Haunted: Dark Delicacies® III
Page 1
“Enough variety that everyone should be able to find something enjoyable within its pages. The good stories are really good, and as such I recommend the book to everyone.” —Horror Drive-In
“Another diverse and talented group of writers, and there isn’t a bad tale in the bunch. In fact, this might be the best one yet.”
—Famous Monsters of Filmland
“Now three terror-filled titles strong, the DD franchise has become a reliable brand in modern fright fiction, featuring mostly big names.”
—Bookgasm
“With any Dark Delicacies book you know you are getting the cream of the crop in regards to authors, and Haunted is no different. All of the stories contained within the three hundred–plus pages will knock your socks off.”
—Fatally Yours
“The third volume in the critically acclaimed series once again gathers the best and the scariest to share their new tales of horror.”
—The Book Zombie
Praise for
DARK DELICACIES® II: FEAR
MORE ORIGINAL TALES OF TERROR AND THE MACABRE BY THE WORLD’S GREATEST HORROR WRITERS
Nominated for the Bram Stoker Award and the Shirley Jackson Award
“Horror tales to suit virtually every taste … a refreshingly varied anthology … a fulfilling feast of fear … an eclectic mix of older and younger talents that ensures broad-based appeal to horror readers.”
—Publishers Weekly
“These unnerving and satirically macabre stories seal Dark Delicacies’ good repute as sponsor of one of the best new horror anthology series.”
—Booklist
“A wickedly crafted collection of terror. A worthy addition to your bookshelf.”
—From The Tomb
“Dispense[s] a good meal to the hungry crowd of horror fans. Enjoy your food.”
—The Agony Column
“Excellent … plenty of gore … All of the stories are wisely chosen … recommended.”
—Library Journal
“Like the first collection, this is a solid sampling of the kind of writing and love of horror that has made the Dark Delicacies store a unique and well-loved one among genre aficionados.”
—Fangoria
Praise for
DARK DELICACIES®
ORIGINAL TALES OF TERROR AND THE MACABRE BY THE WORLD’S GREATEST HORROR WRITERS
Winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Best Anthology
“The alliterative title hints at something unsettling: Dark Delicacies, a new anthology that can be described only as horrifying … repulsive, spooky, and chilling.”
—Los Angeles Times
“An all-star concert whose performers work haunting riffs on gutbucket themes … Howison and Gelb have plundered their Rolodexes to recruit a formidable lineup of horror’s top creative talents.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A good anthology with impressive highs.”
—Locus
“Howison was clearly successful in delivering his goal: a diverse assortment focused solely on ‘total horror.’ To illustrate the variety, he chose to bookend the anthology with two vastly different luminaries—Ray Bradbury and Clive Barker.”
—Fangoria
“[A] dark gem … The original stories commissioned especially for this collection revel in the macabre.”
—Library Journal
“Vampires, zombies, werewolves, necromancers all get their due.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Serves up a collection of tales by some of the genre’s most revered writers … What’s good in here is damned good and worth a second, third, and even tenth read.”
—Rue Morgue
HAUNTED: DARK DELICACIES® III
Publication history:
Running Press edition: August 2009
Ace mass-market edition: April 2011
JABberwocky eBook edition: October 2017
Anthology copyright © 2009 by Del Howison and Jeff Gelb.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
A complete list of copyrights can be found here.
DARK DELICACIES® is a registered trademark of Dark Delicacies.
Cover design by John Fisk
All rights reserved.
eISBN: 978-1-625672-91-9
Published by JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
49 W. 45th Street, 12th Floor
New York, NY 10036
awfulagent.com/ebooks
To those horror writers who have worked hard and are yet to be published. The merry-go-round is tough, but keep reaching for that bloody ring. Perseverance and talent will win out in the end … usually after you’re dead.
—Del Howison
To Richard Matheson, Rod Serling, and Forry Ackerman, who lit my lifelong fiery passion for all things horror.
—Jeff Gelb
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
—C. G. Jung
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION Jeff Gelb
FOREWORD Steven Weber
CHILDREN OF THE VORTEX Simon Clark
MIST ON THE BAYOU Heather Graham
IN THE MIX Eric Red
HOW TO EDIT Richard Christian Matheson
RESURRECTION MAN Axelle Carolyn
A HAUNTING John Connolly
CHURCH SERVICES Kevin J. Anderson
STARLETS & SPACEBOYS Joseph V. Hartlaub
A NASTY WAY TO GO Ardath Mayhar
THE FLINCH Michael Boatman
TYLER’S THIRD ACT Mick Garris
“THOUGH THY LIPS ARE PALE” Maria Alexander
THE SLOW HAUNTING John R. Little
FOOD OF THE GODS Simon R. Green
DO SUNFLOWERS HAVE A FRAGRANCE? Del James
THE WANDERING UNHOLY Victor Salva
MAN WITH A CANVAS BAG Gary A. Braunbeck
FETCH Chuck Palahniuk
THE ARCHITECTURE OF SNOW David Morrell
AND SO WITH CRIES Clive Barker
ONE LAST BOTHER Del Howison
CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES
INTRODUCTION
JEFF GELB
WE ARE ALL haunted.
