Mad Stacks: Story Collection Box Set

by Scott Nicholson

  “I don’t like friends.” I put my hand in my mouth and tried to suck the sore away.

  “Chin up, pup. He’s gone now.”

  The boy sounded brave, plus I had nowhere else to run. “Did you send him away?”

  “No, I dragged you in here where it’s safe.”

  “Where are we?”

  “I call it the Bone House.”

  “It’s dark.”

  “Here’s your teddy bear.” He held it out to me.

  I grabbed it and brushed its soft fabric against my cheek until my tears were cold.

  “Do you trust me?” my friend said.

  I nodded, not sure if he could see me.

  “Okay,” he said. “You have to leave the Bone House now, but I’ll be here to help whenever you need me.”

  “Promise?”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  And he kept his promise, except that “hoping to die” part. The boy learned how to hide me when we heard the boots in the hallway. Into the closet, buried under broken toys and dirty blankets and a Big Bird poster. Under the bed, cuddling dust bunnies with my nose as the boots walked across the floor, inches from my face. Behind the desk, chewing my lip, afraid to breathe until the Midnight Man gave up and shambled off to find Mother instead.

  When I heard the boots in the kitchen, the King Kong roar and shattering of glass, Mother’s high squeaking Godzilla cries, I knew I had escaped again. The boots stomped until they grew tired, until the thunder spent its fury. Then my friend and I would share a smile. We had lived to hide another day.

  My friend taught me a simple game.

  Dodge the boots.

  Run and hide.

  Become invisible when you could, hold your breath when you couldn’t.

  But nobody wins the game every time. And the odds favored the Midnight Man. He seemed to grow taller and stronger and darker the better we got at hiding. When he found me, plucked me out of my corners and nooks, held me up with a thick trembling arm, then I knew it was time to let my friend have this body. My friend would take the punishment while I went away to the Bone House. I hate to say it, but I think he even liked it a little.

  I’d watch from the window as the boots did their dance, crushed a minuet across my friend’s legs, waltzed over his kidneys, and jitterbugged up his spine. I knew it was me being beaten, my bruised flesh that I would eventually revisit, but at least I didn’t have to suffer. My friend did that for me. That’s how much my friend loved me.

  We would talk after. He would give me back my body, with its red welts and pink scrapes, and go into his hidden room in the Bone House. Since it hurt to move, I would huddle in my squeaky bed with my teddy bear. I tasted salt and sometimes blood. My friend would whisper soothing words inside my head.

  “You’re okay now, Richard. Midnight is over.”

  I trembled. For both of us.

  “Did you hear the front door slam?” he asked.

  I nodded, hugging the raw meat of my legs to my chest as the plains wind banged against the windows. Any storm was welcome as long as it hid the sound of boots.

  “He’s gone. You can breathe again.”

  “Thanks.”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  My friend didn’t have a name back then. There was only us. He didn’t need a name until later, when things got more complicated and the Bone House became crowded. But I can tell you the teddy bear was named Wee Willie Winky because one of his eyes was stitched too tightly. And my name was Richard. I forgot to tell you that, but you can see it on the cover of the book, unless that other guy changed it.

  “Did he hurt you bad?” Secretly, I was glad it was him instead of me.

  “Not so bad this time. Not like the time when the two teeth got loose and I bit my tongue. That time, even your mother got scared.”

  “Yeah, remember how she pushed the Midnight Man away and picked you up?” I asked. “With your arm bent out at that funny angle, like you had an extra elbow? That was the only time she ever tried to stop him.”

  “They were nice to me at the hospital. They gave me a lollipop, and that pretty nurse said she’d never seen such a brave young man.”

  I wished I’d been around for that lollipop. Maybe he’d tricked me so he could have the lollipop instead of me. “What does ‘brave’ mean?”

  “It’s when bad things happen and you don’t cry.” He’d probably learned that from a book in school, or maybe church, or that one time we went to a Boy Scout meeting.

  “Are you brave?”

  “I don’t know. But when they asked me how it happened, I said it just the way Mother told me. She made me keep saying it over and over in the car. ‘I fell down the steps, and put out my arm to stop.’”

