Fossil Lake: An Anthology of the Aberrant

by Ramsey Campbell

  Whatever the cause, the priests are all long dead, and with them died whatever esoteric knowledge of the ziggurat and its enigmatic architect they may have possessed.

  As we near the summit of the ziggurat of skulls, I’m afraid, dear reader, that I have a confession to make. Earlier when I described the ruinous city that huddles around the base of the pyramid I used the word “abandoned,” an apt word for describing the city but not the temple itself. For you see, the descendants of the ziggurat’s slaves still dwell here. The breeding chambers deep inside the pyramid continue to spawn slaves. Whether or not these devolved specimens, albinos with shiny pink eyes, completely hairless bodies, and squishy cartilaginous bones actually qualify as human is not so clear, the shape of their soft jelly-like skulls appearing closer to those of Homo floresiensis than those of Homo sapiens.

  Though traces of an unfinished fourteenth step, no more than a single rank of skulls high, can be found atop the temple, no new construction has taken place in eons. The devolved slave spawn have long since forgotten the techniques of osseous architecture given to their ancestors by that which built the lower levels of the ziggurat. Nor are their cartilaginous bones, soft gelatinous things prone to skull-rot, suitable for construction purposes.

  Though construction has ground to a halt, the sacrificial altars atop the ziggurat of skulls are still in operation. The temple is essentially a giant machine that runs on blood. The blood of the slaves beheaded on the altars courses down through the raveled maze of blood gutters until it spills upon the immense wheel of bones in the exact center of the temple. As the blood wheel turns, it drives an elaborate system of gears (whose teeth are made from real teeth). These gears in turn power the automatons atop the temple, clockwork priests made of carved bone, whose rusty, heavily nicked blades lop the heads off the slaves and set the blood flowing down the gutters. What’s left of the bloodless bodies of the beheaded, after the carrion birds have claimed their due, drops down chutes lined with spinning blades that grind the remains up into a paste which provides nourishment for the inhabitants of the breeding pits. The severed heads that used to be collected, stripped of skin, and placed atop the ziggurat, now simply roll from the pyramid and splatter against the bones below to be feasted upon by carrion birds.

  If the blood wheel were to cease turning the entire world would end, or so say those who kneel before the wheel. The universe’s entire existence is predicated on a thin trickle of blood spiraling down a pyramid of bones. And this flow of blood is dependent upon the blades of the automatons shearing the heads from the devolved slave spawn queued up before the altars patiently awaiting their deaths. The deteriorating blades that hold the world together are magnets for the lighting that lashes the top of the temple. These rusted, heavily nicked bits of steel sometimes require upwards of three strokes to slash the head from a sacrifice. If the bones of the devolved slave spawn were not so soft and pulpy the whole machine would have broke down long ago.

  Although the devolved slave spawn have a primitive vocal apparatus and even a crude language, they retain no cultural memories of their forbears. They know nothing of the mysterious architect who constructed the lower steps of the ziggurat. Nor do they seem to know much at all about the priests or the blood wheel, nor why they queue up before the sacrificial altars to offer their heads to automatons that run on blood.

  Some slave spawn escape from the breeding hives and wander the guts of the temple. These escaped slaves never dare leave the pyramid in which they were born, but they often linger at the edifice’s only opening gazing out with their pink albino eyes at the world beyond the ziggurat of skulls. All we know of the interior of the temple of bones derives from the strangulated whispers of escaped slaves. From these fugitive slaves, one capable of deciphering their primitive tongue hears whispered accounts of strange happenings inside the ziggurat of skulls.

  Many of these accounts concern a vast black pit beneath the bottom of the ziggurat. A pit so deep as to be, for all intents and purposes, bottomless, into which the blood of the sacrifices trickles after the wheel has drunk its fill. The pit, the escaped slaves contend, is covered by a gate of bones which is bound to the blood wheel by a chain of gears.

  Recently, if the reports of the escaped slaves are to be believed, the cyclopean gate of bones atop this bottomless pit has begun to slowly inch open.

