by Aaron French
The brightness from the underside of the pelt that was his outer skin illuminated his body: the orchestra.
His chest displayed the colors of a coral reef, his mere breathing, a woodwind wheeze that set the melody. A conglomeration of unknown creatures swam and flitted in-between the bones and organs though nothing was of an anatomy I had ever imagined. These creatures swarmed over and through him, their movement both percussive and piping intonations from alto to baritone. Sounds that accentuated the light that emanated from within Varack. It was an internal light show to put Pink Floyd’s laser extravaganzas to shame.
But that was not their purpose. I knew that was not why they were so active.
His minions raised their hands to the heavens and hummed as an ambient ocean, while the ocean beyond Varack was frozen, as still as my momentarily stalled heartbeat.
“Oh, my god,” I said, an awestruck whisper.
“No. Not your god, Jarrod. Our god. Our many gods.”
I had no idea what he—what it—was talking about, too mesmerized by his body, the orchestra, as the song commenced.
As the “music” lifted in volume to a crescendo almost deafening, I went to cover my ears, to stymie the intrusion. Varack was kind enough to lower the volume, making the need to block it out unnecessary.
He wanted me to hear this.
“What do you believe now?” he asked.
“I don’t believe in anything.”
“That’s too easy of a choice,” he said, the timbres swelling as the multitude of creatures swarmed over his splayed carcass, each step and swift scatter another element added to the burgeoning dissonance.
“Why am I here?” I started to back away, only to have my escape halted by three more of those large figures, much like him. I knew struggling was not in the cards. The impossible was something I did not want to face, yet here I was, made to face it as the circumstances dictated. But why?
“Why me? Why am I here?”
“We want one to witness as the end of humanity commences. You were correct in your assessment. We thought it should be you. We bring death as our gods awaken to rule the land that is rightfully theirs. Eons have passed, yet now, it is their time.”
Fantastical mish-mash or acid-trip philosophy—but no. Look at him! He was not human. What gods did he pray to?
Then, I watched as the creatures raced with feverish intensity within him, liquid as a flood, and listened as the tones escalated, cracking and screeching, the only instrument missing being his voice. Its voice. Varack.
Though he’d opened the coat, his grimy flesh, the cowl still hung snug to his head, until now. With an odd motion by his arms—they bent up and out, flipping the cowl back in a motion no human could copy without breaking limbs—the shadows his face wore dispersed.
I wished they hadn’t. Blindness would have been a welcome gift.
His mouth split open. His mouth was his whole face. Gulfs deep, the starless abyss swirled—distinctly swirled—as if ready to birth galaxies. But what it birthed was a sound, hollow yet dense. An utterance to slay dragons. An utterance to rattle planets to the core. An utterance to awaken—
Something.
My knees buckled as I tumbled to the sand. I pressed my palms to my ears, but the sound bore into my pores, as if prospecting for my soul.
The sound: eternal and infinite, stretching from before our earth stirred to life to a point beyond the unmapped future of sorrows that waited in the wings.
Tears painted my cheeks. I brushed them away only to stain my sleeves in crimson.
I glanced at my palms; they were coated in blood, as well.
I felt myself breaking down to the molecular core, moments before Varack found his pitch, one that only passed through me, without annihilating the body further.
One of his minions turned to me, and in a voice sheathed in the reverberant hum of simmering lava (if such a sound could be measured in that manner), said, “Time to go and tell the others our time has commenced.”
I struggled to stand and he brusquely helped me to my feet. But I pulled from his clumsy grasp. “Our time. Who are you? What is all of this?”
Varack’s body bloomed as a diseased rose, but worse yet, the still waters trembled.
Something massive, more massive than my meager imagination could contend with, threatened to break the surface.
Varack’s vocalizations, a cacophonous solo amidst the viral orchestra, called to that which broke the surface of the moments ago calm ocean.
Moments obliterated by its awakening.
“Go,” his minion said, and I did. Running back to my car, I cranked the ignition and the car coughed to life. I thought of what Varack had said: that I had foreseen this mad revelation embroidered onto the inherent sounds within his songs. That I, in my infinite guise as music journalist driven by ego for a career that would bring me everything I ever wanted, had decorated an overview of a cult figure musician/vocalist with frivolous asides that catered improbable truths.
I watched as that which broke the surface rose up and up and up, blocking out the stars, the moon. A figure bereft of description, except for scales that glimmered in reflection of Varack’s glowing body.
It kept rising up and out of my view.
It became the sky.
There was no escape from what had awakened and would take the world as its own. Running was not an option. The few minutes or days would be spent in fear of the inevitable. I had only one option.
I let out a sigh of defeat as I turned off the key and waited.
About the author: John Claude Smith originally wanted to be a horror writer; now he’s not sure what it is he writes, he just knows it is dark, and he’s the one holding a flashlight, shining light on those places most people want to avoid, scribbling notes. He’s had over 60 short stories and 15 poems published, as well as a debut collection of “not your average horror,” The Dark Is Light Enough For Me. His second collection, Autumn in the Abyss, was published by Omnium Gatherum in March of 2014, and is garnering much positive response and reviews. He is presently writing his third novel, while shopping around the other two and putting together a follow-up collection. Busy is good. He splits his time between the East Bay of northern California, across from San Francisco, and Rome, Italy, where his heart resides always.
