Onyx Neon Shorts Presents: Horror Collection - 2015
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Onyx Neon Shorts Presents
Horror Collection
2015
Edited By
Jeffrey P. Martin | Jacob Michael King
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Ellie Hill by © 2015, MJ Wesolowski
Originally published in: Short Not Sweet, (November 2014), IRON Press/Red Squirrel Press/Tyne Bridge Publishing
82 Rungs © 2015, Brit Jones
What Little Remains © 2015, Franklin Charles Murdock
Sylvia’s Pictures © 2015, DJ Tyrer
Originally published online at “Imaginalis - Voices From A Coma”
Something Nasty in the Woodshed © 2015, Tracy Fahey
Up In The Window © 2015, Elizabeth Myrddin
Insanity © 2015, Jackie Woodard
The Guard © 2015, B.T. Joy
Sacrificial Version © 2015, Jeremy Thompson
An earlier version of this story appears in Into the Darkness: Volume One (Necro Publications, 2013)
The Man Who Left No Footprints in the Snow © 2015, Matt Tveter
The Lake House © 2015, Joseph Rubas
Cold Harbour © 2015, Ro McNulty
Published by Onyx Neon Press, United States
First Edition October, 2015
Edited by Jeffrey P. Martin and Jacob Michael King
Cover Art by Jeffrey P. Martin
Designed and Typeset by Jeffrey P. Martin
shorts.onyxneon.com
Onyx Neon Shorts
We believe in the power of short fiction. It’s a way to express ideas and emotions quickly and powerfully.
We publish non-fiction and fiction of all varieties and we are always seeking new authors.
We are a collective of writers, editors, techies, nerds, book lovers, and artists who strive to find and make the best original content.
If you have questions or would like to submit a story please email us at shorts@onyxneon.com
Introduction
Jeffrey P. Martin
This collection is a dream come true for us. The idea came out of discussions I had with my brother, Kit, who was my co-conspirator on Cifiscape—our geographically-focused, science-fiction anthology series. But the narrow scope left me feeling limited. I wanted a platform that we could use to publish anything. Onyx Neon Shorts came out of these discussions, and, for two years, we’ve been publishing amazing literature.
This release culminates two years of planning. When we finally pulled the trigger on this collection, I decided that I would need an expert on horror fiction. Enter Jacob Michael King. I found him when he submitted Postmortem, which we released in April. It’s one of my favorite stories we’ve published. In Jacob, I sensed a kindred spirit and an incredible writer. Out of our massive to-read pile for this collection he plucked The Guard, Cold Harbour, and Ellie Hill—the importance of Jacob’s contribution is inexpressible.
Thank you to everyone who worked on this unsettling collection, especially Jacob. Thank you to those that offered advice or helped correct mistakes, like Kit and Becca. To the authors in this collection, thank you for entrusting us with your stories. I know how important they are to you and I hope that we did them justice. And thank you, reader, for stealing, borrowing, or buying this book. A lot of hard work went into it, and I can’t wait for you to read it.
Jeffrey P. Martin
Head Editor
Onyx Neon Shorts
13 tales of horror:
Ellie Hill by MJ Wesolowski
A late-night excursion leads three students to the cursed village of Ellie Hill, where they discover that disrespecting a place’s painful past carries a terrible price.
82 Rungs by Brit Jones
It seemed like a routine sewage job. Now two men find themselves isolated from their employers, with no escape from the subterranean labyrinth in which they work. And the environment is undergoing subtle, disturbing changes…
What Little Remains by Franklin Charles Murdock
Seamus hides a secret in the back of his barn in Palmer, Kansas. Little does he know that the dead have desires of their own—Seamus isn’t the only one with murder on his mind.
Insanity by Jackie Woodard
Vanessa and her doctor try to get to the bottom of her seemingly harmless delusions.
Something Nasty in the Woodshed by Tracy Fahey
Here we find a twist on a classic horror trope. The title is a wink to the famous line from Stella Gibbons’ 1932 novel, Cold Comfort Farm.
Up In The Window by Elizabeth Myrrdin
A woman seeks to satisfy her nagging obsession. Sometimes knowledge breeds not power, but lasting dread.
Sylvia’s Pictures by DJ Tyrer
After the arrival of her new baby brother, Sylvia starts drawing pictures of the Raggedy man. Is it a cry for attention, or do the pictures hold something more sinister?
The Guard by B.T. Joy
Harry, night guard at the Metropolitan Museum, becomes increasingly curious about one of its exhibits. But what begins as idle interest soon escalates into a dangerous obsession.
Sacrificial Version by Jeremy Thompson
A door sprouts from the floor, accessible to a single sojourner. Beneath it, concrete steps descend to a subterranean nightclub filled with bizarre celebrants.
The Man Who Left No Footprints in The Snow by Matt Tveter
One cold winter morning, an elderly woman receives an unexpected visitor.
The Lake House by Joseph Rubas
After losing his wife to cancer, novelist Jim Conner retreats to a cabin in the mountains of Vermont.
