by Tim Curran
Thrush sighs, holds out his hand and takes Davenport’s money. He gets up and shuffles towards the door. “I suppose you’re right. I’m sorry I didn’t get her here in time for your big to-do.…”
“Davenport shrugs. “We got a local girl and bleached her hair.”
“I hope your friends were fooled. Your wife must’ve left because of what you were gonna do, but you had it figured out all along, didn’t you, Mr. Mayor? Now she’s outta your hair, you run this town, and you get to keep your daughter as a hole card for the next time you need a blood sacrifice to get out of trouble.”
“You’re not as stupid as you look. You should come work for me regular.…”
“Folks’re talking up a range war with OKC pretty soon. They outnumber us a bit, but we got the college, and lord knows those freaks know a thing or two about warrin’. Big boy like you could write his own ticket, end up a rancher with a spread.”
Thrush shrugged, wiped dead skin out of his eyes. “I don’t much care for regular work, truth to tell. Probably going to go home and sleep for a month now.”
“Well, you’ve earned it,” Davenport says, back already turned, kneeling beside the rug. The toes of a pair of scuffed-up Converse hi-tops stick out of the other end. He fondles the hair, smells it. “My man will see you out.”
Thrush goes out, pulls the door shut. Davenport can contain himself no longer. “All the trouble you caused me … you could’ve ruined me, but you don’t even understand … well, now you’re gonna know, you little––”
The area rug unrolls across the red Spanish tile and a dozen angry homunculi leap out of the nest of dirty girl’s clothes to feast on the mayor’s face.
Thrush parks the Celica in the weeds by their double-wide Airstream because there’s a primer-red Charger in the driveway. He goes over to the garden hose and turns it on full blast and showers, scrubbing out his hard-to-reach spots in full view of the neighbors. Then, looking back at the Celica, he goes in.
He has to step over the guy in the Harry Crews T-shirt, who sprawls from the front door to the dinette and has soaked right through the cleanest portion of their carpet.
A pistol is slowly, laboriously cocked just behind Thrush’s ear.
“What’s for dinner, darlin?” Thrush says. “We can get take-out. I got paid.…”
Ursula rolls slowly forward on the couch, into the light from the neighbors’ bonfire. Sniffling, she says, “He came back … You know how sometimes, they … they …”
Yeah, he did, especially the ones who wanted a monkey to do for them what they were too chickenshit to do for themselves. Suddenly, after making a day-baby with her, she became their Earth mother savior, and their only reason for living.
Thrush turns to look at the monkey perched on the knickknack shelf next to Ursula’s crystal unicorn collection. The misbegotten thing is little more than a cat’s skull and a pair of stunted arms and something that could be a leg or a tail. It’s wrapped around a 9mm Glock. It has its father’s pustular complexion, and Thrush wagers it can’t see for shit.
“He tried to get it to shoot me,” Ursula says, “can you imagine?”
“Yeah, maybe we ought to see about getting you a different line of work.”
A shadow falls across the screen door. The monkey wheezes and twists the gun to point at the intruder. Thrush takes the gun. The thing lunges at him, but he raps it with the butt of the gun and knocks it on the floor with the others.
“Who’s that?” Ursula struggles to pull herself up.
“It’s just this girl I saved today.”
“You sure didn’t save her hair.”
“Long story. Tell you sometime.”
“Well, she can’t stay here; we don’t have nothing to eat for dinner as it is.”
“Well … Maybe tomorrow I’ll go see if the crazy snake-handling church I got her from wants her back. But for now, whyn’t you just sit there and think real hard about a twenty-pound turkey full of stuffing, and try not to make it look like me.”
He pushes open the screen door, but stops the dazed bald girl from coming in. “Come on and help with this,” he says, dragging the dead loser out of the trailer. “Get the feet.”
She’s not much help, but she tries. He drags the surprisingly heavy jackoff through the Russian thistle and wild cucumber around back of the trailer, with the girl holding one or the other of the dead man’s ankles, lifting them up over hidden pieces of lawn furniture.
Around back and twenty paces from the porch, they come to the edge. He tells the girl to go back to the trailer. There’s a fence around this stretch of the Sink, but the section behind the trailer collapsed and fell in a few months ago. It isn’t growing too aggressively, but every so often a good chunk of land will fall in without ever making a noise. Ursula keeps nagging him to move them into town, but Thrush doesn’t feel any urgency.
A sound comes out of him like the sound of his voice when he was a rag of meat inside the flaccid void under the flabby man’s skin. “Iä, Tsathoggua.”
He rolls the dead boy off the edge and waits, watching the moon, for the sound of something hitting the bottom, or climbing to the top.
CONTRIBUTOR BIOS
Neil Baker is the owner of April Moon Books, a small press based in Ontario, Canada. He has published several well-received books including The Dark Rites of Cthulhu, Flesh Like Smoke, and the ‘Short, Sharp, Shocks’ series. His own stories can be found in a clutch of great anthologies including World War Cthulhu and Atomic Age Cthulhu, and he has several more stories due for release in the coming year. Neil lives with his wife and two kids in a perpetual state of confusion.
Glynn Owen Barrass lives in the North East of England and has been writing since late 2006. He has written over a hundred and thirty short stories, most of which have been published in the UK, USA, France, and Japan. He has also edited anthologies for Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu fiction line, and writes material for their flagship roleplaying game. To date he has edited the collections Eldritch Chrome, Steampunk Cthulhu and Atomic Age Cthulhu for Chaosium; In the Court of the Yellow King for Celaeno Press; and World War Cthulhu for Dark Regions Press. Upcoming books include The Eldritch Force, The Summer of Lovecraft, and World War Cthulhu II.
