Widowmakers: A Benefit Anthology of Dark Fiction

by James Newman Benefit Anthology

  Something exists, beyond the brush

  Among the trees, I hear its rush

  Of clamoring

  The whispers hush

  A damning

  Out where no sunlight shone

  Branches cry, they bend and moan

  Something lives beyond the dark

  Beckoning a cold remark

  Alluding to your own demise

  A watcher cloaked with blackened eyes

  Where once a soul none remain

  This watcher who plays his game

  Which no one never, ever wins

  It feeds upon a mortal’s sins.

  Careful where you choose to tread

  Something lurks

  I’m sure the dead

  Come out to play

  Within the black

  They’ll bid you stay, you won’t come back

  To bid you, oh such terror, glee

  To keep you there

  No bid they need

  To catch you lost and so alone

  Hear the screams, the cries, the moans

  As darkness swallows the light of day

  Leads you on a path astray

  Something exists

  Within the trees

  Counting lives

  Within the leaves

  Step inside its darkness deep

  Watch your step for evil creeps

  Near the cold and dampened ground

  Listen close and look around

  They’ll reach your ankles grab your feet

  Yes, that which has no heart to beat

  Deeper yes, so deep within

  Where something breathes

  And locks you in

  The forest where, something exists

  Hidden by a cloakened mist

  Beyond this tangled, loathsome wood

  Escape is futile

  Though know you should

  Beyond its branches

  Lies a door

  Walk within

  Exist no more

  Question your self-worth

  Yes doubt

  Now you’re trapped

  You can’t get out

  Entangled here among the trees

  Where death, it floats upon the breeze

  Carry me where cold winds cry

  Beneath the Ancients

  There is no sky

  Carry me where cold winds cry

  Where all those soulless, go to die

  Late Lunch at

  The Eddie Bear

  by Shawna L. Bernard

  Shawna L. Bernard, better known as Sydney Leigh, is a writer, editor, photographer, and native of the North Shore. Her fiction and non-fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including Merrimack Valley Magazine, Shroud, Darkness Ad Infinitum, Enter at Your Own Risk: The End is the Beginning, Demonic Visions 50 Horror Tales, Hellnotes, Nightmare Illustrated, and contests held by Grey Matter Press and Inner Sins. Upcoming publications include poetry and short fiction in collections from Written Backwards, Eldritch Press, Great Old Ones Publishing, and DailyNightmare.com. She currently works charming letters and constructing nightmares at Villipede Publications. Find out more at thespiderbox.shawnaleighbernard.com

  Eddie gave the man a quick once-over from behind the bar as he walked into The Eddie Bear, pulled a chair away from a table, and sat down. It was late afternoon, and the sun setting over the old mills on the riverfront across the street peered straight in through the glass front doors. The glare illuminated the dark grooves and knots in the old wood floor of the bar, and the thin layer of dust on the empty tables, as it did each day before disappearing behind the smokestacks.

  * * *

  Eddie’s wife, Pearl, had come up with the name for his bar years ago, before they were even married. They were high school sweethearts, and on Valentine’s Day, in 1966, Eddie had given Pearl a stuffed brown bear wearing a black and yellow striped bowtie and holding a red velour heart which had the words “BEE MY HONEY” printed on it. Pearl had feigned a swoon and thrown her arms around Eddie’s neck.

  “I’ll bee your honey if you’ll bee my ‘Eddie Bear’!”

  Eddie had laughed, and hoped never to forget how tightly Pearl held him in her arms, and how he knew at that moment they’d be married someday.

  * * *

  The man sat without removing his jacket, an olive green canvas coat with deep pockets and a corduroy collar. He did, however, lift a charcoal gray wool cap from his head, ran his free hand through his hair, and hung it on the back of the spare chair at his table. He couldn’t have been more than forty, forty-five, maybe, Eddie figured. But something about him made him look old. In an odd, somewhat unnatural way, Eddie thought.

