Fossil Lake: An Anthology of the Aberrant

by Ramsey Campbell

  The next time Mr. Berlin was over I found a gift wrapped box sitting on my bed. Inside it were a pearl necklace and a tiny note that read “To Margery: A string of beauty for a beautiful girl. Thomas.” I placed it around my neck and wore it shamelessly in front of my mother, who asked me where I’d gotten it.

  “A boy from school,” I lied, without skipping a beat.

  “I have one just like it,” she told me, and she paused. “From your dad.” My mother was also a good liar, but not as good as me.

  The gifts became more frequent. Usually, I’d come home late from a party and hear my mother moaning in her bedroom. That is how I knew Daddy was still at work. Then I’d find earrings, roses, and scented letters written in fine cursive on my bed. Mr. Berlin soon confessed that he was in love with me, but was hurt and upset that I had a boyfriend and didn’t think I’d want anything to do with someone three times my age. In one letter he faulted me for giving him such awful, sinful thoughts that he couldn’t bear to sleep.

  My new boyfriend, Sasha, told me that by accepting the gifts I was leading the old man on, and that made me a tease. I didn’t like when he called me names. He wasn’t very nice to me, not like Mr. Berlin was, but he was good looking and let me ride on top.

  Still, the hunger pains were unreal, sometimes to the point of nausea and dizziness, and I spent quite a bit of time in the nurse’s office. I had numerous hospital visits as well, and was checked for anemia, but the results were negative. My friends decided I must be bulimic, what with my meat affinity and thin physique. Perhaps they weren’t that far off the mark. Perhaps I did have some sort of eating disorder, if not bulimia, than one that had me contemplating horrific sexual scenarios. The more these images plagued me, the less I let Sasha touch me.

  After a particularly dramatic fight with Sasha about my apparent sexual dysfunction, I came home to find my mother rummaging through my desk drawers and jewelry boxes. Inside my special princess music box that my father gave me were all of Mr. Berlin’s love letters.

  Mommy read them and smacked me hard across the face. “You slut!”

  I didn’t know what to say. I suppose part of me wanted her to find them. She sat at my vanity table and examined her face and bleached salon styled hair. Then she lit a cigarette and glared at me through the mirror.

  “You have no idea what it’s like to be hungry,” she said through the smoky air, “to wanna devour every last bit you can get because you are so starved. You won’t know what that’s like until you are my age.” She stood and got close in my face. “What the fuck are you?” she demanded, and I could smell the booze on her breath.

  She left me in my shock and humiliation, and I wanted so badly to answer her, but I didn’t know what I was. I did know hunger though. I did know the need to devour. I also knew something was terribly wrong with me, and now Sasha knew it too.

  After weeks of no sex, we had tried again, but I bit his chin and drew blood, and he responded in absolute dread and fury, throwing me out of his house. I was most worried about what would happen the next day when everybody’d know that the prom queen was a sadistic psychopath.

  Now my own mother despised me. I had tried so hard to be the better, more improved version of her. I thought that that’s what she wanted, that she would be proud of me, but this whole being beautiful thing felt more like a curse than a blessing. Mr. Berlin told me I had been put on Earth to torture him and make him do bad things. If that were the case, if I indeed was a villain, then I wasn’t being true to myself, or to my nature.

  In biology class, I was fascinated by the cruelty and brutality of nature. The food chain was a violent, murderous bloodbath among beasts and humans. Instinct was ruthlessly unforgiving. It didn’t matter how domesticated a tiger was, she was still capable of mauling the shit out of people if need be.

  This made me think of my girlfriends who desperately tried to fix and idealize themselves by shaving or waxing every last bit of hair below the neck. I too was guilty of this, but recognized the absurdity. It didn’t matter how much work went into being pretty, hair would always grow back. I had to stop suppressing.

  I emailed Thomas Berlin and begged him to see me. He refused at first, and ranted in an email about how much he cared about my family and respected my father, and didn’t want anyone to get hurt including his wife and kids. But I knew he’d show up. It was the same kind of bullshit rant Mr. Whitman, the school janitor, gave me when I seduced him.

