through his hair. “But it was a bargain. What could you give Richard?”

  “Nothing good. It wasn’t happiness—that the Grimlorn can assure you. He asked for riches, material possessions. Meaningless and trivial things. The Grimlorn got the better part of the bargain.” She giggled. It sounded like water boiling in a cauldron.

  “You were able to give him those things?” Max asked.

  “He will come into them, yes.”

  The old man was right. Richard would be fine. The schemer found a way to get his money.

  “You have magical powers, but you can’t get yourself or me out of here?”

  “There are rules. There are always rules, Max-well. Down here the Grimlorn can only give birth to pots and pans, occasionally food, trinkets. The Grimlorn gets only what she needs, nothing more, nothing less. The Grimlorn can make you a nice bracelet.”

  “Thanks, but that’s not going to help either one of us get out of here.”

  “Max-well, the Grimlorn doesn’t want to leave, this is where she belongs. You will not want to leave either, once you settle in. This is our home. We will make it beautiful.”

  Max leaned back and closed his eyes. At some point he fell asleep.

  Max awoke to the smell of roasting meat.

  “Breakfast!” the Grimlorn announced as she pulled the skewered rats off the fire. Then she reached under her filthy dress and pulled out a ceramic plate. She placed the rats—at least Max thought they were rats—on the plate and handed it to him.

  Max was starving, but he couldn’t bring himself to eat her food. He didn’t want anything from this creature. Eating it would only be an acceptance of his fate.

  The Grimlorn sat beside him, waiting.

  Max said, “Give me a minute. I can’t eat first thing in the morning.” He put the plate on the ground. He waited, but she didn’t throw a fit. She bought it. He planned to dispose of the food when he got a chance and make her think he ate it.

  Then, without a word, the Grimlorn dropped her head onto his lap.

  “What the hell!” Max shrieked, and tried to scuttle back. But she kept her head firmly in his lap. Insects crawled in the matted strands of her hair.

  “Max-well, we will be happy here,” she said, lifting her head slightly.

  Max shoved her harder than he meant to; it was like pushing a bag of dry leaves. She let out a soft cry when she hit the ground.

  “What’s with you?” he shouted. “There are—things—in your hair!”

  “We can be happy,” she said, tears welling up in her red-rimmed eyes.

  “Please, stop saying that. Happiness isn’t eating rats in a cave with a crazy old hermit. I used to have a life up there. A pretty nice life.”

  That wasn’t true. Most nights Max had to drink himself to sleep. During the day he avoided social contact whenever he could, rarely going out. He had zero friends. He never picked up the phone when his father called. The old man would only lay into him about the bar going bust or whatever else he could think up. That was one of the reasons he couldn’t get out of going hiking with Richard. He knew Max had nothing else going on. He’d always say, “You have to stop hiding from the world, kid. Get out there, bust a few heads.” God, he hated Richard.

  The Grimlorn burst into tears. Her body heaved and then she began rolling on the ground.

  Max ignored the tantrum. “How long have you been down here?” he demanded.

  After about a minute, she sat up. “The Grimlorn doesn’t know.”

  “How did you come to be here?”

  “The Grimlorn cannot remember. It has been too long.” She shook her head. “This is where she belongs.”

  Max gave up and searched, again, for a passage to the surface. Sooner than he would have liked, he was back in the Grimlorn’s chamber.

  It was the same routine every day: The Grimlorn would cook a nasty-looking meal, Max would find an excuse not to eat it, and then given the opportunity she would drop her head in his lap. She never told him why she did that, and Max was beyond caring about her motives.

  She wouldn’t tell him about the sack that hung on her side, either. “Now that is none of your business, Max-well,” she said through gritted teeth. “A woman has a right to some privacy.”

  “Is there something inside that could help us get out?”

  “There is no way out. The Grimlorn told you that already.”

  There was little point in talking to her. She always gave the same answers.

  “Why don’t you give birth to a pick axe?” Max said. “Then I’ll get us out of here.”

  “The Grimlorn gets what she needs, nothing more, nothing less.”

  And the Grimlorn got him, didn’t she? She had some weird magical power, though Max didn’t understand how it worked. She would simply reach under her dress and pull things out. Whenever he asked her about it, she would only say she had given “birth” to it. Did she give birth to whatever was in the sack? Why was she hiding it? Why did she get so angry when he talked about it?

  Whatever was inside was important. It meant something. If he wanted to escape, Max was sure he’d need whatever was in that bag.

  “Are you happy, Max-well?”

  Max was done fighting. If the Grimlorn wanted a husband, he would give her one. “Of course,” he said.

  “The Grimlorn does not lie. This place is not so terrible once you learn how to see in the dark. If you trust the Grimlorn, we will have a beautiful home together.”

  Over the next few days, Max continued to speak lovingly to the Grimlorn. He laughed with her, teased her. He lied about enjoying her cooking. She liked to hear that especially, grinning and laughing like a little girl. At those times, Max almost enjoyed her company. He even had her make him a bracelet—a brown leather strap studded with tiny metal chips. She was delighted. He would pet her hand, hug her, get her used to the idea of him touching her. That was key.