  APARTMENT B

  Stinky Cat

  I don’t expect you to believe a word of this.

  In fact, I wish it weren’t true. Four years later, there are still nights I lie awake in bed, unable to escape the memories of the horror I encountered in Apartment B.

  I wish I could tell you just what it was. Maybe identifying and understanding whatever it was could help me forget about it, but I have never been able to offer an even somewhat satisfying explanation for what I saw that night.

  Consequently, I hold out little hope of you believing me when I say that every word of this is true.

  It began when I rented a room in a dilapidated home with a couple of friends I’d met on Craigslist. I could hardly afford my share of the rent, as I was barely scraping by on my disability check. But the price was right, no background check needed, and, honestly, I had nowhere else to go.

  It was a great place though, an imposing Victorian row house, tall and narrow with a turret rising three stories above the street. Just seeing the weathered brick façade, stained almost black by a century of Chicago pollution, gave me a chill. Even on the warmest day, that building seemed to have a cold wind blowing through it. For lack of a better word, there was a heaviness in the air – an oppressive atmosphere over the whole place.

  Now, I’ve neglected to tell you the really unnerving part. Directly across the street was the old Resurrection Cemetery, infamous for its many reported hauntings – too numerous to recount here. Needless to say, I must have heard them all before I moved into the house, so whenever I looked through that rusty black iron fence through the forest of tombstones, I expected to see Resurrection Mary darting between the monuments. The thought of seeing her, even for a second, terrified me, but I couldn’t help looking. I’d find myself transfixed on that landscape for hours. Conveniently enough, our apartment overlooked it, and I came to memorize it from my worn-out chair in the living room, located on the second floor of that turret.

  My roommate Meghan cleaned bedpans in a nearby nursing home, and my other roommate Dave stocked shelves in a bookstore. I really didn’t see much of them because they got up early and went to work before I got out of bed. Their alarm clocks were really loud and annoying. When you’re disabled, you really don’t have anywhere to be, so I’d stay up late writing and sleep until noon. This gave me plenty of time to work on my novel when they were either asleep or at work, but I have to admit I spent most of my days staring out that living room window, scanning the graves for any anomalous movement.

  Sometimes I’d waste so much time this way that I was barely able to post hate-filled rants on my blog or send death threats to idiots who one-star my books on Amazon. I knew they’d never even read my books before rating them because I hadn’t sold any yet. Between my reputation and my disability, you can understand why I still haven’t finished that novel.

  Directly across the room from this window was the kitchenette, and between it and the living room was a small round table with a chandelier hanging over it in what passed for a dining room. A door in the kitchen area led to a hall, down which could be found the bedrooms and bathroom. Since my bedroom was in the very back, a windowless space barely big enough for my bed, I usually set up my laptop at the kitchen table.

  I think it was a Monday night more or less like any other that Dave joined me at the table with a fish taco, a can of PBR, and a Ouija board.

  “Hey, whatcha writing?” he asked.

  “It’s a novel about a monster living in Lake Michigan.”

  “Like the Creature from the Black Lagoon?”

  “No, a big sea creature like the Loch Ness Monst
er.”

  “That seems a little implausible, Ricky. Don’t you think it would be kind of hard for a monster that big to hide in such a busy lake with twelve million people living along its shores and all the commercial fishing, tourist steamers, and…”

  “Trust me. It will terrify you.”

  “I dunno. It sounds kinda stupid.”

  “Shut up, you pile of baby batter that should have been aborted!”

  Meghan sat next me, trying to calm me, “It’s okay, Ricky. He’s joking.”

  By this time, Dave was having a good laugh at my expense. “Move that crap out of my way, so I can show you something that will really terrify.”

  I closed my laptop and placed it under my chair as he unfolded his Ouija board and put the pointer on top.

  “What the hell is that?” I asked.

  “It’s our Ouija board. We use it to contact the dead,” said Meghan.

  “I don’t mess with that sort of stuff. I’m a Christian,” I told her.