That’s not to say we’ve all got ghosts chasing us around. That would be easy.
But we all are haunted by one thing or another. A deed we have done, or not done. An event in the past that changed us forever. A missed opportunity. A loved one’s death. Our unhealthy desires and habits.
Or by our phobias. We all have them. Heights, spiders, snakes, food: you name it, we’ve got it.
And what we do about what haunts us makes us human. For better or for worse. Do we address these dark spots in our lives head-on? Or do we avoid them, or ignore them?
In any case, we’re all haunted. Which is why this Dark Delicacies volume is appropriately titled Haunted.
Welcome to our third collection. And thanks for picking us up. This time around, our stellar group of contributors has cooked up a stewpot full of stories of people who are haunted. And yes, even by ghosts. But that’s just for starters, as you will soon see.
FOREWORD
STEVEN WEBER
WHEN I WAS asked to write the foreword for this collection of stories, it felt like the time a stranger had approached me, his eyes hollow, desperate, and darting, muttering about unseen threats to his health mad
e by unnamed enemies and otherwise causing me much alarm (as I am a classic coward), whereupon he thrust an object in a plain brown wrapper into my hands for safekeeping and, as quickly as he had appeared, fled into the murky night.
That never really happened to me, but I was stuck for a grabby opening. It’s only a foreword, for chrissakes. All the good writing comes later.
Being a devotee of this genre is a lot like being a trafficker in porn (I imagine) in the days before its current ubiquity made it so commonplace that any eroticism has been mediocritized right out of it. And in spite of the recent glut of popular “torture-porn” films and their increasingly relentless sequels (I include any one of George Bush’s State of the Union addresses in that particular genre), the real foundation of the horror/sci-fi/fantasy oeuvre (I just used “genre” a moment ago and couldn’t risk the repetition) is more subtly invasive, its adherents less inclined to advertise their predilections so brazenly. Upon meeting a fellow connoisseur, there is a probing look into the eyes, an instant reading of the facial twitches, an understanding that we are … different. There’s even a hint of sadness in the knowledge that we are lovers of images and ideas that the majority of the world views as repugnant, which ironically makes us embrace our choices even tighter. To me, it’s this inherent push-me-pull-me nature of horror, science fiction, and fantasy literature and films that makes it so alluring, so forbidden. It’s less the slashing knife or the rent flesh or the many other cruel, otherworldly acts themselves. It’s the fact that they are the products of the same essential human recipe and therefore entirely possible. Because if it can be thought, no matter how insane or imaginitively deviant, it can be realized. That’s terrifying.
Horror walks hand in hand with beauty, terror with contentment; neither could exist without the other. We who indulge ourselves in this world know this and know also that our counterparts would never admit as much. So why not scare the living shit out of them? Serves ’em right. And did I mention this volume would make a great gift?
CHILDREN OF THE VORTEX
SIMON CLARK
If you convince one normal, healthy individual that he is Abraham Lincoln, Picasso, or Elvis Presley, exhibit him on TV for the world’s ridicule. Convince a million men that they are invincible warriors and you will strike terror into the heart of Man….
—Dr. Hilda Lippisch, East Berlin, 1969
Isle of Rugen, Germany. Present.
WHAT IS IT, Leo? What’s wrong?”
The old soldier regarded the limestone cliff that rose from perfect white sands. His respiration quickened. Either memory or the brilliant sunlight made him screw his eyes almost shut. His tongue ran from side to side over his lips as if it were a small creature searching for a means of escape.
“Leo. Is this the first time you’ve been back?”
“You know it is.” Shuddering, he zipped his brown leather jacket up to a jaw that exhibited the prickly scarlet rash of razor bum.
“How far now, Leo?”
“I want to go home.”
“You promised to help.”
“After all these years I didn’t think it would hit me as hard as this.”
The Baltic surged over the beach with a roar that sounded distinctly ominous.
“Leo. Are we close?”
“Yes, Dominic. We’re close. Far too close!”
Anger rumbled in the old man’s normally soft German accent. Old man? This veteran soldier of the former German Democratic Republic, one of the Soviet puppet states, was only in his early fifties. Yet his white hair had molted to reveal a speckled scalp. Long-term usage of antidepressants left a glassy sheen in his blue eyes, which were apt to stare, unblinking, for so long it made Dominic uncomfortable.
Leo Fiedler awarded the tangled forest that topped the cliff a particularly long glare, then turned away, shivering. “I’m cold! There’ll be nothing to see. It was dynamited after the Wall came down.”
“Leo—”
“You see? It’s a national park now. Just a nature reserve.” His accent thickened. “Why be so damned stupid as to go back to the old places? Why dig them back up? Forget them!” The wind blew hard enough to tug away strands of the man’s silver hair. They fled along the beach. “Get me back to the mainland, Dominic. This cold will be my death.”
Dominic spoke firmly. “I know the place disturbs you, but we are under a legal obligation to investigate areas of public interest.”