  Eddie finished wiping the bar down and threw the damp cloth back over one of his shoulders, still broad from eight consecutive years of football on the local junior and varsity teams in his younger days. But a small, growing pouch above his beltline hid less well under his white cotton button down shirt these days, and some nagging arthritis pains in his knees reminded him he was no longer that young nose tackle. At fifty-seven, though, it was hard to tell Eddie’s age otherwise--the skin on his kind, gentle face was still supple, and affected by few wrinkles. His dark hair showed no signs of thinning whatsoever, and was parted just a bit to the side, which set off his angular features and jade green eyes well enough to attract the approving glances of many local women.

  “Get you somethin’?” Eddie asked the man sitting at the table.

  The man turned slightly towards Eddie in his seat, but averted his eyes. “Just a menu,” he said quietly.

  “Not much on it,” Eddie warned. “Just a few basic dishes my brother in-law’s been willin’ to cook for me these last few years. Kitchen’s pretty small out back.”

  The man nodded, still not meeting Eddie’s gaze.

  “Nothin’ to drink?” Eddie asked.

  The man paused, looking down at his lap. Eddie saw the man’s hands were clasped together there, tightly. “I’ll let you know,” the man finally replied.

  * * *

  Eddie grabbed a menu from a wooden display rack and handed it to Gerry, a regular for as long as Eddie had owned the place, and who was perched in his usual spot at the bar next to the draft beer taps. Eddie nodded in the stranger’s direction, and Gerry sighed.

  “Geez, Eddie. You’re gonna have to start givin’ me free beers, what with all the work I do around here, and all!”

  Gerry turned and leaned back in his stool, holding onto the counter with one hand, and reaching far enough backwards with the other for the stool to creak loudly before the man accepted the menu from him. Gerry shook his head and sighed again as he resettled back into his seat.

  “Sheesh,” he muttered.

  Eddie rolled his eyes and filled a glass from one of the beer taps, carefully tilting the glass before the foam head spilled over the top. He set it down in front of Gerry.

  “Happy now?” Eddie asked sharply.

  “Yup,” Gerry answered. “Just let me know if you need me to do anything else.” He grinned, exposing an irregular set of yellowing teeth, and Eddie took a playful swipe at him with his cloth.

  * * *

  Gerry was a good guy, Eddie knew. He’d had a tough enough life. Gerry’s parents died in a Philadelphia train wreck when he was just a boy, and his grandparents raised him over in Camden. They hadn’t expected the financial strain that late in life, and struggled. Unable to afford college after high school, Gerry moved here to find work, ultimately collecting garbage for the town, and met Jane in the local coffee shop. They married, found out they couldn’t have kids, and one Saturday morning Gerry woke up to find his thirty-two year old wife dead beside him in bed--some kind of a brain hemorrhage, or something, Eddie remembered. The kind that didn’t come with too many explanations, either. Since then, Gerry spent more afternoons in The Eddie Bear than at The Over Easy.

  Though they rarely spoke of it anymore, Gerry and Eddie had a lot in common. When Jane passed,
Gerry felt lost, and found a sympathetic ear one night at The Eddie Bear over several pints of beer and a few shots of whisky. Eddie was an only child, and his mother had been murdered in a grisly botched robbery on the only trip she and Eddie’s father had ever taken other than their honeymoon, a visit to see one of her three sisters in Chicago. Eddie’s father had never fully recovered, and hadn’t told Eddie until he returned home and picked him up at his best friend’s house after the trip what had happened. Eddie was eleven, and his father had promised to take care of him. He and Gerry had both seen their share of death, and it formed a fast and solid bond between them.

  * * *

  Eddie turned to the man as he approached the bar with the menu in his hand. “What’ll it be?” Eddie asked.

  The man cleared his throat, and Eddie noticed what appeared to be some serious sun damage on his face. The skin around his eyes was excessively wrinkled, and there were large dark splotches covering most of his cheeks and forehead. His nose was raw, angry along the sloping bridge, his colorless lips chapped and peeling off in curling strips of dead, white skin. Gerry saw Eddie studying the man beside him, and turned to look for himself.

  “I, uh, was told you had soup,” the man offered.

  “Yeah, we do,” Eddie answered. He pointed behind himself with his thumb. “Snapper. It’s still on the specials board, but we have it just about every day.”

