Fantastic Tales of Terror

by Eugene Johnson

  Before descending, he looked out the window. The ground near the remains of the windmill was scorched black. Jagged pieces of wood extended from the windmill’s base. The meteorite sat among the ruins like a dead elephant. It would be something to tell his new classmates about at “Show and Tell” next week, for sure.

  His brother had already eaten breakfast and headed off in search of new friends by the time Ray went downstairs. Ray was eager to investigate, but he knew his parents would never let him go outside until he finished his breakfast. He put jam on a slice of toast and folded it in half, cramming the whole thing into his mouth at once.

  His father pushed his chair back, drained the last of his coffee and took his dishes to the sink. “Got a lead on a job,” the elder Bradbury said. “Wish me luck.” He got a peck on the cheek from Ray’s mother, and a muffled version of “Good luck” from Ray, who was having a hard time swallowing his toast.

  After his father left, Ray helped his mother with the dishes, then put on his shoes and dashed out the back door. He stood on the top step and tried to remember everything that had happened during the night. The meteorite was over there, so that meant he had been over here, and the creature had gone . . . there, maybe? Or was it that way? The yard was unfamiliar, and everything looked different in the dark, anyway.

  He looked up at the sky, wondering if other meteorites were about to plummet through the clouds and crash to the earth. What if one struck his father’s car? Or the house, turning it into a smoking ruin. What if mother went out to hang the laundry and was eaten by that terrible, shambling creature? He shook his head. That couldn’t have been real. Must have been a dream.

  He was suddenly aware of someone standing beside him. A dark figure. His heart leapt—at first, he was sure it was the creature from his nightmare. Then he realized it was a person, and he calmed down a little.

  The stranger wore a black shirt, a black coat, and black pants. He also had on an oddly shaped black hat. His face was clean shaved and his eyes were as dark as embers. Something about his demeanor made Ray consider running into the house to warn his mother, but he couldn’t make his legs move.

  The man tipped his hat. No one had ever done that to Ray before. “Good morning,” he said.

  “Morning,” Ray said, wishing he had a hat to tip back.

  The man looked around. “Quiet,” he said. “Where is everyone?”

  “Mom’s inside,” he said. “My father’s away. Skip, too.” He didn’t know why he said all this. It seemed rude not to answer the man.

  “Did you see what happened last night?”

  “The meteorite?” Ray said. “Yessir.”

  The man frowned. “Is that what you think it is?”

  Ray nodded. “They come from outer space. I learned about them from a book.”

  The stranger’s eyes narrowed. A chill ran down Ray’s spine. “Did you, now?” He took off his hat and sat on the topmost step, patting the spot next to him. “Sit yourself down,” he said. “Tell me everything. Spare no detail.”

  Ray swallowed, took a deep breath, and told the man about how the meteorite had destroyed the windmill. How his father had poured water on it and how it had steamed. He didn’t, however, mention what he’d seen near the mesquite tree.

  The man leaned forward. “Did your father open it?”

  “Open it?” Ray’s eyes widened. “You mean, hit it with a sledgehammer or something?”

  The man expelled a burst of air and leaned back. “If that thing gets out . . . ” He seemed to be talking to himself, but the way Ray’s eyes opened wide must have told him something. He grabbed Ray by the shoulder and leaned in close again. “What do you know, boy? Tell me now.” Spit flew from his lips as he spoke.

  Ray cringed, suddenly afraid of this stranger who smelled like a summer breeze and raged like a winter storm.

  “What did you see?” The man relaxed a little, perhaps sensing the boy’s fear. “The lives of everyone you know and love may depend on this. Show me now.”

  Ray led the stranger to the charred remains of the windmill. The earth was grooved for dozens of yards, as if an enormous plow had been dragged through it. He saw several shards and chunks of what might have been molten glass or metal. The meteorite was dark, almost black, and rough, like a boulder. It was egg-shaped, nearly ten feet long and taller than he was.

