by Holly Black
We went around a bluff’s shoulder, down a steep trail, and found ourselves in a high-walled ravine; almost a box canyon. A quarter of the way up the rear wall, at the top of a pile of talus, was what had once been the mouth of Arrowhead Cave. It was little more than a lacuna now, the dynamite having closed it off seventy years ago. Two of our four captors urged us up the ten foot slope.
“Hey, guys?” The nasal quality of Malcolm’s voice was rising, a sure barometer of anxiety. “It’s gettin’ dark—my Dad’ll hide me if I miss dinner—”
“Zip it,” one of them—short and rotund, with wire-rim specs—said. I got a good look at the clothes he was wearing as I passed him—knee pants and suspenders, a sweater and a flat, button-down cap. There was definitely something anachronistic about the apparel, but what really caught my eye was the toy gun he was brandishing. It was unlike any kids’ gun I’d ever seen, and after looking at it for a minute, I realized why. I didn’t have the words to describe it at the time, but looking back on it, I realize it was made of stamped metal. It was black, with a red barrel, and on the butt was a stylized sketch of the Lone Ranger. A legend ran in curved script along the bottom of the image; I can’t recall the exact phrase, but it was something about listening to Brace Beemer as the Lone Ranger, every Friday.
Why “listen”? Why not “watch”? And who was Brace Beemer? Everyone knew the Lone Ranger was played by Clayton Moore.
As big of a puzzle as that gun represented, however, the one held by the third boy was even more so. It, too, was made out of some material which I didn’t immediately recognize. When I did realize what it was, it was enough to make stop and stare, openmouthed.
His gun was made of cardboard.
There was a slogan inscribed on the side of it, as well—I couldn’t read all of it, because his hand partly obscured it. The part I could read proclaimed Geyser Flour to be “America’s top self-rising flour!”
The boy saw me staring at his paper gun. “Shut yer bazoo, yegg,” he instructed me, raising the toy as he did so.
And a strange feeling possessed me; I suppose it made sense in light of later developments, but at the time it was as inexplicable as it was overwhelming. I was, abruptly and totally, terrified of that ridiculous cardboard gun. So terrified that I felt in danger of soiling my corduroys.
He reached out and put a hand on my shoulder, pushing me up the slope, and his hand was cold. I could feel it through the fabric of my T-shirt.
As we climbed the steep slope, I watched both of my comrades, and knew they’d come to the same conclusion I had about our captors. Tom’s face was set in the utter blankness of denial, his gaze as uncomprehending as that of an abused animal. Malcolm’s was a hundred and eighty degrees opposite, full of growing realization and horror.
By the time the three of us had clambered up into the shallow remnant of the cave’s former entrance, Malcolm had lost it. He was sobbing, babbling incoherently, snot drooling from his nose. I wasn’t doing much better myself, but I at least managed to keep a somewhat braver face on. Tom seemed outwardly calm also, but his face was the same sallow hue as that of his prosthetic’s plastic skin.
We sat on the sandstone lip that hung above the declivity for what seemed like hours, but was in reality scarcely more than forty-five minutes; just long enough for the sun to disappear behind the western slope of the ravine. I watched our captors. I was only seven, and so I had no idea that all of them were dressed in Depression-era, poor white trash clothes, or that their toy weapons were relics of those same long-gone days. I only knew that there was something profoundly wrong about every aspect of them—even the way they moved, and sat, and talked amongst themselves.
I say they talked, but, even though I could clearly see them address each other; could even, until the light faded too much, see their lips moving, I heard nothing. It was deathly quiet in the ravine—even Malcolm’s crying had, for a time, subsided—and I knew that sound rose with great clarity in still air. But it was like watching TV with the sound off.
“Gh-ghosts,” Malcolm blubbered. “Th-they’re ghosts. They were kuh-killed in the cave—”
“Bullshit,” Tom muttered.
“—twenty years ago—”
“Stop it.” Tom’s voice was level and icy, but it was thin ice, covering black depths of hysteria. He stood and faced Malcolm.
Malcolm stood as well. “You know it’s true! You nuh-know it’s—”
“Shut up.”