  But Max drew the line when she would place her filthy head in his lap, which she did every chance she got. He would push her away as always, and she would throw a fit.

  One night, as she slept, snoring like a buzz saw, Max sidled up to her, held her in his arms—it felt as if he were hugging a bale of hay—and he gently slipped the sack off her belt. She went on snoring as Max grabbed a torch and sneaked out of the chamber.

  When he was safely in one of the smaller rooms, he wedged the torch into a niche in the wall and opened the bag. Inside was a heart.

  He didn’t know what he’d expected to find. An amulet, maybe. A ring. A magical wand.

  He held up the shriveled, desiccated organ. Soon after the heart began to pulse, the Grimlorn’s voice erupted in one of the passages.

  “Max-well? Max-well?” she was shouting. But soon she was screeching, “My heart! You stole my heart!”

  There was something terrible about the way the black heart felt in his hand. It felt obscene, like a dead thing that didn’t know it was dead. He wanted to tear it apart, stomp on it, destroy it. Would that kill her? If she died, would that free him? Is that what he needed to do?

  He heard her feet slapping against the stony ground. And then she was in the chamber.

  “Max-well, what are you doin
g? Give me the Grimlorn’s heart!”

  Max held the vile thing above his head. “Don’t come any closer. I’ll rip it to pieces.”

  The Grimlorn shrank back in terror. “Don’t” was all she managed to say.

  The heart was as dry and rough as sandpaper.

  “This is what’s holding me here, isn’t it?”

  “No, Max-well. The Grimlorn is not holding you here, nor is her heart. She and you are both trapped here. Why not make the best of it?”

  “Best of it? You’re insane. Look around you. This is hell. I think if I destroy your heart, it will kill you and then you won’t have any power over me.”

  “Please, Max-well, give it back and we can be happy. It is up to you.”

  “Stop it! Stop saying that. I’ll never be happy here. No one could be happy here. Look at you—you are a monster! This is a nightmare.”

  The heart swelled.

  He could tear the heart like a sheet of paper—it had little weight to it—and put her out of her misery. It would be an easy thing to do. And even if killing her didn’t release him, at least he wouldn’t have to spend eternity with this mad woman.

  Max’s own heart beat wildly as he watched the Grimlorn standing before him, her pink eyes wet. She rocked back and forth and seemed to have shrunk to half her size. What if she was telling the truth? What if it was the mountain and she was just another victim?

  For a long moment Max didn’t move. Then with a sigh, he tossed the heart on the ground. “Take the damned thing!” he said, and fell back against the cave wall. He slid to the ground.

  The Grimlorn picked up the heart, which was now flopping and twitching like a fish out of water.

  “The Grimlorn loved you.” Max could hear the sorrow in her voice. It sounded as if something inside her were breaking. “She gave you many opportunities, but you were a fool.”

  A glimmer of light flashed behind her eyes. She tilted her head straight back and dropped the wagging heart into her open mouth. Her throat bulged momentarily, like a bullfrog’s, and then she gulped it down.

  Her crooked and bent form straightened. She grew, as if something were filling her up. Her pale face reddened, as did her hair. Her pink eyes turned emerald.

  She stood over Max, no longer the Grimlorn.

  “But—”

  “Does my appearance please you now, Max-well?”

  Her skin burned bright as a torch, her eyes glowed with life. Her voice was as smooth as honey.

  But then her face contorted into a mask of terror. “It hurts, Max-well, my heart. That is why I kept it in my sack.” She convulsed and doubled over but quickly righted herself. “You could have had my heart without stealing it. You could have made it not hurt. You only needed to see.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Ignorance, Maxwell, is not bliss.”

  As Max tried to stand, her hand shot out, her sharp fingernails impaling his chest, and he fell back. He felt his flesh tear, his ribs separate and crack. It happened so fast, there was no pain, just a burning emptiness.

  “What did you do?” he said. “Why don’t I feel anything?”

  The woman held up his still-beating heart. Unlike her shriveled, black heart, his was engorged with dark red blood.

  “It only hurts when the heart is inside your body.” She shuddered as if an Arctic wind had blown over her. “It’s one of the many mysteries of the lonely mountain. I’ve given up trying to understand it. But there are rules. Follow them and you are rewarded. Don’t and…well, I gave you plenty of chances.”

  Max held up his hand and gasped in horror. It had turned white as marble. He held up his other hand and it too was white. He watched as thin, black lines appeared just below the surface of his skin.

  “What’s happening to me?”

  “It doesn’t matter. It won’t be long.”

  “Please, I just want to go home.”

  “You did not follow the rules, Max-well. You did not learn how to see in the dark. You saw only the shadows. You saw only a prison, not the possibilities. You saw only ugliness, and ugliness was returned to you. You could have been happy here. You could have had a kingdom and a queen. We could have shared it all. But it is clear now. You are not husband material.”

  And with that, she bit into his fat, red heart. Steaming blood filled her mouth and dripped down her chin. She tore and swallowed, tore and swallowed. Then, Max felt pain. He howled with each bite, fell to his knees, and held his hands over the hole where his heart had been.

  With the last bite, a terrible silence spread throughout the cave.