  The stranger held out a palm, warning Ray to stay back, but Ray ignored him. This man, whoever he was, wasn’t his father. He had no right to boss him around. Ray’s eyes were fixed on the black rock. As he got closer, he realized that the features on its rough surface were intricate carvings. Maybe even a kind of writing.

  The stranger reached inside his coat and brought out something shiny. It had tubes and rods pointing in all directions. It might have been a weapon, but instead of a trigger it had several colored buttons made of a material unlike any Ray had ever seen. The man ran his hand over the rock, found something and pushed. The entire side of the meteorite glided upwards without a sound.

  Ray gaped. The spicy aroma he had detected near the mesquite tree wafted out of the opening. Inside, he saw a depression that resembled the outline of the elongated creature he’d encountered. All around it, glassy circles of every imaginable color twinkled like stars. A flat panel glimmered with pale blue light at the tapered end of the rock, near where the creature’s head would have been when it was nestled inside. Arcane characters and symbols streamed diagonally across it.

  Ray could only stare. “Is it magic?” he asked. Ray loved magicians.

  The stranger pointed his device at the opening. It beeped and trilled like an exotic bird. “To you, probably,” the man replied. He stepped away from the object and examined the ground. Ray looked down, too. The hard soil didn’t show any footprints. If the stranger intended to follow the creature’s trail, he would need impressive tracking skills.

  “I saw it over there,” Ray said, pointing toward the mesquite bush. “I think it was hurt.” He showed the man where he’d hidden. Here the ground was softer and the man had no trouble finding the creature’s tracks.

  “You followed it?” the man asked a few seconds later.

  Ray nodded. “Tried to, anyway.”

  The stranger shook his head and sighed.

  The footprints fascinated Ray. They were at least fourteen inches long but narrow. “Looks like he lost some toes,” he said.

  “Quiet, boy.” The stranger held the beeping, blinking gadget out in front of him. “And stay where you are.”

  Ray heard a door slamming. He turned to see his father coming down the porch steps. “What’s going on?” he demanded. “Who in tarnation are you and what are you doing with my boy?”

  The stranger held up his empty hand to call for silence. Ray’s father’s face grew dark and pinched. He spun on his heel and went back inside. When he emerged a few seconds later, he was carrying a shotgun. “I asked what you were doing,” he said.

  The stranger ignored Ray’s father, staring at the ground as he approached one of the taller mesquite trees in the yard. After scrutinizing the ground, he looked up.

  Something dropped from a branch, pinning the man to the ground. The creature was even more horrific than in Ray’s nightmare. Its gray-green body was a lumpy cylinder, and its head looked like an elongated pumpkin. Its arms were long and crooked. Its dark eyes were as big as saucers and its mouth gaped open to reveal dozens of needle-sharp teeth.

  It knocked the stranger’s gadget aside, grabbed the man by the shoulders with its long, gnarled fingers—only three on each hand, Ray observed—and bashed his head against the ground. It then arose from its crouch, swiveled and saw Ray, who was less than five feet away. It took three strides to reach the boy. Its arms may have been spindly, but they gripped Ray like a vise, crushing the very breath out of him. The spicy odor overwhelmed him. Ray closed his eyes, waiting for those terrible teeth to bite into his neck and chew off his head.

  He was dimly aware of a ratcheting sound behin
d him—his father pumping a shell into the chamber. “Put him down,” his father screamed. “Put him down.”

  The creature’s grip intensified. Ray cried out in pain. His heart pounded as he struggled for air.

  A shot rang out. Ray felt the creature flinch and loosen its grip. Then its smothering arms dropped away. Ray fell to the ground, knocking what little remaining breath he had left from him. Constellations of stars filled his head.

  His father ratcheted the shotgun and fired again. This time the creature screamed—a terrible sound. Birds scattered from the branches of the mesquite trees. Ray heard a soft thud and managed a glance in that direction. The creature had collapsed two feet away. It wasn’t moving.

  After the gunshots and the horrible wailing and the clamor of the birds, the world went quiet. Ray stayed still, catching his breath. His father rushed over and knelt by his side. “Are you all right?”