“Shouldn’t’ve let ’em get us, should’ve run, now they’re gonna—”
Tom hit him.
It was a short, hard jab, brought up from his waist into the pit of Malcolm’s stomach, and it let the air out of him like a nail in a tire. He stared at Tom in utter shock, mouth gaping, making vaguely piscine sounds.
Then he turned, staggered toward the edge of the rocky shelf and, before either of us could try to stop him, he fell.
He rolled down the declivity a few feet before he managed to stop himself. Then he looked up, and Tom and I both heard his moan of terror when he saw the four boys—or whatever they were—surrounding him. His face had been scratched during his fall, and a red streak of blood stood out vividly against his chalk-white skin.
“Please,” I heard him say. “Please—I’m late for dinner—”
And they laughed.
I guess it was laughter, though it was the most mirthless, soulless sound I’ve ever heard. It was the sort of laughter something dead for a long time, long enough to completely forget any connection it had had with life, would make, if it were to somehow be amused.
They laughed, and they moved closer to him. Malcolm made a high, keening noise, a sound of utter despair.
Tom shouted, “You bastards! Leave him alone!” And he jumped off the ledge.
I don’t know what he thought he could possibly do. I doubt he thought about it at all. He just went to Malcolm’s rescue—or tried to. He might have been successful, somehow, if he’d had two good legs. I don’t know if he forgot that one was artificial, or if he just didn’t care.
It was a magnificent jump; it carried him to within five feet of them. He plowed into the loose stone and gravel, and his right leg buckled beneath him; he lost his balance and fell.
He struggled to stand, but before he could, the one with the cardboard gun looked up at him. He was grinning, and it might have just been a trick of the fading light, but for one awful instant it looked like the grin of a naked skull. He raised the gun and pointed it at Tom’s chest.
And, softly, but somehow very clearly, I heard him say, “Bang.”
That was all; just “Bang,” in a quiet voice. There was no puff of smoke, no recoil from the paper muzzle.
But Tom’s back erupted in a spray of blood.
He fell backwards.
I screamed.
All four heads swiveled up toward me. Their eyes were like spiders’ eyes; black and gleaming.
I knew that following Tom and Malcolm would only get me killed—or worse. There was only one other direction that I could go—back into the cave.
I’d seen before-and-after photos of Arrowhead Cave. The City Fathers had ordered it sealed off, and sealed off it had been, with a vengeance. What had been a dark, mysterious opening into the underworld had been reduced to a pile of rubble, leaving an overhang barely a yard deep.
But there was no place else to hide. I pressed against the unyielding stone, feeling a distant wetness as my bladder let go. I could hear them scrabbling up the slope after me. I turned frantically from side to side, seeking an impossible escape—
And saw, six inches above my head, a lateral crack in the rock.
It was barely wider than my body, and beyond it was unrelieved blackness, yet to me it looked like the gates of Heaven. I jumped, grabbed the flat sandstone lip, pulled myself up and into it, kicking and squirming. There was barely enough room for me to wriggle between the two slabs of rock; I had to breathe shallowly to do so. But I kept crawling.
To this
day I’ve no idea how that providential escape route came to be there. Perhaps it had been overlooked after the blast; perhaps it had been deemed too small to worry about. Or perhaps that temblor we’d had a week earlier had had something to do with opening it. All I know is that, after a lifetime of frantic crawling, I saw light up ahead.
I redoubled my efforts, scooted forward—and felt a cold hand close on my ankle.
I didn’t have the breath to scream—it came out as a thin, mewling cry. Whichever one of those things had me began dragging me relentlessly back, down into the darkness. I felt my fingernails splinter on the rock. I kicked back frantically with my free leg, felt my shoe strike what had to be the head of the one that had grabbed me. I gritted my teeth, drew my leg up and kicked backwards with every bit of strength I had left.
His head splintered. I felt his skull cave in. But his grip did not slacken.
Sobbing obscenities, I swung my free leg against my other one, as hard as I could. Among the injuries that would be counted up later was a hairline fracture of my ankle—but at the time I felt nothing but a fierce joy when that cold grip loosened for a moment.