  The man peered up at the chalkboard hanging on the wall behind Eddie. “Uh, yes, I, uh...I see it. I’ll, uh, I’ll have that, please,” he stammered. He turned back towards his table.

  “Bowl or cup?” Eddie called after him.

  “Huh?” the man asked, without turning around. “I...uh...what?”

  Eddie turned to Gerry with a puzzled look.

  “Bowl or cup?” he repeated slowly.

  The man ran his hand through his hair again, and as his head fell forward, Eddie saw what appeared to be a fiery red sunburn on the back of his neck.

  “A cup’ll be just fine, I suppose,” the man replied. He sat back down at his table, clenched his hands in his lap once more, and began studying the photographs and framed newspaper clippings hung unevenly on The Eddie Bear’s rear wall.

  Eddie poked his head inside a door beyond the bar and called out, “Hey, Ray, cup o’ soup. Special, please.”

  “You got it,” Ray’s voice returned. “That it?”

  “Yup,” Eddie answered. “Early for the crowd yet,” he added. A couple sat at a table by the front of the bar, and Eddie checked to see if they needed refills.

  Gerry leaned back in his stool and folded his arms while Eddie rinsed glasses that had been soaking in the soapy water in the small stainless sink under the bar.

  “Man, that is one thing I will never understand. Turtle soup? Yuck! I mean, what the heck kind of soup is that? No offense, Ed, but I tried it that one time, and...” he curled his finger and pointed it into his open mouth, towards the back of his throat.

  Eddie smiled. “Well, it’s not for everyone, I s’pose. But it’s more of a local dish anyway. Folks here have been eatin’ it as far back as I remember. There’s somethin’ about the ones we have in our river that make them perfect for slow cookin’ in soup. Ray’s really got it down, too. Some like to use broth instead of a knuckle, but not Ray. An’ between you and me, I think he uses a touch more sherry and Tabasco than the rest. But you didn’t hear it from me.”

  * * *

  The door behind the bar swung open and Ray walked through it, carefully balancing two cups of soup on a tray. He rested the tray on the edge of the counter, and said, “Take one, Ed, b’fore you get too busy.”

  “Thanks, Ray,” Eddie responded, as he took the soup by the cup’s handle and picked up one of the sets of silverware off of the tray. Ray lifted the tray up and looked around the room. He gestured towards the man sitting alone, and Eddie nodded.

  “Here you go,” Ray said to the man as he placed the soup down onto the green paper placemat on his table. Gerry made a gagging noise from the bar.

  “Anything else?” Ray asked as he set the napkin and spoon down beside the thick, dark soup.

  “Thank you, uh, no,” the man answered quietly.

  “Suit yourself,” Ray replied, and disappeared back behind the door to the kitchen.

  * * *

  Eddie put his soup down as a few more men came into the bar, one of them ordering a pitcher of beer and bringing it back to a table near the couple who were just finishing their drinks. The two of them stood, and the woman put her coat on while the man settled with Eddie.

  “No change,” the man said. “Thanks.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Eddie responded. “Mighty kind of you.” He opened the register and put the bills inside.

  “Well,” Gerry considered, “maybe I’ll have a burger tonight. I like the way Ray toasts the bun so it’s warm, but not crunchy.”

  “Extra onions?” Eddie asked with a straight face.

  “Yeah, wiseguy. Extra onions. And keep the beer comin’ so I can burp ‘em all back in your direction when my stomach starts to turn.”

  Eddie wrote up an order on a pad from his shirt pocket and tore it off. He stuck it through a metal spike on the counter and rang the bell beside it. Ray came back through the door and slid the slip up off the spike.

  “Well,” Ray began, reading the slip, “I haven’t made a shitburger in a while, Ed, but I’m pretty sure I remember how. Extra onions, right?” Eddie smiled.

  Gerry swallowed a gulp of air and forced out a staccato belch. “Hope you got a mask back there, man,” he threatened.

  Ray grimaced. “I’m out of here,” he said. “Make sure you come back and get that burger yourself, huh Ed?” He reached for the bell. “Just in case,” he added.