  “Why did she want you to make up a story like that?” I didn’t care why, but this was my friend, and I liked the way he talked. Plus he was sharing a very important lesson in how to lie, and what boy could resist such a thing?

  “It wasn’t a story. You know how she says, ‘If you believe something hard enough, you can make it true’? Well, she wanted that story to be true. She believed it more.”

  I pulled the blankets tight under my chin. The fabric was scratchy, like Father’s cheeks. “Do you remember what really happened?”

  “I didn’t hide good enough, that’s all.”

  “Sometimes, just before he goes to sleep, or when he’s on the couch watching TV, he makes me take the boots off his feet. They’re not so scary when they’re off.”

  “Tongues hanging out. Tired dogs. But they sure are stinky. Wee Willie stinky.”

  I looked up at the ceiling, at the shadows of trees dancing in front of the streetlights. The room smelled of purple Kool-Aid and old socks and rats behind the walls, and sometimes I prayed to Jesus for clean laundry. If my friend wasn’t around, I’d sometimes throw in a prayer for candy or a Matchbox car. But the ceiling was in the way so I couldn’t see the sky or heaven. “Maybe one night we could hide the boots after he’s asleep.”

  “Then he’d really be mad,” the voice said. Sometimes my friend spoke out loud instead of just thinking it, and that was a little scary until I got used to it. I’m glad it didn’t happen when other people were around. Not often, anyway.

  “Maybe it’s the boots that make him mad.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “It’s stupid to be brave.”

  “Does Mother hate the boots?” I asked questions I was afraid to answer. He never minded when I tricked him into telling the truth once in a while.

  “I don’t know. She keeps telling the Midnight Man ‘I love you.’”

  “Maybe there are different kinds of love. She likes to hold me and sing to me. She says she loves me, and kisses me on the forehead, and tucks me under the blankets even when she knows the Midnight Man is coming. Even when she knows he’s got his boots on.”

  “Maybe he would hurt her more if she didn’t love him, so she’s afraid to stop.”

  I swallowed hard. Darkness crawled in from the corners, its edges sharp. I put my head under the pillow. Love was easy when it was just some invisible person in your head, but when you had to pretend to love in the real world, who wouldn’t be a little crazy and afraid? “Love means you have to be brave?”

  “Sometimes your mother cries when she says she loves you. That means she’s either lying or she’s not brave.”

  My friend was clever, but I usually came up with a comeback because in your own autobiography you don’t want anybody to think you’re playing second fiddle or fifth harmonica or ninth penny whistle. “But how can she love me and the Midnight Man at the same time?”

  “Maybe she only loves the Midnight Man when his boots are off. Maybe they’re sole mates. Get it, s-o-l-e?”

  “Funny, ha ha. Love shouldn’t go on and off like that. I love you all the time. And I don’t want to die like Jesus had to before He could get people to love Him,” I said to the person in my head. Throwing in the Jesus bit was a little melodramatic, seeing
as how we’d only been to church three times, and only one of them didn’t involve food. You can sure get the best coconut cakes at church.

  “I love you, Richard,” he said. “I’ll never leave you. I won’t let you get hurt.”

  I tucked Wee under my bruised arm. Wads of cotton spilled from the rips in its neck and leg. The Midnight Man had done that, but Wee didn’t have an invisible friend to hide him, and I wasn’t sharing mine. “It’s not so bad hiding. Inside, where it’s dark. I wish we could stay there all the time.”

  “We can’t both go into the Bone House.”

  “Why not?”

  “Who would watch Wee? Wee can never be alone.”

  My friend loved double meanings and playing with words. It helped pass the time when he was stuck in the Bone House. And maybe he wanted to be a writer when he grew up, just like everybody else. But first he’d have to live long enough to grow up.

  Thump thump.

  Our eyes opened, our shared heart boomed like the storm rolling down the hallway, but only one of us got to flee for the hidden room inside my skull.

  Me first. Always me.