  Mr. Berlin and I met up in a parking lot overlooking South Beach. I’d called my father to let him know I’d be sleeping at Callie’s house, the most responsible and smartest of my friends, so there’d be no concerns. Mr. Berlin had flowers for me, but he wouldn’t look me in the eye.

  I spoke softly to him and giggled and put my hand on his knee and he rubbed my wrist as if he couldn’t believe I was truly sitting beside him. We kissed heatedly, knocking his glasses right off his face. I undid the buttons of my shirt and Mr. Berlin kissed my breasts, like he’d never seen anything quite as full and succulent before. His hands rubbed up and down my body, and I fell back against the car door as Mr. Berlin licked me and put his fingers inside me.

  My stomach began to growl and saliva dripped from the corners of my mouth. He was the hardest I’d ever felt a man be, as he fucked me with all the energy and fervor he could muster at fifty years old. He started to breathe heavier and my hunger increased as my vaginal muscles flexed. We both began to reach orgasm. Then his gasps became woeful howls of immense pleasure and tears filled his eyes as he let out a great sound of release.

  Slowly my mouth stretched open and enlarged to the size of Mr. Berlin’s head. As I enveloped his head inside my mouth, Mr. Berlin’s eyes popped open to darkness. He screamed, and thrashed, and struggled, but it was too late. I bit down. I chomped through the bones, vessels, and arteries in his neck, munched and swallowed.

  A morning jogger found Mr. Berlin’s headless body once I was gone. My mother sobbed for weeks after she learned of the news and though she never said anything, I know she somehow suspected my involvement.

  Daddy still didn’t seem to realize that Mr. Berlin meant more to his wife than just a friend, but he did express interest in the peculiar circumstances of Mr. Berlin’s death. The police, he said, could not understand how a man’s head had been bitten right off. The papers had yet to report it, but I was certain the findings of human bite marks were unfamiliar territory for the pathologist who performed the autopsy.

  I felt amazingly at peace for the first time ever and relished in a satisfaction I had never had with any other man. Or any other meal, for that matter. I knew what I wanted now, and what I was. In biology my fetish was revealed to me, as I began to study up on a strange little insect called the praying mantis. This remarkable creature cannibalized its submissive mate once fertilization took place.

  I was pleased to learn I wasn’t alone in the world. There was something in nature just as beautiful as me, just as powerful, sexual, and vicious. It felt good to know I was so much more than what people thought of me, more than what my mother wanted me to be, more than eye candy, more than just a pretty girl.

  Mr. Berlin had said I made monsters out of men, but he was sorely mistaken. It was men who made a monster out of me.

  COME FLY WITH DEATH

  Wesley D. Gray

  Come fly with Death

  and feel the splitting as you come apart

  with turbulent screams bifurcating bones.

  Flee further from this life –

  unfurl your wings and soar

  with tangled feathers cutting the night.

  Join his skeleton beak,

  slicing stabs at airless wind,

  and wield its dashing spine.

  Stay near to glinting shroud and glide,

  knowing tattered wings will guide,

  as whispering scars are left behind.

  Go now into that hollow abyss,

  but do not pass the dark in calmness;

  break
the barrier with raging clamor!

  Do not scrape or merely crawl.

  Come fly with Death –

  and swoop, and yawp, and bawl.

  THE HORN OF PLENTY

  Russell Nayle

  The sound of the neighbor’s rooster woke Jack. After an hour and a half’s sleep, he was in no mood to be nice to anyone – or anything. Even his hamster shied away from him. He couldn’t go back to sleep, but it was just as well. He hadn’t packed his gear yet for the day trip to Fossil Lake, and the bus was supposed to leave from the mall parking lot in an hour.

  Jack had taken this trip many times. He usually sat in the back seat, where he spread out his baling twine and safety pins – for insurance purposes. A man once tried to sit next to him. Ever since, Jack came prepared.