  The Grimlorn didn’t know what fraction of infinity had passed before she found herself back in the dark water. Time passed oddly under the mountain, if at all. Spears of golden light pierced the darkness from above. When her eyes adjusted to the glare, she saw a curious face looking down.

  Finally, she thought.

  “I am the Grimlorn Under the Mountain,” she announced. “Send me down a husband and I will lavish you with riches beyond your wildest imagination.”

  The face lingered for a moment, and then disappeared.

  She felt the nits multiplying in her hair, but she didn’t pick them out herself. That was against the rules.

  As she waited, she thought: Soon the Grimlorn will have a husband or she will have his heart. Either way, she will be happy, she will make the best of it.

  DEAD JACK

  A Dead Jack Short Story

  The Case of the Amorous Ogre

  GWENDOLYN

  She was thirty-two inches of nauseating cuteness in an itty-bitty emerald dress that made her seem, somehow, more naked than if she wore nothing at all. Her skin was snowflake white, her hair torchlight red, her eyes tiny blue moons. And if I wasn’t such a smart guy I’d have thought she was a child. But she was probably five centuries past her sweet sixteen. The little lady sat across from my desk, her thin, see-through wings twittering nervously.

  She said her name was Gwendolyn. She was a pixie.

  I poured myself a shot of Devil Boy. “Care for some?” I said. “Looks like you might need it.”

  She pulled on one of her pointy ears. “I don’t drink formaldehyde.”

  Lilith, my secretary and the resident office ghost, told me the pixie was in trouble. Of course she was in trouble. Why else would she be in the same room as a zombie?

  I threw back the formaldehyde, most of which poured out from the bottom of my skull. The pixie’s face scrunched up in disgust.

  “Gwen, let me ask you something. Any of you pixies not so goddam adorable?” It wasn’t a compliment.

  She tugged down on her flimsy get-up. She covered an extra inch of thigh, but also managed to expose a healthy chunk of pixie cleavage. If I wasn’t a zombie, I’d be sweating buckets now.

  “Can we, please, get down to business?” she said. “I was told you’re the best detective in Pandemonium. Was that a lie?”

  I don’t know who told her that, but I should hire him to do my PR. I wasn’t the best, just the cheapest. Which is why I got the dirtiest cases in the Five Cities.

  “Gwen, everyone lies in this business, but you got the rare truth.” I threw back another shot of Devil Boy.

  “Then you should have no problem rescuing my daughter.”

  “I rescue daughters all the time. It’s one of my specialties.” Actually I never even rescued a gremlin from a tree. But, as I said, everyone lies in this business.

  Finally the pixie got into it. “My daughter, Willa, she’s a very naïve girl. But that’s to be expected: she’s only two hundred and twelve years old. And if you know anything about pixies, especially young ones, they’re always getting into mischief. It’s usually harmless pranks: stealing horses, leading people astray, that sort of thing. But lately she’s been getting into real trouble. Running with a bad crowd, going places a pixie shouldn’t go. I forbid her to go uptown. There are bad types there—”

  “Ogres.”

  “Yes, ogres. And one of
those vile, disgusting beasts has taken a fancy to my Willa. I believe his name is Mad Dog.”

  “Madgogg?”

  “Yes. You know him?”

  “Heard of him. I told you I’m the best. In fact, I already know why you’re here: Madgogg abducted your daughter, is holding her in his ogre lair, and demands that she marry him, right?”

  “Yes, yes, it’s horrible.”

  “It’s an old story, Gwen. Happens every day.”

  “An ogre in the family! I’d never stand for it.”

  “Ogres are stupid, predictable creatures. I’ve dealt with a few in my time. No worries.”

  I didn’t mention that ogres also like to eat pixies, but she probably already knew that. I also didn’t mention that zombies like to eat pixies, too, and just about anything else with succulent, sweet, so juicy flesh. But I kicked that habit (mostly) long ago. I said, “I just need one kilo of fairy dust a day plus expenses.” I didn’t tell her how badly I needed the dust. It had been a while since my last fix and I was getting hungry.

  A SIMPLE PLAN

  Black, tentacled clouds drifted across the blood-red sky as I drove toward the Upper West Side of ShadowShade. The forecast called for more dry heat with a chance of firestones. Creepy shit. But par for the course in Pandemonium, the twilight realm of nightmare creatures, legends, the undead, and everything in between. Home shitty home.

  ShadowShade was actually the more cosmopolitan and sophisticated of Pandemonium’s Five Cities. It has streets and a subway (though you don’t want to go down there if you’re afraid of eyeless mole people), unlike those other Podunks.

  I watched blood-drunk vampires stumbling out of the Full Moon Saloon, the most notorious watering hole in Hell’s Kitchen, and werewolves playing patty-cake with virginal waifs at the edge of the Wood of Shadows.

  Madgogg had a brownstone on West 93rd that overlooked the Wood. It was a high-rent area for the well-to-do ogre, and many ogres were well-to-do these days. Droves of the brutes were leaving their cramped huts in Ogreville, nestled in the eastern corner of the Broken Lands, and buying up ShadowShade’s most expensive real estate. Their success must have something to do with their big bodies and little brains.