  “Up the stairs, away, away, away,” whispered my friend. “Sounds like someone’s putting his foot down.”

  And off I’d go.

  Into the rest of my life.

  Or lives, as it turned out.

  But you’ll have to read the whole story to help me figure it out. As I Die Lying is the book I wrote about what happened. Or else it’s the false autobiography of you-know-who.

  Maybe there’s no difference.

  Richard Coldiron’s first and last novel follows his journey through a troubled childhood, where he meets his invisible friend, his other invisible friend...and then some who aren’t so friendly.

  There’s Mister Milktoast, the protective punster; Little Hitler, who leers from the shadows; Loverboy, the lusty bastard; and Bookworm, who is thoughtful, introspective, and determined to solve the riddle of Richard’s disintegration into either madness or genius, and of course only makes things worse.

  Richard keeps his cool despite the voices in his head, but he’s about to get a new tenant: the Insider, a malevolent soul-hopping spirit that may or may not be born from Richard’s nightmares and demands a co-writing credit and a little bit of foot-kissing dark worship.

  Now Richard doesn’t know which voice to trust. The book’s been rejected 117 times. The people he loves keep turning up dead. And here comes the woman of his dreams.

  Learn more about As I Die Lying and the six people in Richard Coldiron’s head or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK

  The End

  Missing Pieces Table of Contents

  Master Table of Contents

  ###

  FLOATING CATHEDRAL SONG

  By Scott Nicholson

  Mara peeked between the curtains into the temple.

  Her heart thrushed in rhythm to her sister Penelope’s singing. Penelope’s voice filled the atrium, pouring out through the space in the roof to fill the cup of sky, powerful enough to lull even Aeolus himself. Her song was of the greatness of the wind, of the dark maddening of the harvest moon, of the rains that fell like soft and joyful tears.

  Penelope would soon ascend. Penelope, who had reached her time of blood. Not the white-bearded oracles, not the young farmers with their strong backs, not the hunters who ventured deep into the forests, or the horsemen whose dust clouds vanished across the plain. And not Mara. Penelope alone would be called into the cathedral, and must be readied for the eyes and ears and mouth of a god.

  Penelope was beautiful in the candlelight and starlight, her black hair parted evenly and hanging to her waist. She wore a flaxen robe, a band of red and violet flowers around her head. Their mother was fussing over the sleeves of the robe, pulling them this way and that, stepping back to admire the fit. Mara tried to read Mother’s eyes for any sign of pride or sadness.

  No, Mother wouldn’t reveal anything. Things were the way they were, just as they had always been. Girls could sing and sew and tend crops, and when they turned into women they could bear children of their own. Once in a great while, daughters were given to the sky. Women were born to serve, whether the masters be men or gods.

  Mother tugged on Penelope’s silken waist wrap. Penelope adjusted to the new constraints of her abdomen and continued her hymn. Mara silently mouthed the sacred words. She felt a pang of jealousy, but then scolded herself. She had no sacrificial value, nothing to offer. She was not a woman yet.

  “You must remember to be loud,” Mother said.

  Penelope stopped her song, and the air was heavier with the loss. “I’m trying.”

  “I know you are, dear.” Mother paused in her fussing with the garments and tenderly stroked a strand of Penelope’s hair. “You have a right to be nervous.”

  Penelope touched her throat. “I wish I could give my prayers instead.”

  “Silence is the sweetest music,” Mother said. “But we do what Aeolus bids, not what we think is best.”

  “Will I be good enough?”

  “Of course you’ll be good enough.”

  “If Aeolus doesn’t come...”

  “He will come.”

  He didn’t always. The villagers whispered of a tribe behind the mountains who had no beautiful singer, no young woman who had crossed the threshold into ripeness, and no proper sacrifice. Aeolus had passed them over, bringing forty seasons of calamity and ruin. Mara prayed that Penelope would be worthy.

  Mother hugged Penelope. Mara shifted from her spying, and the curtain fell closed.

  “Who’s there?” Mother called.