  “You don’t go to church, and I’m pretty sure Jesus wouldn’t approve of you making death threats to people all day long,” Dave answered. “Have you read your blog? I’m pretty sure you’re not a Christian.”

  “It’s okay, Ricky. It’s just for fun,” said Meghan.

  Dave instructed us to put our fingers on the pointer and concentrate. He asked the board, “Is there a spirit with us?”

  The pointer pointed to the word “YES” on the board.

  Meghan asked, “Can you give us a sign?”

  It was then one of the bulbs in the chandelier burned out, plunging the room into somewhat less brightness.

  My body stiffened. I staggered backwards from my chair, tripping over my laptop and crashing to the floor. The collapse stunned me. Writhing on the linoleum, I whimpered uncontrollably, unable to rise, helpless to flee. Suffering as I was from a disabled pinky toe for which I got a monthly check, I was powerless to resist the dark force which had made its presence felt through that single light bulb.

  I could see only blurry shapes through my tear-filled eyes. I could hear nothing over what sounded like a young girl sobbing.

  How long I lay there I don’t know. Meghan and Dave were apparently so horrified they were unable to rise from their seats. They were frightened so senseless they even appeared to be laughing and pointing at me.

  I have no idea how Meghan managed to summon the strength to walk to the kitchen cabinet and return to the table with a little light bulb. With Herculean fortitude, she twisted the dark light bulb while battling the invisible demons which were undoubtedly tormenting her. Then, as if by magic, she screwed the new bulb into the socket, flooding the room with light slightly brighter than the light had been before she replaced the bulb.

  Having defeated the demonic entity, my savior laughed with joy and called out, “Get up, you pussy. It was just a burnt out light bulb.” She was obviously delirious, since we had no cat.

  Trying to take his mind off the terrors we had just experienced, Dave bravely changed the subject to my writing. “How do you expect to be a horror writer when you’re afraid of your own shadow?”

  Though his question puzzled me, I appreciated his attempt to distract us from the awful scene which had just unfolded.

  Having survived this inexplicable and traumatic experience, we seldom spoke of it afterwards. In fact, my brave roommates usually pretended to have forgotten all about it. Unable to accept the true terror of what happened that night, Dave sometimes even pretended that I had scared myself and that the light bulb had somehow burned out just because it was old.

  Though I have studied page after page of Wikipedia, I have never been able to explain what happened to that demon-possessed light bulb in Apartment B.

  PRETTY GIRL

  Deb Eskie

  Everyone wants to be the pretty girl.

  We are conditioned to strive for beauty from our earliest years. Our parents, with the best intentions, tell us just how pretty we are when we are two years old, and they accentuate that innocent doll-like adorability with bows, lace, and light pink lipstick so we can make ourselves up like Mommy.

  But what we didn’t realize, at that oh so tender age, was that Mommy used makeup to hide her true face, her sad face, a face that struggled to maintain the very same smoothness of youth it possessed when she first met her husband, and they were in love, and he paid her the least bit of attention. My mother saw the opposite of beauty as death, and she wanted me to know love and experience joy, and love and joy, of course are the benefits of being attractive. Without attractiveness there could be no fulfillment, no reason for existence.

  Thankfully, I was pretty; a dimpled-face cutie-pie with long blond hair that my mother enjoyed styling into different dos. I was primped and curled and danced onstage in baby beauty pageants. It didn’t matter how much I cried or stamped my foot, Mommy never listened. Those pageants were important to her and my success was hers as well.

  So I did what was expected of me. I dressed how beauty queens are supposed to dress and I surrounded myself with only pretty people or people that were jealous of me and therefore easily taken advantage of.

  Like Lizzy Kay, head of the school newspaper and the events committee at school. She worshipped me and constantly complimented what I wore, as if being nice to me would somehow make us alike. I knew what she said behind my back, though, words I was all too familiar with: bitch, slut, whore. Girls use the same terminologies boys do when they want something they can’t have.

