High pitched cheering came from above. The neighborhood children laughed at him, as they watched the spectacle of the old man frantically stumbling down the empty street, possessed by some mad hope of escape. Jack tried to not let it get to him. If it wasn't for the hunters chasing him, he'd have stopped to scream at them. Curse their little cold hearts. Cruel little beasts, he thought, remembering his own cheers and laughter very well.
If you asked him now, he couldn't tell you why he ever thought the hunt had been funny. Why? Why are you laughing? I'm being hunted down like some dirty rodent! Like filth. But I'm not filth. I'm a man! Why is this happening to me? He could cry for help, but what would be the point? He never helped anyone in all those years when he watched the hunt. Why would anyone do the same for him?
The yipping and growling grew closer. No time to vent his rage, being so close to home now, with still a chance that he could make it. With any luck, there wouldn't be any lawmen loitering in front of his building, allowing him to slip inside and hide from the pack. If there were, they might just sweep his legs out from under him and throw him back to the wolves. No, he had to risk it. It was his only chance.
There it was! The steps to his building. Home! Safe! And not a lawman in sight. He could make it. He would make it!
Then, it happened. An agonizing pain in his wrist that dragged Jack to the ground. He fought, trying to pull his arm out from the sleeve of his jacket, but the young wolf had his teeth buried deep into his flesh. It burned! The pain burned so much!
A second pain, from his thigh. A third on his ankle. The rest of the pack joined in, prancing and jumping around Jack as the three pulled him to the ground. His head hit the pavement, gushing blood out from the wound. They won.
He turned around, flailing his arms. An immense pressure pushed down on his chest. Was his heart giving out? No, it was one of them. A beautiful she-wolf with bright gray fur and azure eyes loomed over him. Her teeth bared as she snapped at her pack. The others backed off. This was her kill.
Jack looked into her eyes, seeing himself reflected in those spheres. Big caerulean marbles, showing him an image of what he had become. He saw an old man. An old man like so many before him. Beyond his reflection, was darkness. A cold empty void, yet one that was very much alive, burning with a primal fire of passion. It was her. The she-wolf. She looked back into his very soul, as if to thank him for being her kill. It was his time.
The laughter stopped. Or perhaps he just didn't hear it. There was nothing left but silence. For a moment, it was like there was only them. Just Jack and the she-wolf.
“Beautiful,” he whispered.
Then her teeth sank into his face. Warm breath stroked his skin as her canines scraped against bone. The pain began after she pulled away, taking most of his face along with it. Another bite! He tried to scream, but he no longer had a throat. He heard the laughter again, as another wolf sank its teeth into his crotch. Young voices, laughing as the old man was torn apart by the beautiful hunters of the night.
Joachim Heijndermans is a writer and artist from the Netherlands. His work has been featured in Gathering Storm, Mad Scientist Journal, Kraxon, Storyteller, Every Day Fiction and Asymmetry Fiction, with upcoming publications with Ares Magazine, Metaphorosis and the anthology Enter the Aftermath. He likes to read, travel and collect toys, and is currently completing his first children’s book.
LUMP
By D.J. Tyrer
“That looks nasty,” I said, peering at Alan’s back. He was sitting on the edge of my bath, where the light was best, and had taken his shirt off to offer me a look. Amongst the pimples that clustered upon his back, there was a large lump like a red, inflamed Satsuma. “Does it hurt?”
He shrugged. “Not really. It’s uncomfortable, not sore.”
“What caused it? Do you know?” It looked like an allergic reaction, but seemed too localised.
Alan pulled his shirt back on, then turned to face me. “That’s the strange thing.”
“Why?”
“It happened to me in a dream,” he said, and he began to tell me what had happened.
Alan was walking through the dark, misty streets of an unfamiliar city. His footsteps echoed hollowly about him. He could see nobody else, but he could hear the occasional echo of a horse’s hooves, a distant inarticulate shout or a muffled scream.