“Who do you work for? Army? Interpol? CIA?”
“Leo. Once we find the entrance to the complex, we can leave.”
“And I told you that the sub base has been demolished.”
“I’m not interested in submarine pens. It’s the adjacent complex.”
Leo’s face turned gray. For a moment it looked as if he’d collapse.
Dominic pressed on. “We are interested in the Vortex.”
“No …” The man grimaced as if pains lanced his heart.
“We know you were present when the order came to terminate Vortex. You took part.”
“I wasn’t a proper soldier. Ha! They armed me with pencils; I audited military land holdings. I had nothing to do with Vortex! Now … please, take me home.” Anger turned to pleading. “I can’t abide this place. Just the smell of it makes me ill. Please, Dominic.”
Just then, a silver BMW 4x4 roared along the beach. When the vehicle stopped alongside them, three people sprang eagerly from it. Two men and a woman, dressed casually in jeans and sweatshirts. The woman’s red hair was carved brutally short. The trio grinned at each other, then at Dominic, as if they’d brought him surprise birthday presents. In a way, they had.
“Good news, Scarlet?” Dominic ventured.
“We’ve got it.” She brandished a memory stick. “The ministry biked it across twenty minutes ago.” Then she glanced at the old soldier. “Feeling off-color, Leo?”
“Get me off this devil island!” He glared up at the looming cliffs as if he expected to see enemies there. “You should leave too.”
Dominic shrugged. “I told him that we know he’s linked to Vortex.”
“Ouch.” One of the men smiled. “That must have touched a nerve.”
Dominic nodded at the memory stick. “Show us what you’ve got, then.”
Scarlet waited, an impish smile on her face, as one of her companions brought out a laptop, flipped it open, then set it down on the car’s hood. “It’s classified. But you’ve clearance to watch it, Leo.” Her green eyes were hard. “I hope you like horror movies.”
As she loaded the data, one of the men advanced on Leo. Big boned, muscular, his manner suggested that of a policeman who’d peered too much into the world’s nastier corners to be fazed by anything, no matter how bloody. “Leo. My name is Powell. This is my colleague, Larchette …” A thin, bearded man with anxious eyes nodded. “You’ve already met Scarlet. Now you’re going to see footage from the communist regime archives. You will be asked questions during the showing of the film. Do you understand?”
Frightened, Leo nodded. The wind blew, tugging away more strands of silver from his mottled scalp. Meanwhile, the surf’s roar grew louder. Waves smacked angrily against boulders. Gulls screamed.
“Best make it snappy.” Scarlet glanced at the ocean. “Tide’s coming in fast.”
“This’ll only take a couple of minutes.” To the prematurely aged man shivering there in his leather jacket, Powell announced in aggressive tones, “Larchette will video your responses. Understand?”
“How can I stop you? I’m a sick man.”
Larchette produced a digital camera. He aimed it at Leo’s face, then nodded.
With the intense smell of brine in his nostrils, Dominic gathered with the others to watch the laptop perched on the car’s hood. On screen, silver numerals counted down: 3, 2, 1. B/W footage of a featureless room. No windows. A man sits to a piano. He plays—tuneless, discordant, an absence of melody. The camera operator is no expert either. The frame lurches left to reveal an attractive woman of a
round forty. She wears a clinician’s white coat, carries a clipboard; long hair is pulled tight back from her face. Pianist remains in shot. Hunches shoulders, plays faster. An expression of ecstasy transforms his face.
Coolly professional, the woman addresses the viewer. “I am Doctor Lippisch. Senior MD, Project Vortex. Here you see subject seventy-two-stroke-nineteen-a, aged twenty-four. Upper mind successfully erased. Reindoctrination as musician. Subject had no musical training. Now, however, he is convinced that he is both a brilliant pianist and a renowned composer. Note: playing is discordant, totally unmusical, yet he believes he has written a beautiful sonata. Subject underwent C2 procedure: ECT, drug therapy, audio-corrective stimulation …”
As Dr. Lippisch continued her lecture, Powell fired questions at Leo: “Do you recognize that woman?”
“Never seen her before.”
“Lippisch? Know the name?”
“You’re going to get wet. Here the tide is fast. People have been swept away.”
“How do you feel watching such a grotesque experiment? That man’s brain was wiped, then reprogrammed.”
“You think I’m intimidated by the tide, so you make me stand here. I don’t fear the ocean. I wish I had the guts to drown myself in it.”
“So you know something of Vortex?”
On screen, Dr. Lippisch seizes papers covered in delusional scribble and rips them apart. In grief, the pianist howls. “Don’t! My music!” Heartbroken, he sobs as she tosses the scraps into the air.
Leo’s glazed eyes were melancholy. “I know nothing of the scientific process. I was only there at the end.”
On screen: Images of floating paper crash to black. Next: Dr. Lippisch in the same room. Instead of the piano there is a line of potted ferns on the floor: an attempt to create an outdoor scene. Three men in infantry fatigues crouch down. They hold AK-47s, which they point at the blank wall.
First soldier: “Enemy sighted.”