I lunged forward, panting, and came to the end of the passage, so abruptly that I tumbled out before I could stop myself. I caught a brief, dizzying glimpse of a hillside below me, scrub brushes barely illuminated by the crepuscular twilight—then I fell. Pain exploded in my head like a roman candle, and I must have passed out.
My last thought before I lost consciousness was: They’re still coming for me.
And now most of you are wondering a few different things, I imagine—such as, Why did he waste our time with this silliness? or, He’s got quite an imagination, or even, Where are the men with white coats and butterfly nets?
For those of you who wish to know the end of the story—I wish I could tell you. There was front-page material in the local paper the day after that day in 1955, documenting the discovery of Tom Harper’s body near Arrowhead Cave. No bullet or gun was ever found, but something very powerful had punched a hole clean through him.
They never found Malcolm.
Me they found at the bottom of the next ravine over from Arrowhead Cave. I had a concussion, and was in a coma for nearly two weeks. When I finally came out of it, I told everyone who asked—and many did, believe me—that I remembered nothing. Which was the truth. My recollection of the events of that long ago day has come back to me piecemeal, during the course of many a long and sleepless night. I stopped seeing therapists after one diagnosed me with PTSD, and wondered why a writer with no military history was so afflicted.
I suppose it’s possible that I imagined the whole thing, in an attempt to supply a story that fit the necessary particulars. If it hadn’t been for the finding of Tom’s body, I would have no reason not to assume that wasn’t true. Which, of course, asks the question: What could possibly have happened that was so horrible that I might have made up such a story to normalize the reality?
In any event, I must admit lying to you at the start of my speech. I said I had always known that I wanted to be a writer. That’s not strictly true; until I was seven years old, I had no idea what I wanted to be. But after that night, there was no doubt in my mind.
It’s how I deal with it.
So, in conclusion, to those of you out there who know without question what you want to be when you grow up, I say congratulations—and be careful what you wish for.
Class Dismissed
Charles Antin’s fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Michigan Quarterly Review, the Gettysburg Review, Fugue, Unstuck, and Glimmer Train, where he won the award for very short fiction. His writing has also been published in the New York Times and Food & Wine. He holds an MFA from New York University.
Dale Bailey lives in North Carolina with his family, and has published three novels, The Fallen, House of Bones, and Sleeping Policemen (with Jack Slay, Jr.). His short fiction, collected in The Resurrection Man’s Legacy and Other Stories, has won the International Horror Guild Award and has been twice a finalist for the Nebula Award.
Holly Black won the inaugural Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy for her novel Valiant, part of the acclaimed Modern Faery Tale series. The Spiderwick Chronicles, which she co-authors with Tony DiTerlizzi, reached the New York Times bestseller list and was made into a feature film. She lives in an old house with a secret library in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Georgina Bruce is a writer and teacher. Her short stories have been published in Strange Horizons, Ideomancer, Shimmer, and various other places. She is currently studying for a masters degree in creative writing at Edinburgh’s Napier University, and in her spare time undertakes psycho-geographical excursions around the city, sometimes involving whisky. She is often lost. Her blog can be found at georginabruce.com.
The Oxford Companion to English Literature describes Ramsey Campbell as “Britain’s most respected living horror writer.” He has been given more awards than any other writer in the field, including the Grand Master Award of the World Horror Convention, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association, and the Living Legend Award of the International Horror Guild. Among his novels are The Face That Must Die, Incarnate, The Count of Eleven, Silent Children, The Darkest Part of the Woods, The Overnight, Secret Story, The Grin of the Dark, Ghosts Know, and The Kind Folk. Forthcoming are The Last Revelation of Gla’aki (a novella) and Bad Thoughts. His collections include Waking Nightmares, Alone with the Horrors, Ghosts and Grisly Things, Told by the Dead, and Just Behind You. Ramsey Campbell lives on Merseyside with his wife Jenny. His pleasures include classical music, good food and wine, and whatever’s in that pipe. His web site is at ramseycampbell.com.