Although he had no conscious idea of where he was going, he kept walking despite the fear he felt building at the strange sounds echoing off the cyclopean walls that surrounded him. Somehow, he knew that stopping would place him in danger. What danger . . . he couldn’t say.
Then, he came to his destination. He didn’t know how he knew it, but the ironbound door in the alley wall of some old and soaring building was where he was meant to be. He reached out and tried the cold, wrought-iron handle: it was unlocked. The door swung open to reveal a void within.
Biting his lip for a minute, Alan resolved to press on. He stepped into the darkness and, a few steps later, stumbled out into a courtyard reminiscent of Moorish Spain, lit by the light of the moons above. There were no plants, only urns he didn’t dare look into, and the pool at the courtyard’s centre was dry and its fountain long dead.
Alan stood for a moment, savouring the silence, and wondering why he was there.
Then, he became aware of a new and unnerving sound, something like the swishing of skirts or the rustle of leaves. He looked about for the source of the noise, but could see nothing in the darkness beyond the arches at the courtyard’s edge.
He called out, but there was no reply, only the swish-swish.
Alan wanted to run, but didn’t know where. Then, it came into view. From the shadows, something flopped and slithered its way into the courtyard and towards him. It looked like a bundle of washed-out yellow rags from under which, for just a moment, a tiny, porcelain-white limb, like that of a baby, would protrude, then disappear back within the folds.
Alan looked down at it and one end of it rose as if to look up at him in return. They stayed like that for a long moment. Alan wasn’t certain whether to feel fear or be amused. Had it been made of brightly-coloured cloth, he might have found it almost cute: it gave the impression of a little pet seeking love. Yet, it very clearly wasn’t natural and it disturbed him.
Then, it suddenly rolled sideways. He turned to follow it, but a moment later, it was behind him and he felt a dozen tiny hands clutching at his legs, pulling the thing up his trousers and, then, his jacket. He tried to grab for it, but somehow he couldn’t reach it.
There was a ripping sound as his shirt tore and he felt a piercing sensation, as if he’d been bitten on his back.
“Then, I woke up with a scream. Of course, although I could feel the pain, I thought it was just the echo of a dream. I didn’t think it was anything more, just went back to sleep.”
“And, then you got the lump?”
Alan nodded. “Yes. It was there the next morning. It was only small. As time passed, it got bigger, but hurt less.”
“Strange. You should see a doctor.”
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
He didn’t, of course. Alan was never the sort to trust a professional. He might ask a friend, but usually he’d do it himself, or do nothing at all. When his pipes had burst, he’d tolerated a puddle in his lounge for a fortnight before finally calling a plumber.
“It’s gotten larger,” he said when next I saw him.
It had. It was now the size of a football and he could’ve auditioned to play Richard III.
“You really should see a doctor,” I said, staring at the livid, red mass.
“I don’t like to make a fuss. I mean, it doesn’t hurt.”
“Are you sure?” It had to.
“No, not really. It’s just uncomfortable; heavy.”
“You don’t say . . .”
It looked horrible, like some sort of cyst or tumour. It was one of those things that fascinates you and repels you in equal measure; I had the urge to touch it, but,
at the same time, didn’t want to. It made me feel queasy.
“Hell!” I suddenly cried, jumping back from him.
“What?” exclaimed Alan, turning his head to look at me. “What is it?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t believe it. I leaned forward to look at the lump, certain I’d been wrong.
I hadn’t. I gasped.
“What is it?” Alan whined, worried.
“Um . . . I don’t know how to . . .”
“What? Tell me!”
I watched as, yet again, a face pressed itself against the inside of his skin and the shape of a tiny fist pushed out the surface of the lump. Surely, I was seeing things! And, yet, there it was . . .
“Alan . . . I think there’s a baby in your bump . . .”
“I dreamed of a child,” he murmured, taking it more calmly than I did.