  * * *

  Just then, the man sitting alone at the table stood and pushed his chair back with his legs. The chair made a loud swonk as it scraped against the floor. Ray, Gerry, and Eddie all watched as the man approached the bar. He reached into his wallet, pulled out a limp ten dollar bill, and handed it to Eddie. The man shook his head as Eddie reached into the register for change.

  “Just a glass of water, please,” he asked. Ray reached under the bar and held a small glass while he ran the faucet in the sink.

  “Take a second for it to get cold,” he explained.

  * * *

  Eddie thought the man looked worse now than he did earlier. His brow was spotted with tiny beads of sweat, and his color had turned what Eddie considered sickly. The word sallow came to mind.

  Gerry discreetly shifted away from him in his stool, tossed his head back, and emptied his beer with one long pitch.

  “S’cuse me,” Gerry offered as he rose and headed for the restroom.

  He paused as he walked behind the man and threw his hands up in the air, silently mouthing the words, “What the...?” Eddie shrugged lightly as Gerry ambled on, and turned back to the man.

  He grabbed the edge of the counter and leaned forward onto his arms. “You okay, there, buddy?” he asked uneasily.

  Sticky white collections of spit had gathered in both corners of the man’s lips, and Eddie saw them stretch into pasty strings when the man opened his mouth to drink the water Ray handed him. He closed his eyes as he swallowed the water, pausing briefly halfway through before finishing it off.

  Ray raised an eyebrow and glanced sideways at Eddie as the man stared down at the empty glass and swallowed dryly several times, appearing to tilt his head with a slight wince each time his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down in his stubbled throat.

  The man looked frail, Eddie decided. The collar of his flannel shirt sagged loosely around his neck, and the shoulders of the jacket overshot his own by a few inches. Eddie could see now that the man’s belt had been fastened by poking the sterling pin through the tanned leather much closer to the buckle than where the first hole had originally been made. As a result, his khaki pants were cinched--at least two sizes too big, maybe three. The sleeves of the jac
ket were a bit wide and covered too much of his hands, which looked almost, but not quite, skeletal.

  He nodded politely at Eddie, and thanked both he and Ray before turning for the door.

  Eddie stiffened a bit when the man stopped, just for a moment--a simple hesitation, but one that made Eddie brace himself for some odd reason. The man turned only his face sideways, with his back still to the men, so that Eddie could see him open his mouth, as if to ask a question; but just as swiftly, he exhaled, shook his head, and walked out of the bar.

  * * *

  Gerry returned from the restroom, regarding the two men with wide eyes and a gaping jaw.

  What the hell was that all about? That guy was oh-dee-dee!”

  Ray rolled his eyes at Gerry. “Look who’s talkin’,” he remarked dryly. He placed a large, calloused hand on Eddie’s shoulder. “One shitburger, comin’ up,” he said, heading back towards the kitchen door.

  “Hold up, Ray,” Eddie said quickly, “let me grab these dishes to send back with you.” He was surprised to see that most of the stranger’s soup still sat floating in the cup on the table.

  “Well, I guess that explains why our friend was actin’ so strange,” Eddie decided. “Doesn’t look like he cared much for your soup, Ray. He couldn’t have taken much more than a bite--maybe two.”

  * * *

  When he heard it, Eddie thought for a split second that it was the door closing behind Ray. But Ray hadn’t gone back into the kitchen, and when the three men sharing a pitcher of beer all jumped to their feet at once, Eddie knew then that had been a gunshot.

  “Holy shit,” one of the men cried, peering out through the glass. “No! Oh my god, no!” another shouted, stumbling back towards the bar and burying his face in his hands.

  “This fuckin’ guy just shot himself!” the third man screamed, and burst through the front doors of The Eddie Bear and out onto the sidewalk. “Call 911!” he yelled back into the bar.

  Eddie fumbled for the phone, an old black rotary dial he kept near the Finlandia Vodka as a reminder of his late father, but Ray beat him to it. Eddie’s shaky hand came down on top of Ray’s on the receiver, and he could feel how steady it was. Ray punched in the three numbers and spoke to the voice which answered on the other end calmly. “Please come to The Eddie Bear bar at Two-hundred and twelve North Main right away. There’s been a shooting.”