  Ray nodded without speaking and took another deep breath before slowly getting to his feet.

  The stranger regained consciousness after Ray’s father splashed water onto his face. He shook off his injuries, brushed dust from his coat, and went to investigate the creature. Ray watched, his father at his side with an arm casually draped around Ray’s shoulder. The stranger’s gadget beeped and squawked. A few seconds later, he pronounced the creature dead.

  Ray’s mother emerged from the house and rushed to them. She shrieked when she saw the dead thing on the ground.

  “What is it?” Ray asked the man.

  The stranger arose from his crouch. “Mighty hard to explain. Something not from around here. Something nasty.”

  “You’re not from around here, either, are you?” Ray’s father said.

  The man grinned. “Guess not. I’ll be taking these with me,” he said, nodding at the dead creature and the strange rock in the ruins of the windmill.

  “You’ll need help,” Ray’s father said.

  The stranger shook his head. He raised his gadget and pushed a few buttons. He pointed it at the dead creature and then at the rock. A moment later, two beams of colored light descended from the sky and lifted the dead creature and the rocklike object into the air. Ray watched them go up and up and up until he could see them no more. His father uttered a soft curse and his mother almost swooned at the sight.

  “Someone might come looking for him,” the stranger said, indicating the spot on the ground where the creature’s body had been only a few seconds before. “Not right away. Takes a while to get here. They may not land, but if they do, stay away from them. They aren’t friendly, as you’ve seen.”

  “Who are you?” Ray asked, but before the words were out of his mouth, there was a pop as the air closed around where the stranger used to be, and then he was gone.

  ***

  Ray told his brother about his adventure later that afternoon when Skip returned home. They wandered around the backyard, where Ray pointed out where everything had happened.

  “Gosh,” Skip said. “Sounds like a movie. And to think I missed it all. It’s not fair!” He gave Ray a playful punch on the arm. “What do you think it was?”

  “I think that big rock was some kind of flying machine. Maybe the creature inside it came from Mars.”

  “A Martian? For real?”

  “In our backyard,” Ray said. “Imagine that.”

  He looked up at the sky, which was cloud-filled and blue. Far beyond that, he pictured planets and stars. What would it be like to live on another planet? He remembered Waukegan—his family and friends who still lived there—and wondered if the man from Mars had a family back home who would miss him.

  He thought all these things that afternoon, and in the following days when the family moved on to Tucson, and in the ensuing years when they returned to Waukegan and eventually moved to California. Ray claimed in later years he could recall his whole life, including the moment of his birth, but some memories were more vivid than others.

  The day Ray met the man from Mars was the day the universe entered his imagination. He would never look at the world the same way again.

  THE GIRL WITH THE DEATH MASK

  STEPHANIE M. WYTOVICH

  November 17, 1925

  Mexico City

  It was early Sunday morning when I woke to the sound of shuffling limbs. The sun had barely risen and the faint glow of its arrival had yet to grace my window. The quilt mother had wrapped me in was too hot, and I felt the sweat drip down my plaster-coated legs. The itch was unbearable, but the fear that wet my mouth kept me still.

  Against the faint scent of dying vanilla orchids, shadows climbed my walls.

  Were they back?

  I tossed and turned, trying to keep my focus on the drapes. There were tapestries with blue flowers and deep green stems. On my good days, the warmth of the red felt romantic, reminded me of tequila-soaked kisses and girls with painted lips, but on the bad days—which were more and more frequent these past weeks—the coloring reminded me of the way the gasps and screams of the other passengers fell on my body like freshly sewn fabric, their skins a soft blanket to help sop up the blood. I don’t remember the iron handrail that pierced my abdomen, but when the doctors told me that my uterus was punctured, I felt the dream of children slip from my heart despite the nails that held my body together.

  When I got on the bus that day, I had no idea that the face I wore was already painted with the brush of death, and sometimes when I closed my eyes, I could still smell the gold leaf in the air, the allure of fate fresh on my tongue. But what I haven’t forgotten is his face, the portrait of the man dressed in teeth who tried to help me, the one I turned away when I begged for God.