  He dodged the granny spies to cut through the back yard of his apartment complex. It was the fastest way to the mall. The safety pins in his backpack jabbed him between his shoulder blades with every stride, but he didn’t have time to rearrange his gear just yet. Getting to the bus was his priority.

  Jack made it to the parking lot, elbowed his way to the front of the line, and proudly displayed his ticket. The bus driver recognized Jack, and grudgingly let him board. He’d accused Jack of trying to rook him before, but Jack’s ticket was kosher this time, so there was nothing the bastard could do.

  The others boarded the bus with no problems. They all took seats near the front.

  After half an hour’s ride to the lakeside, Jack wanted to be first person off the bus, which wasn’t so easy to do from the back seat.

  Another passenger, Greg, slid his 300 pound bulk halfway into the aisle.

  “You’re not getting in front of me, boy,” he told Jack. “Wait your turn.”

  “Da fuck?!” growled Jack. “No way is some fat guy going to make me miss five minutes worth of fossil hunting!”

  “Yeah, well, I am. Deal with it, Shortcakes.”

  “I am not short! I’m five-foot-ten-inches!”

  “No you’re not.”

  Jack fumed. He’d figure out a way to get back at Greg. Overpowering him was out of the question. The safety pins he’d packed would have to do. A kilt pin would have been useful.

  The moment he hopped down from the bus, Jack pushed past Greg, and ran to the shore.

  * * *

  The bus driver and Greg looked at each other and shrugged.

  Greg asked, “Do you think he came for the fossil hunting or the food?”

  “If I knew that, I’d dress in drag and do palm readings instead of drive a bus.”

  “He looks familiar. Have you seen him before?”

  “Lots of times,” replied the driver. “He tries to board the bus once a month or so. A couple of times he handed me a counterfeit ticket. You should have seen the tantrum he threw last time. My two-year-old nephew takes it better when he can’t have a cookie.”

  Greg laughed. “Well, I’m here for the cookout, and the scenery. Fossils don’t really rock my socks. I’ll help you set up, if that’s okay.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate it. Can you grab one end of this table?”

  Twenty minutes later, there was a commotion by the edge of the lake.

  Greg pointed to where Jack was splashing around in the water. “What is that he’s doing? My grandpa told me a story about catching fish with some twine and a safety pin on a stick, but I always thought it was one of his tall tales. That boy is going to scare off the fish.”

  Jack bent over, and reached down into the water.

  Greg’s eyes widened. “Oh, lord, I did not need to see his plumber’s butt. Is that a tat on his tailbone? Can you read it?”

  The bus driver replied, “It looks like a comment cloud, but all I can make out is ‘WOOF’.”

  They continued to watch Jack, fascinated.

  Jack’s jerry-rigged fishing line had gotten caught on something. He was in the water up to his crotch trying to un-lodge it. Mud and all, he emerged, and approached the picnic table with a twisted looking horn.

  “Take that, bitches,” he screamed while running circles around the table, waving his find. “Yeah, take that!”

  One woman who was sitting at the table asked, “May I see that? It looks like part of a narwhal tusk. But what’s it doing in a fresh water lake?”

  “It’s a unicorn horn. I just know it is.”

  The woman tried to keep a straight face. “Send it off to a university in the Maritimes. Get a biologist to look at it.”

  “It’s a unicorn horn. I don’t need some fool from a college to tell me that. I know what it is.”

  “Okay, okay. Just don’t wave it in my face.”

  Jack paused, looking stunned as it visibly dawned on him he was talking to a woman. An actual woman. Clearly, not many women would engage him in conversation. Opportunities like this seldom presented themselves.

  Greg and the bus driver, still watching, winced in unison as they saw him suave up and try to make his best move.

  “Ma’am, would you like to go to dinner with me sometime?” Jack asked her. “You’d have to drive, though.”

  She’d managed to keep the straight face before, but this time proved to be a bigger challenge. “No thanks.”