Back Acres
Jay Wilburn
Omnibus Exclusive
“I don’t like going out in the yard after dark.”
“It is going to be farther than that. And it’s not getting any lighter, Son.”
Mack stood atop the five steps leading from the deck to the yard. He stared out where the floodlights reached almost the place where his father stopped mowing. The tall grasses waved in the deeper shadows higher than Mack’s head. His fear of the backyard in the dark overcame his pride of being tall enough to hold the railings now that he was eight.
His father leaned out on the banister next to the steps. His beer bottle clinked against the wood as he held it by its brown neck.
“It’s yours to solve, Son,” he said.
“Mom says not to go out in the brush because of the creatures.”
“Well, it is a mother’s job to worry and a boy’s job to become a man.”
“It’s sticky and sharp out there, Dad.”
The old man laughed at the boy before he took another swallow. The liquid and air in the bottle made a series of light rings as it tipped up and back down off his lips. As the man licked his teeth, the beer and backwash settled back into the base of the bottle. Mack thought the light notes made a sort of music. Whether it counted as music or not, it was a tune Mack had heard many times.
“Nothing is different about ‘out there’ now, boy. The living things are just closer together and you watch yourself around thorns or teeth, is all. You know what you need to find and you know why you need to be the one to find it.”
Mack rubbed at his neck and swallowed. A click and groan escaped his throat. He heard his father sigh. This was
a duet they sang often.
“Mom says there are alligators out there.”
The man snorted. “Have you ever seen an alligator out there?”
“The preacher said he saw one out by the pond on the golf course. That’s just past the field. He took pictures and said he’d show us next time we came to church.”
“Well, lucky for you that was back at Easter and Christmas is still a long time away, so you have a while, right?”
Turning sideways on the short steps still holding the banisters, Mack said, “I’m not worried about seeing the pictures; I’m worried about running into the real gator.”
“Preachers see monsters everywhere and they believe in them even when they don’t see them.”
“That doesn’t mean they are not there.”
Tapping his bottle twice on the wood, his father tipped it up to gulp out the rest of the swill that was more spit than alcohol. He shook the bottle as he said, “Absolutely no proof that they are real either, boy. We go back to that church this Sunday and you ask him about the pictures and I bet he says he forgot them, but he’ll try to remember next Sunday. It is never about proving the monsters. It is about getting you in the pews and keeping you out of other seats for other reasons.”
“Alligators bite though, right, Dad?”
“Anything with teeth can bite.”
“I don’t want to go.” Mack’s voice came quiet on the dark air.
His father shook the upturned bottle hard and drew back his fist. With a hard arc of his arm and shoulder, the bottle rang off his fingers and soared through the beams up the floodlights end over end. It parted the grass like a blade at the edge of the light and was swallowed into the brush. Mack shivered when he did not hear it land.
“You’re too young for what you want in life to matter much,” his father said. “Get out there and find what’s lost. You are at the age where doing what you’re told is what matters.”
“Do I have another choice?”
“Not doing what you’re told is an option for some boys with other fathers or no daddy at all. Do you see a future for yourself that involves disobeying me, boy? Say?”
Mack stared at the shadows in the tall grass beyond the edge of the light and saw nothing. “No, sir.”
“Then make yourself walk and do your bit.”
Mack stepped down each step with a pop and creak from the wood. He pulled his hands away from the rails and found his balance as he stepped across the cut grass. As the boards of the deck behind him protested, he heard his father walking toward the house.
Mack shouted without turning to look. “Does it matter what I want once I get older? When I’m a daddy one day, does it matter then?”
As the screen door screeched open on its hinges, his father laughed and replied, “Not as much as you might hope.”
After the door banged shut, Mack jolted.
He walked out past the rounded archery target on the frame. With the spray of the floodlights, the colored rings on the plastic over the thick foam of the target shown muted. As he passed, he saw deep, dark pits left by the practice arrows.
The light from the house made the ground and brush beyond the yard harder for Mack to see. As he walked farther from the house, the light behind him made the darkness appear thicker.
From the cold that crept into his skin and the thought of thorns, he found himself wishing he had put on long pants before he came out on the deck. Like the notion of saying “no” about going into the brush, he could not imagine telling his father to wait for him to change pants after the old man called.
He stood at the edge of the tall, yellow grass and took several deep breaths. He smelled the wet, stagnant tinge of standing water and decaying matter. He leaned forward with his palms together and parted the grass as the flying beer bottle had.
He turned his head just enough to see the washed out light of the house at the edge of his vision.
Mack spread his arms apart and stepped through the edge of the brush only to have more grass tickle and itch around his exposed knees. His first step in the darkness crunched on a can. His father did not drink from cans and when the man was sober, no one was allowed to throw trash into the back field. Mack shook the can free from his sneaker and took another step.