  In spite of my social reputation, I learned early in life that not everyone was on my side. I had plenty of friends, but trusted no one. Plenty of boyfriends, but was backstabbed by them all. I was a cheerleader and model, dated only jocks and upper status high school boys, and still sought out this happiness my mother claimed was in store, but had yet to find for herself.

  Of course, she didn’t know about my little secret. Nobody did. How could I tell my pretty, perfect mother that her pretty, perfect little girl was somehow imperfect, different, abnormal?

  At puberty, it kicked in. I would masturbate constantly, trying to eliminate the hunger, the empty feeling in my stomach I would get, even if I had already eaten a big meal. For some reason, only orgasm would help, but then I’d be hungry again, just an hour or two later.

  I started having sex with my first boyfriend at thirteen. He was a senior and it did not take long for him to convince me we needed to share our love under the sheets. I was scared at first, but sex felt good and I quickly adapted to it. However, James didn’t like me on top because he said I took too much control and had too much passion for a recent virgin. He said I looked at him funny when we did it, like I was someone else, like I was insane.

  He ended up breaking up with me, and I encountered this dilemma again with other boys. Many claimed I wanted sex too much. I was too into it, too much for them to handle. Something in me would emerge when I was aroused and it scared my boyfriends; the hunger, the desire, the need to fill the emptiness in my gut. I liked to taste them with my tongue, their every part. I delighted in the flavor of sex, the salt of sweat, the hot, sticky sensation of mouth upon flesh.

  It didn’t stop with just sex either. I loved food and loved to eat. Like my father, I was an avid carnivore. After shows, Daddy would take me to Burger King and we’d have ourselves giant Whoppers with everything on them, and Mommy would get angry and tell me I’d be too fat to ever win the Little Miss Darling award. But I always won. The food I gorged upon never affected my body. I remained as skinny as ever, no matter what I inhaled and digested. My dates would watch in amazement as I’d indulge in large quantities of red meat as rare as the restaurants would be willing to make it. My friends hated me as they’d nibble upon their bland salads and raw tofu.

  And so I suppressed whatever it was that lingered inside me, whatever sick, depraved urges I felt. The idea of my mother, or anybody, discovering my secret was a terrifying one. I imagined Mommy would never look at me again, and my friends, a
s two-faced as they were, would abandon me for good. I researched fetishes on the internet, but could not find my own identity among even the most bizarre categories. I believed I was alone, a hyper-sexual freak of nature with a ferocious and dangerous appetite.

  My parents had a new friend over for dinner one night, a man named Thomas Berlin whom they knew through business. It was obvious to me that he and my mother were sleeping together, although, my father was most oblivious. Surely, my mother was hoping he’d notice, but that was asking a lot of Daddy. He didn’t even notice Mr. Berlin’s gaze upon me.

  But I did. It was a familiar gaze, one that said “I would shove my dick in you so hard the gods above would hear you scream.” I received that gaze all the time, wherever I went. I received it even as a child in pageants from the judges, hosts, and regulars. I knew that gaze from teachers, doctors, and strangers who’d pass by me and turn their heads twice to get a better look.

  Although Mr. Berlin was sleeping with a married woman, he had daughters of his own and did not condone pedophilia. Nor was he used to being attracted to someone as young as I was. He was polite to me and listened attentively when I spoke, or when my father bragged about my school accomplishments, mentioning of course that I wanted to be a biologist. To this, my mother always scoffed and rolled her eyes. Science was a silly and unnecessary interest for a pretty girl to have.

  I rinsed the dishes after dinner and put them in the dishwasher. Mr. Berlin handed me his used plate and when our fingers accidentally met, he jerked his hand away and dropped the plate, cracking the side. Mommy apologized and blamed my clumsiness, but Mr. Berlin defended me and accepted the blame instead, to which Daddy made some wise crack about having too much wine. My parents’ friend nervously helped me gather up the pieces. When we caught eyes, I smiled at him and he smiled back. He was nice, and charming, and sweet. It didn’t faze me much when men acted weird around me, but I was rather fond of Mr. Berlin’s humility.