  Sometimes I think I imagined him, created him so I could face my death.

  Other times, like when the day bleeds into night, I know it was real.

  The whine of a floorboard filled the room.

  “Hello? Is someone there?” I said.

  Silence.

  I propped myself up on the bed, the layer of pillows behind me like a fortress to cushion my shattered spine. Sweat lined my brows and dripped down my face.

  “Frida? Are you awake?” asked my father, Guillermo. A photographer by nature, he, too, was always up with the sun.

  “Unfortunately,” I said. “Is there coffee, yet?”

  “Si. Un momento, mi hija,” he said, his accent still carrying a hint of German on the tongue.

  I heard the clangs of pots and pans and tried to make myself comfortable amongst the noise and unease. At this pace, the whole family would be up soon, and father would never have time to work with Mama slinging out orders about our overgrown garden.

  I swept the room with quick nods to the corners, the white-washed ceiling.

  Empty. Alone. Safe.

  For now.

  “Gracias, Papa,” I shouted, my voice catching as I hoped for a strong shot of caffeine to take with my painkiller cocktail.

  I rubbed my eyes and swallowed hard while the mirror above my bed watched me, a constant companion to my pain.

  When will this Hell end?

  It had been two months since the trolley took my body from me, locked me in this plaster prison, and I’ve been painting to keep my hands busy and my mind sane. A week ago, father bought me some paints and canvas as room on my cast dwindled inside my ever-growing collage. Pink and yellow butterflies lined my breasts as dark smudges of skulls and tropical flowers trickled down my chest and navel. It was beautiful until it wasn’t, and even then, the beauty only faded against the call of my nightmares.

  I reveled in the smell of acrylic, the fresh cut of charcoal.

  They helped tame the maelstrom that circled me, the storm of death and agony that positioned itself against the door to love and health while day in and day out, I lay here, a waking corpse amongst the living.

  La chica con la mascara de muerte.

  According to the mirror, I needed my braids redone as the black of my hair looked sullied, gray, my face dried out from the hands of slee
p.

  I reached to my bedside and dipped a washcloth in the tumbler of water Mama left out for me last night. It was lukewarm, but it felt cold on my face as I scrubbed and fluffed my eyebrows, cracked my neck.

  In the corner of the room, something scuttled up the wall, disappeared into the ceiling.

  My breath caught in the panic building in my throat.

  Tantos diablos.

  “Frida? Darling? Are you okay?” asked my father holding a tray of coffee, milk, and fruit.

  “Yes. I mean no. I just—”

  “Have you been sleeping? Taking your medicine?” he asked. “You look like you caught your death.”

  “Sometimes, father, I really think I did,” I said.

  ***

  I took a forkful of grapefruit and savored the sweet-sour tang as I licked my lips. A chill crept into the room, the draft of November a cold kiss against my aching bones. I’d spent most of the afternoon writing, my diary a mixture of recorded fears and pressed flowers that soaked up my pain between pages.

  Yesterday, I’d left off drawing a crushed-in skull with fresh roses in its eye sockets. The red was vibrant, bright, and I even had father crush up red petals in the paint for me, but the smell made me sick and I had to stop, my stomach churning, flipping.

  Today, I added tears to its cheek, little blue specks salted with the water leaking from my own eyes. It bonded me with the skull, this skeletal rebirth.

  It’s strange to think that before the accident, I wouldn’t have left the house without putting a dab of rose water on my wrists, but it had been weeks since I’d felt like myself, and the scent of roses made me nauseous now, filled my mouth with the taste of copper, the memory of blood and asphalt on my teeth.

  No. No. No.

  I picked up the tumbler of water and drank straight from its lip.

  Easy now, easy. It’s just a memory. It will fade.

  The doctor was due to our house in a few hours, and his visits always left me with scars that not even he could treat. I didn’t like the way mother choked back sobs when she stood in the corner watching, or how father stood tense, his muscles clenched, near ripping as my body was twisted and turned.