  Mara tried to control her breathing. The preparations were sacred, with only mother and daughter allowed. If Mara was caught, she might be forced to miss the Arrival. Then she would have to wait another ten years, with only the teasing hollowness of legends and the dim childhood memories of the last Arrival to sustain her. But on this night, Penelope’s last night here, Mara would take the risk. Tomorrow that sweet music, the gift of throat and tongue and wind, would belong forever to Aeolus and no longer to Mara and the village.

  “It was only the wind, I suppose,” Mother said. Mara looked again through a shadowed crack, unable to resist the forbidden spectacle.

  “I’m the nervous one,” Penelope said.

  “Forgive me. I promised to be brave.”

  “Be brave for both of us.”

  Mother nodded, eyes bright with held tears. She gathered the great, white veil that hung from a blunted stag’s horn. She draped it behind her daughter, carefully smoothing the gauze and lace to hide the adorning flowers. Mother kissed Penelope’s cheek before dropping the veil over her face.

  “Tell Father good-bye for me,” Penelope said. “And my dear Mara.”

  Father was hiding in the hills with the other men, awaiting the Arrival with a mixture of dread and awe. He could be proud of his honorable gift. Only great and noble men could spawn a sacrifice. He would lose a daughter but would gain a sacred position in the temple hierarchy.

  Mother hurried from the temple, unable now to hide the tears. Penelope, ghost-like in her lace, went to the center of the atrium. She reclined on the large pile of grain. A bounty of melons, gourds, and fruit surrounded her, all gifts to Aeolus so that He might find Penelope, and thus the village, worthy of blessing. Bright bolts of cloth and carved statuary completed the tribute.

  A breeze stirred through the gap in the ceiling. The candles extinguished.

  Aeolus. She trembled in delight and fear. She should go now to join the other women in the caves. She would be needed to calm the children. But she couldn’t take her eyes from her sister.

  Penelope folded her arms across her breasts and lowered her head. Her shoulders shook with sobbing. She tried to sing, but the tones were broken, uneven, and a little off-key. A lifetime of training abandoned her when needed most.

  The sky lightened with the coming dawn. From across the plains came the first keening strains of the cat
hedral. Mara’s heart beat faster. Penelope lifted her face, and through the veil the morning starlight glinted in her tears. Her throat trembled, giving her song an unorthodox lilt.

  She’s not performing, Mara thought. Now, at this moment of sacrifice, she falters.

  Penelope had always been the best, chosen at an early age to be the next offering. Mara had trained with her, helped her practice the songs she must sing. Penelope had rarely missed a note, had never lacked for sustain or range. But now she tensed, and only a tortured cacophony issued from her mouth.

  The song of the cathedral was louder now, closer, rising from a barely audible hum to a melodic but frightful whisper. The sound reflected off the ice and stone of the mountains, a beast eating the earth. Penelope tried again to join in, but failed.

  Aeolus will not approve. Mara heard the songs in her head, the way they were meant to be performed. If only she could wish the correct notes into Penelope’s head.

  She couldn’t. But she could do the next best thing.

  Mara began to sing, softly at first, and then with more confidence. She came out from the curtains. Penelope hushed, caught between Mara’s song and the rising music of the cathedral.

  “Sing!” Mara shouted, meeting Penelope’s startled eyes.

  Penelope lifted the veil from her face. Mara raised both her hands, exhorting her sister to join in. Penelope’s mouth parted, and then she drew in a breath and began.

  The walls of the temple shook with the throbbing roar of the cathedral. Its thousand voices lifted, Aeolus’s heavenly choir. The hymn stretched out over the plains and hills, blessing the village’s crops and streams and game and hearths. The stacked tetrachords shifted in counterpoint, so dense that the music crowded the stars and the rising sun.

  Mara and Penelope joined in a duet, their harmony bound by the threads of blood. They sang louder so that Aeolus might hear them, even over the other glorious voices. The walls shook. Fruit and vegetables tumbled from their piles, rolling around on the stone floor of the temple.

  He’s angry.

  Mara didn’t pause in her song. This was her gift, maybe not as fine as Penelope’s, but between the two of them, they might yet appease Aeolus.