Alan had been in a suite of rooms, which he didn’t recognise, yet somehow knew to be his home. He was, apparently, high up within some sort of tower: there was a balcony from which he had a view of an endless city of soaring towers rising from a sea of mist. It was the city from his previous dream.
He walked through the rooms, which had an air of decayed gentility about them, until he came to one with vibrantly-yellow walls and a cot.
In the cot, there was a child. He could hear it snuffling. Slowly, tentatively, he walked towards it. He felt an odd sense of nerves.
“Then, I woke,” he finished. “I never did see the baby. I don’t know what it meant. Well, not till now . . .”
“You need to go see a doctor. You need to be checked out.”
“And be poked and prodded? No, thank you!”
It was a month later that he called me in a panic and asked me to come over. He hadn’t been out in all that time, had hidden away, ashamed, fearful.
I rushed round and let myself in with the key he kept under a flowerpot beside his backdoor as an invitation to burglars.
“Alan, you there?”
An agonised groan guided me to his front room.
Alan was on the floor in his underpants. The bulge had grown to enormous proportions and the skin was stretched horribly thin and appeared to be beginning to split. Within it, I could clearly see the . . . baby twisting about, extending its arms and legs to pull the skin taut: trying to break free.
“It hurts!” he cried, writhing on the floor. “It hurts so much! Do something!”
I didn’t know what to do. If I phoned for an ambulance, what could I tell them?
I just stared in horrified fascination.
Then, the skin burst and it broke free in a shower of puss-blotched blood. Bile rose in my throat.
It wasn’t a baby. Not a human one, anyway.
It was the general size and shape of a baby and the yellow of its skin might have been attributable to jaundice, but the hollows where the eyes should’ve been were covered with skin and its eyes were in the palms of its hands, which it held up to observe me.
The thing slithered down Alan’s back and flopped onto the bloodstained carpet. Then, it half-crawled and half-flopped towards the corner of the room and pulled itself up into a sitting position, leaving Alan sobbing in the centre of the room. I stood transfixed, unable to act.
The creature began to croon, a strange, phlegm-filled tune that reminded me of Beautiful Dreamer. As I watched, a shimmer appeared in the air. The shimmer seemed to coalesce into a circle that looked like a mirror floating in the air; only its greyish surface reflected nothing. Then, it seemed to wobble, a little like a pond into which a stone has dropped and an image began to form of a dark and barren landscape.
It crawled through the opening between this world and that one and I watched it crawl some distance across that barren landscape, before pulling itself once more into a sitting position.
Then, it began to croon again, a different song this time, one I couldn’t place at all. Dust began to swirl about it and, as I watched, the ground trembled and lances of rock began to extrude upwards from the earth, growing into towers that reached towards the moons that began to accrete from the whirling clouds of sand. The creature—the child, or whatever it was, that had sprung Minerva-like from my friend’s back—appeared to be singing a new world into existence. A world over which that peculiar yellow thing would be king. A world that showed a certain affinity to the one Alan had seen in his dreams. Coincidence? I didn’t think so. Had those dreams been a pre-echo of what it was now creating here? Or, was the entity somehow self-created?
Either way, I was fascinated, the amazing sight of creation sweeping aside the nausea I’d felt watching its birth. I felt the urge to step through the gateway and join it in that new world, explore it, experience it—live it. But, at the same time, I knew such a step would be irreversible. If I went there, I’d never return; I’d be leaving everything behind.
A new world!
My courage failed me and I looked away. I so wanted to leave, yet couldn’t bring myself to abandon my banal life: I’d invested so much in it . . .
When I looked back, the gateway was gone, that window to another world was closed: my chance at a new life in a new world of unknown delights and new experiences was gone. It was over.
Alan groaned and I crouched beside him.
I should’ve stepped through.
DJ Tyrer is the person behind Atlantean Publishing and has been widely published in anthologies and magazines around the world, such as Chilling Horror Short Stories (Flame Tree), Snowpocalypse (Black Mirror Press), Steampunk Cthulhu (Chaosium), Night in New Orleans (FunDead Publications), Miskatonic Dreams (Alban Lake), and Sorcery & Sanctity: A Homage to Arthur Machen (Hieroglyphics Press), and in addition, has a novella available in paperback and on the Kindle, The Yellow House (Dunhams Manor).