Cold Harbour by Ro McNulty
A social worker begins to suspect that there is someone else living in her client’s house...
Onyx Neon Shorts Presents
Horror Collection
2015
Ellie Hill
MJ Wesolowski
Myles with-a-Y heaved himself out of his seat as the train squealed to a halt. His rugby player’s calves stuck to the plastic and made a thack sound as he stood up. Tight muscled with downy blonde hair. Shorts at this time of night. Even his bottom half didn’t give a shit.
“Come on, cunts.” He said, mouth thick with lager. “Let’s get smashed.”
Myles was asleep for the last ten minutes as the train carried us around the black fells, higher and higher toward Ellie Hill. We didn’t speak while he slept; the silence without his voice was huge.
It was only a few hours ago that he’d broken the ice for us, bawling down the corridor of the freshly hoovered halls of residence that weren’t ours, not quite yet.
“Social! Social!”
He had the voice of the privileged, the accent that wasn’t used to people saying no.
“Social!”
A few called back and Myles tossed blue lagers from a crumpled box like grenades; one came my way. My hands slick with sweat, it eluded my grasp and burst against the wall, hissing furiously and sending a jet of lukewarm liquid against my leg. Myles and his new friends guffawed, their laughter raining around me as I fled back into my room.
I should have left it there; locked my door, unpacked my stuff to the tinny soundtrack of Myles’s phone and the eager giggles of the others from the kitchen.
Instead I leaned into the doorframe as they slumped on c
hairs. The girls perched on the edges of the worktops. Bare legs dangled.
“So, we fuck the uni bars right off!” Myles was saying. There were giggles. “Tosser-town, let’s go somewhere, yeah? Let’s have a fucking adventure.”
“Like where?”
Her name was Amy. A voice as delicate as her face. Wide, hopeful eyes, no makeup, a pink clip in her hair.
“Well....” Myles’s cheeks blossomed red.
She’d disarmed him, gentle as a wish.
Myles looked up, the others turned away. His eyes fell on me.
“You’re from around here aren’t you, smiler?”
I nodded, making an attempt to smile.
“So, like, where?” Myles mirrored Amy’s wide eyes, jutting his jaw at me. Spots of razor burn on his throat.
“There’s always Ellie Hill...” I said before I couldn’t.
* * *
A few heads turned as Myles stumbled to the carriage door. Old fellas in caps and wax coats still damp from outside.
We stood on the platform, puffing out steam. The old men scowled out at us as the train pulled away, their faces crumpled ghosts behind the old glass. We watched in silence as it disappeared back the way it had come, swallowed by the dark.
We were the only ones there. Us and Ellie Hill.
Only three of us on Myles’s adventure, my adventure, an hour later. Two males, one female. The wrongness of that twisted my stomach into a fist. None of us had even had tea or ‘dinner’ as Myles called it. We sipped from warm cans of lager and smoked, fledgling adults. The air from the surrounding hills breathing its corpse-breath through the station.
A once-white clock face peered down at the platform, didn’t chime.
7 pm in faded Roman numerals.
I saw Amy shiver and in that moment I felt a sudden urge to put my arms around her.
She’d feel bird-like, brittle against my chest. Her hair would smell of shampoo and home. Close your eyes, don’t say a word, I’ll hold you until that train comes and you never have to come back here. Ever again.
“Well this is fucking wild...” Myles looked at me. “Where’s the pub?”
I could feel the weight of their expectancy as we crowded together, already a flock.
“Not far.”
I waved a hand at the black square of darkness at the top of the stairs.
Somewhere out there.
“Well how far?” Myles’ voice was a whine.
I bristled. “I thought you wanted an adventure?”
Amy fluttered past us and we watched each other watching her. She stopped and looked back. We began to walk, clip-clopping beneath the old stone of the station.
Myles pitched the end of his cigarette onto the tracks. Orange sparks vanished between black rocks.
“I’ve never heard of Ellie Hill.”
She was between us. My arm burned to take hers. Myles did it. She rolled her eyes.
“Oh...” I was reddening. “I’ve never been here myself, I just heard… I mean… my granddad… he…”
We reached the bottom of the stairs.
“Oh for fuck’s sake smiler...” Myles unlatched Amy from himself and pointed upward where the sky was inky silence.
“I’m not going on a fucking ten mile hike to end up in some shitty pub drinking fucking stout with some farmers, talking about the price of sheep, I’ll tell you that right now.”
Something clattered on the tracks, made me jump.
“Four hours till the next train back.” Amy looked at a watchless wrist, cocked her head. “Race, ya!”
She was away up the stairs, Myles hot on her heels making a sort of breathless braying noise.
I lingered for a moment; that clattering sound again. I set off after them.
At the top of the stairs, the land simply fell away and the monolithic fells loomed in the cover of dusk. ‘Ellie Hill jumps out at you,’ they like to say round here. A single streetlamp and a gate. ‘Station’ in bent metal pointed the way we had come.