  “Geez. Some women are so picky.”

  The cookout had barely started when Jack announced that he was ready to go home. Greg reminded him that they weren’t due to leave until 4:00.

  “Sit on that horn thing you found until then, okay?”

  “I will not! It’s a fossil. It’s from the lake. It’s fragile.”

  Greg shot back, “Yeah, like you.”

  The cookout went well, with brats and some burgers. Almost everyone enjoyed the day trip, except for that one woman, who seemed to have lost much of her appetite and only picked at her food. For the rest of them, Jack’s antics were an amusing sideshow to a gorgeous day spent poking around among the rocks.

  * * *

  All Jack wanted to do was get home with his twisty horn. He persisted in telling anybody who’d listen, but they sided with the fat guy and made him wait until 4:00.

  After three agonizing hours, which gave his clothes time to mostly dry out in the sun, he reclaimed the rear seat on the bus for the return trip. Nobody else wanted it.

  During the ride, Jack kept fondling his fossil. Others returned with some trilobites. One woman found an ammonite. Nobody else found a unicorn horn!

  Once off the bus, Jack raced home with his precious find. He sat down at his computer and googled “unicorn horn,” and “narwhal.” None of the results really looked like his fossil. Frustrated, he hung his fossil off his headboard with baling twine, and went to sleep.

  The mirror shook. His dresser shifted a little. He rolled over, and pulled the covers over his head.

  The next morning, his wallet was missing, and everything that had been on the dresser was scattered across the floor.

  Throughout the next month, plenty of other strange things happened. His beloved Empyrean Sky t-shirt was shredded. Things kept getting knocked off his dresser. Several times, he saw a black cloud behind him when he looked in the mirror. Lights flickered, and he occasionally got ear piercing feedback from his speakers. He heard demonic laughter at night.

  Jack still had the name of a guy he’d seen on TV who investigated this sort of thing, Don Zoofus, written on a post-it that he had stuck to his fridge. He looked up the man’s number, and called to explain the situation. The answering machine picked up, so he left a message.

  Zoofus returned his call that evening. He could not come investigate for a couple of weeks, he said, because he had several urgent cases pending, but he expressed his interest.

  Jack endured the weird happenings for two more weeks, until Zoofus arrived with his equipment. The cameras looked nice, but what really caught Jack’s eye was the voltmeter. Zoofus called it a K2 EMF meter, or something that sounded high tech. It had pretty lights.

  Zoofus spent two days on his investigation. When he finished
, he proclaimed that the twisty horn was the cause of the strange occurrences, and recommended that it be removed from the premises. He explained that it was Jack’s decision, of course.

  Reluctantly, Jack allowed Zoofus to take the horn. Zoofus promised to bring it home with him, do a purification ritual, and encase it in a bell jar, so that any remaining evil couldn’t escape.

  Despite that, Jack continued to experience weird phenomena.

  And three weeks after Zoofus left, he logged onto eBay, where he saw his unicorn horn for sale, for $300.

  THE LOST LINK

  Carl Thomas Fox

  If Francis didn’t get there in time, he would not be happy. His time was precious. There was so much to tell him, and only Francis would be the man to do it.

  It was his right, after all. He had found the irrefutable proof.

  Fuelled with his knowledge, Francis raced through the empty rain-slicked streets in his rental car. It was the middle of the night, a dreary British night with the rain cascading down. In the gloom, everything had a sleek black sheen. So sleek and slick that, in his excitement, he fought to maintain control of the car, doing his very best not to die with this knowledge.

  He tried to remain calm by remembering the events that led him to this kamikaze errand.

  Fresh out of studying for his Ph.D for palaeontology, Francis had been keen to begin his first dig and add something new to the world’s knowledge of prehistory. There had been so many changes lately! Such as the concept that dinosaurs had evolved into birds, rather than being lizards, as the original translation of their name meant. No, they were of the bird genus, to the point many had feathers, not scales as popularly believed.