One of the bestselling names in young adult fiction, Cassandra Clare is the author of the Mortal Instruments and Infernal Devices series of urban and, respectively, historical fantasy novels. The first movie based on her work, City of Bones, releases in 2013.
Hal Duncan’s Vellum was nominated for the World Fantasy Award, and won the Spectrum, Kurd Lasswitz and Tähtivaeltaja. Along with the sequel, Ink, other publications include a novella, Escape from Hell!, a chapbook, An A-Z of the Fantastic City, and a poetry collection, Songs for the Devil and Death, with a collection of short fiction forthcoming from Lethe Press. He wrote the lyrics for Aereogramme’s “If You Love Me, You’d Destroy Me” and the musical, Nowhere Town. Homophobic hatemail once dubbed him “The … Sodomite Hal Duncan!!” (sic). You can find him online at halduncan.com, glorying in that infamy.
Formerly a film critic, teacher, and screenwriter, Canadian writer Gemma Files is probably currently best known for her Hexslinger series (A Book of Tongues, A Rope of Thorns, and A Tree of Bones), a gay-friendly Weird Western trilogy available from ChiZine Publications. She has also published two collections of short fiction (Kissing Carrion and The Worm in Every Heart, both from Prime Books) and two chapbooks of poetry, and won a 1999 International Horror Guild Award for Best Short Fiction with her story “The Emperor’s Old Bones.”
Jeffrey Ford is the author of the novels The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Girl in the Glass, The Cosmology of the Wider World, and The Shadow Year. His story collections are The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream, The Drowned Life, and Crackpot Palace. His short fiction has appeared in numerous journals, magazines and anthologies, from MAD Magazine to The Oxford Book of American Short Stories. His work has been translated into nearly twenty languages and is the recipient of the Edgar Allan Poe Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Nebula Award, and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire.
The late Charles Grant was a prolific novelist and short story writer of dark fantasy and horror, who won a World Fantasy Award for his collection Nightmare Seasons, as well as two Nebula Awards. Grant also edited the award-winning Shadows anthology, running eleven volumes from 1978-1991.
Alex Jeffer
s seldom feels older than seventeen although he published his first story in 1975. His books are Safe as Houses, a full-length novel; Do You Remember Tulum? and The New People, two short novels; The Abode of Bliss, a novel-length story sequence; You Will Meet a Stranger Far from Home, a collection of wonder stories; and, this year, Deprivation; or, Benedetto furioso: an oneiromancy. His website is sentenceandparagraph.com.
Stephen Graham Jones has eleven novels and three collections on the shelf. He’s been a Stoker Award finalist, a Shirley Jackson Award finalist, and has been an NEA Fellow. He has some hundred and fifty stories published. He teaches in the MFA programs at CU Boulder and UCR-Palm Desert.
Michael Kelly is a Toronto-based author, editor, and publisher. He’s been a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award and the British Fantasy Society Award. His fiction has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including Black Static, Carleton Arts Review, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, Supernatural Tales, and Postscripts, and has been collected in Scratching the Surface and Undertow & Other Laments (Dark Regions Press). His next book (as editor) is Chilling Tales: In Words, Alas, Drown I (EDGE). He also publishes and edits the acclaimed literary journal Shadows & Tall Trees.
One of the most recognized authors in the world since his first novel, Carrie, debuted in 1974, Stephen King has received Bram Stoker Awards, World Fantasy Awards, and British Fantasy Society Awards among his numerous honors. Even his short fiction is fecund, with “Children of the Corn” inspiring a series of nine horror films. King’s most recent release is Joyland, from Hard Case Crime.
Joel Lane’s publications in the weird fiction genre include four short story collections: The Earth Wire, The Lost District, The Terrible Changes, and Where Furnaces Burn—the latter a book of supernatural crime stories. He is also the author of two mainstream novels, From Blue to Black and The Blue Mask; three poetry collections, The Edge of the Screen, Trouble in the Heartland, and The Autumn Myth; a chapbook, Black Country; a booklet of crime stories, Do Not Pass Go; and a pamphlet of erotic poems, Instinct. Current projects include a collection of ghost stories, The Anniversary of Never.