We followed the dipped track that led steeply down, an old wagon way through the uplands of the Grey Hermit before it joined the Cripple’s Road that wound up toward Ellie Hill. Gravel popped beneath our feet. Myles drowned out the rush of the Sycamores that pursed their leafy lips on either side, regaling us in an elaborate parody of the local accent before stopping beneath a streetlamp, thrusting his groin and making baaing sounds.
“How fa-a-a-ar?” Myles echoed the sheep.
My heart sank as Amy sniggered. Myles gave another little thrust.
“Not bad.” She said. Her grin smarted.
“Oh come on, smiler.” Myles’ rugby-muscled arm was around my shoulder now. I suppressed an urge to bite him. He reeked of expensive aftershave.
“I’m only having a laugh, yeah?”
It’s not me you should be justifying yourself to.
“Is this it?”
We’d reached the top before we knew it: Ellie Hill’s perch. It clung on as the wind howled around its crumbling dry-stone, like the battlements of a long-forgotten fortress.
“It’s more of a market place than a proper town,” I went on. We were in it before we knew it. I kept going, in spite. “15th century. Last trading point at the edge of the fells...”
Myles had his arm around Amy again, whispering something. My accent I assumed. She held in her laughter while my words petered out.
Buildings flanked us now, grey gardens where grass grew wild. A few lights were on. Most of them weren’t.
“The prices had better be fifteenth fucking century as well, yeah? Place like this.” Myles held up his hand for a high-five. I couldn’t see his sneer.
* * *
We walked in one direction along a half-hearted pavement past the back ends of barns where the houses had given up. Single file; me at the front, an uneven wall at hand height to the left. No cars went by but we stayed off the road.
You must never go there.
A fucking adventure, yeah?
I was about to halt, to just turn back. Beyond the last black barn, the pavement simply stopped and the road bent upward into a wood. Nothing moved save for the plastic bags that thrashed like trapped ghosts along a rusty vein of barbed wire atop the dry stone wall.
“There!”
I looked back, stomach clenched. Myles pointed to a stooped building that bent furtively away on the other side of the road behind a row of sprawling Birch. A single leaded window glimmered orange at us like a cloudy eye, “‘Ellie’s Chair” in wrought iron on its unlit wall. The road branched between the trees.
I turned around again, saw in Myles’s ruddy cheeked face, the uncertainty in his eyes, that he was just like the rest of us, still a child really. I saw in that moment that they were as nervous as I.
“I could do with a pint, I think...” The words felt ludicrous, their shapes alien in my mouth as I strode across the road.
I’d never ordered a pint.
I couldn’t look round at his face or Amy’s; my stomach was a fist.
If we can just do this—if we can just stay for a few hours, have a few drinks and get back—I promise we’ll never come back again. I promise.
You must never go there.
“Let’s fucking do this,” said Myles.
The few locals sitting on their own glanced up at our entrance. Flat caps pulled across brows, casting shadows over bulbous noses and trailing growths hanging forlornly from their faces. If there had been a jukebox it would have wound down to a stop. The Slaughtered Lamb. No one said it. Myles and I leaned hard against the bar. Above us, the eaves were thick, almost invisible in the gloom, where the rusted spines of farming equipment hung like charnel relics.
We were children in place of men.
I scanned the walls and the spaces between the dull brass horse tack pinned up behind the bar for a plaque or a tea-stained faux-ancient scroll. Some explanation, something to tell them so I wouldn’t have to. Local councils like to pay for wall-mounts and flyers these days; tourists
love anything idiosyncratic about England’s forgotten places; they can make glossy books about ghosts and long-forgotten murders.
Not in Ellie Hill.
We traipsed to a corner on the far side of the fire and sat, silent.
Myles returned from the bar with pints of thick brown ale, a sweet perry the colour of decay for Amy. We drank them quietly, respectfully, trying to quash our blossoming nerves. There was too much silence here but the drinks were cheap. No one wanted to refuse and it was half way through my second one when Amy asked me about Ellie Hill.
I imagined telling them, I opened my mouth, shook my head and closed it again, preventing the forbidden story that my mother had banned from bedtime to come floating out of me, bit by bit, into the black beams of that black bar.
Ellie, her hill, and the chair that bore her name.
“I don’t know anything about you,” I said, the ale churning inside me.
“What do you want to know?” her eyebrows rose for a moment. The gloom hid my blush.
I could feel Myles glaring.
“Anything...” I remembered her parents lingering to say their goodbyes when the rest had gone, the door of her room ajar, a cardboard box that simply said “Home” and a heart in black marker.
“You’re brave enough to come out on the razz with two lads you don’t even know.” Myles looked me dead in the eyes. Back off.
Amy placed a ten pound note on the table.
“Let’s make it interesting then, truth or dare...”
Myles was on his feet in an instant, face flushed. The old men watched him silently as he stumbled over to the bar and returned with three small glasses of a dark, burning liquid.