BONJOUR, STEVIE
By David Turton
From: Cliff and Mary Allan
Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2017 at 2:48 PM
Subject: Hello from France
To: Stephanie Allen
Bonjour, Stevie!
I’ll be honest, that’s pretty much exhausted my French repertoire. Your mother, brother and l arrived a few days ago. We are enjoying the hustle and bustle of Paris after the inevitable trauma of the long-haul flight to get here. We were in premium economy, which is the most minute of smidgens above economy class, and found ourselves sitting behind a young couple with a delightful baby. I had knocked back as much Valium as I possibly could in order to get some sleep. As you know, I abhor even the shortest of flights and suffer from the most terrible anxiety on those large iron death traps, whereas your mother could sleep through a Slipknot concert. So, just as the drug was beginning to take its effect, the sly little baby started bawling. “Waaah, waaah, waaah,” it yelled, each scream louder and more piercing than the last. As a father of two, including yourself, Stevie, I know what it’s like to have a baby crying uncontrollably. But that doesn’t mean that I have to tolerate it in my senior years. It sounded like each yell was stabbing coldly into my soul, and you know no-one wants to find out what’s in there. Anyway, the baby’s cries were dealt with, but they were soon replaced with its mother’s screams. That’s life I suppose, you remove one problem and just replace it with one that is just as troublesome.
Anyway, enough of that.
We are staying in the Marais district of Paris. I have to say, Stevie, it’s very trendy. We are by far the oldest people around, apart from Mikey of course. Speaking of your little brother, he has been quiet since we set off. Of course, we haven’t told him about the true purpose of this trip, but I feel that he suspects it on some level. We toyed with the idea of letting him know, just so he could make the most of his last few days, especially in so wonderful a city as Paris, but we couldn’t be certain that he wouldn’t cause problems with our carefully planned trip. I’m sure that, if he can, he’ll look back at his part in our pilgrimage with pride. It’s a nice thought for me and your mother.
We did a walking tour of the Marais on a stinking hot day, one of those times when the sweat just seems to soak every inch of your clothing. I’m not quite as fit as I used to be, but I kept up with your mother and Mikey admirably if I do say so myself. I visited the Louvre for the first time and was overwhelmed by the vastness of its collections. It was really awesome, Stevie, I only wish you could be here to enjoy it with us. I’m sure you’re lying on the sofa as you read this, stroking your baby bump and picturing all the masterpieces on display. Seriously, I was overwhelmed and I’m not so manly to deny that I shed a tear when I saw Gericault’s The Raft of the Medusa. Such darkness, such life brought to a macabre and deathly story. Your mother and Mikey weren’t really passionate about our Louvre trip, and I lamented your absence more then than ever, you know how much I adore our shared love of art. You may never come to Paris, Stevie, but I hope to show it to you in the next life, if the Great Old Ones see fit to allow it.
Talking of passions, the food here is amazing. It certainly is not an exaggeration or a myth about the French cuisine. It really is exquisite, Stevie. Although I’m not sure I impressed the waitress and the other diners in one of the classier Marais restaurants. I wanted a steak and, as the waitress had little English, I did my best cow impression, placing my fingers on my head to act as horns and creating an impressively accurate mooooooo sound. The waitress laughed, more out of politeness than anything else, and your mother was mortified. When the food came, I was given pork. Whoever thought it was a good idea to allow Americans passports, eh?
In the afternoon, we took a bicycle trip along the Loire River to Amboise, one you would have really enjoyed, Stevie. The countryside is unbelievable, the whole Loire valley is just sublime. In another life, I could see ourselves living there, drinking crisp chardonnay and eating cheese and olives.
Hinnom Magazine Issue 003 Page 9