He faced a tangle of thorns twisted around premature pines.
Turning completely around, he glimpsed the house through the screen of grass. Only the dark roof stood above the tops. He squatted down next to the crushed can and stared at a corner of a rotten board poking up from the underlayer.
He hugged his knees and waited.
Mack heard his father’s voice bark clear from the edge of the deck. “No use hiding on the edge. You are already in, Son. Do the job right.”
Mack stood and walked sideways through the grass to get around the thorns. “Yes, sir.”
The boy shook his head. He would have sworn the old man had gone inside, but his father had eyes and power everywhere, just as Mack had suspected when he was younger.
Probing with his toe, the ground felt spongy under the twisted, dead floor of the field. The ground shifted under his feet.
He frowned and tried to maintain a line as he stepped deeper into the back fields. He turned to try and use the light from the house to stay straight, but he couldn’t judge the angle of his path any longer. He still believed his father knew where he was and what he was doing.
He caught something with the toe of his shoe and lifted up. Mack turned and saw the orange feathers at the end of the tail. He reached down and snatched the arrow up by its shaft. He lifted it up into the light filtered by grass above his head. The bullet-shaped practice tip had wet, black dirt caked between the metal and the plastic shaft. Mack twisted the tip tighter, forcing the dirt out the sides.
He smiled and held it up in the air.
“Victory,” he whispered.
His father’s voice came to his ears in an echo and seemed to be near his side instead of on the deck in the distance behind him. “A job half done is an unfinished job.”
Mack lowered the orange arrow back to his side with the point toward the spongy ground. The second practice arrow was jet black and would be a chore to spot.
“We could angle the target away from the back brush and not have this problem,” Mack muttered.
The echo of his father replied, “Moving the target is a loser’s game, Son.”
“Every time we miss high or wide, the arrows end up buried in the back acres and I’m trudging around looking for them.”
“So stop missing, boy.”
Mack pressed forward sweeping his feet back and forth in his path as he walked deeper into the brush. He moved around larger trees and privet grown from weeds into bushes. Smaller thorns escaped his sight from the failing floods in the distance behind him until the vines nipped at his bare legs.
His toe found something hard that lifted as his poked at it. Mack knelt and pressed his thumb and forefinger through the twists of felled grass.
He felt the cold and grit on the object. He expected it to sting or bite, but he found the loop of a handle and pulled the object free of the ground. Holding it up, he still did not have enough light to make out the details. Something crawled out of the interior and Mack shook it loose. Chunks of packed, black earth dropped loose from the hollow shape.
He brushed his thumb over the curved side and held it close to his face. “This isn’t an arrow.”
Something growled off to Mack’s left. His throat tightened and he couldn’t swallow.
“Dad?”
The rumbling growl trailed off. Mack heard grass moving, but not the crunch of steps. He imagined a large serpent slithering through the brush, tasting Mack’s smell on the air as it circled him.
“I’d rather deal with an alligator… no, I wouldn’t. I’m just kidding.”
Mack breathed out slowly and looked at the object again. He read, For The Greatest Dad of All.
He frowned and ran his finger through the globs of
dirt. He twisted the orange arrow in his hand as he felt the grooves of fingerprints from the mug he had made for his father last year. He pictured his father drinking beer from it and then pitching it empty into the field like a bottle. The thought of the old man throwing it made him burn behind his eyes, but the image of him drinking beer from the malshaped mug made him want to laugh nervously in the dark.
The crunch, swish, and growl crossed behind him and Mack lost the light from the house. He wanted to turn and look at it, but fear froze him.
He whispered, “Just be quiet so it doesn’t hear me.”
He heard his father’s voice like a hiss on the breeze or the voice of the serpent in God’s garden. “Snakes are deaf, boy. Finish your work. Crush its head if you have to as it strikes your heel, like the preacher talks about.”
Mack shook his head. “I don’t want it to strike my heel. Even if they are deaf, they could smell my breath or feel my vibrations, right?”
His father didn’t answer. He stood holding the arrow in one hand and the warped mug in the other.
Mack pressed forward through the grass, swiping his feet back and forth along the ground until he stumbled into a clearing over the edge of a mattress. He fell on his knees on the split top making the springs groan. Something answered the groan softer and lower behind him and to his left. Water squeezed up out of the mattress under the pressure of his legs, soaking his bare knees.
He staggered backward until he stood in the tall grass. As his eyes adjusted, he saw the clearing was formed by the soggy mattress pressing down the grass underneath it. He saw a pair of torn panties near one corner. The extra hole in the panties formed by the tear was near the side on one seam. They were turned inside out. He tried to see if they were pink or skin colored. His mother had tan, skin colored panties and those were the only ones he had ever seen outside of a store. As he looked, his eyes focused and he made out a broad stain across the butt of the panties. He could not tell if it was blood or something else.
Mack turned his head away and stuck out his tongue. A small hiccup escaped his throat and he caught on a silent gag at the end of it. As he sucked in air through his nostrils with a wet sound, his vision wavered a moment. He blinked on tears as he swallowed twice.