Tim Curran is the author of the novels Skin Medicine, Hive, Dead Sea, Resurrection, Hag Night, Skull Moon, The Devil Next Door, Doll Face, Afterburn, House of Skin, and Biohazard. His short stories have been collected in Bone Marrow Stew and Zombie Pulp. His novellas include The Underdwelling, The Corpse King, Puppet Graveyard, Worm, and Blackout. His short stories have appeared in such magazines as City Slab, Flesh&Blood, Book of Dark Wisdom and Inhuman, as well as anthologies such as Shadows Over Main Street, Eulogies III, and October Dreams II. His fiction has been translated into German, Japanese, Spanish, and Italian. Find him on Facebook at facebook.com/tim.curran.77
Edward M. Erdelac is the author of ten novels including the acclaimed occult Civil War thriller Andersonville (Random House), the Judeocentric Lovecraftian weird western Merkabah Rider series, and Monstrumführer from Comet Press. His fiction has appeared in Dread Shadows in Paradise, World War Cthulhu, Star Wars Insider Magazine, and dozens of other places. Born in Indiana, educated in Chicago, he now lives in the Los Angeles area with his family and a trio of felines. News and excerpts can be found at his Delirium Tremens blog at http://www.emerdelac.wordpress.com
Sam Gafford has been published in a wide variety of anthologies and publications. His fiction has appeared in such collections as Black Wings Volumes I, III and V, as well as Flesh Like Smoke, The Lemon Herberts, Wicked Tales, and in magazines like Weird Fiction Review, Dark Corridor, Nameless, and others. A lifelong Lovecraftian, he has written critical articles that have appeared in Lovecraft Studies, Crypt of Cthulhu, and more. An expert on the life and work of pioneering science fiction writer William Hope Hodgson, Gafford is currently working on a book length critical biography of Hodgson. Recently, he wrote Some Notes on a Non-Entity: The Life of H. P. Lovecr
aft, which is a 120-page graphic-novel biography of HPL, with PS Publishing set to release it in 2017. Gafford has a collection of short horror fiction, The Dreamer in Fire and Other Tales, coming from Hippocampus Press in 2016. He recently finished writing his first novel and hopes to have it published by 2017. A pop-culture junkie, Gafford has probably watched far more TV than recommended. He lives in Rhode Island with his long-suffering wife and three ambivalent cats.
Cody Goodfellow’s previous collections Silent Weapons For Quiet Wars and All-Monster Action both received the Wonderland Book Award. His latest, Rapture of the Deep & Other Lovecraftian Tales, is out now from Hippocampus Press. He wrote, co-produced and scored the short Lovecraftian hygiene film Stay At Home Dad, which can be viewed on YouTube. As a bishop of the Esoteric Order of Dagon (San Pedro Chapter), he presides over several Cthulhu Prayer Breakfasts each year, from Comic-Con to the Queen Mary. He is also a director of the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Los Angeles and cofounder of Perilous Press, a micropublisher of modern cosmic horror.
Scott T. Goudsward is a New England-based writer, tethered to a cubicle during the day. At night he listens to the voices in his head and writes them down. Scott has been writing seriously since 1992 and in that time, written two novels, Trailer Trash and Fountain of the Dead, and several non-fiction books with his brother David, including Horror Guide to Massachusetts and Horror Guide to Florida. He has also edited or co-edited the anthologies, Traps, Once Upon an Apocalypse, and Wicked Tales. Scott’s short fiction has appeared in Wicked Seasons, Atomic Age Cthulhu, and Snowbound with Zombies. Scott is one of the coordinators of the New England Horror Writers and belongs to two writers groups. He is working on a new novel, a new non-fiction book, and new anthologies.
Scott R. Jones’ fiction and poetry has appeared in Broken City Mag, Cthulhu Haiku 2, Cthulhu Fhtagn! (Word Horde), and Australia’s Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, among others. His story “Turbulence” was awarded an Honourable Mention in Imaginarium 3: The Best Canadian Speculative Fiction. He is also the author of a non-fiction work, When The Stars Are Right: Towards An Authentic R’lyehian Spirituality (Martian Migraine Press), and has edited three anthologies for that press, Conqueror Womb: Lusty Tales of Shub-Niggurath, Resonator: New Lovecraftian Tales From Beyond, and Cthulhusattva: Tales of the Black Gnosis. He lives in Victoria, British Columbia, with his wife and two frighteningly intelligent spawn.
William Meikle is a Scottish writer, now living in Canada, with twenty novels published in the genre press and over 300 short story credits in thirteen countries. He has books available from a variety of publishers including Dark Regions Press, DarkFuse and Dark Renaissance, and his work has appeared in a number of professional anthologies and magazines with sales to NATURE Futures, Penumbra, and Buzzy Mag, among others. He lives in Newfoundland with whales, bald eagles and icebergs for company. When he’s not writing he drinks beer, plays guitar, and dreams of fortune and glory.
Christine Morgan recently relocated from the Seattle area to the Portland area, beginning a new, more-social phase of her life among the local horror/bizarro weirdo creative community. They like how she brings baked goods to readings and events. In addition to her several books and dozens of short stories in print, she’s a regular contributor to The Horror Fiction Review, the editor and publisher of the Fossil Lake Anthologies, and dabbles in many and various other writing-related projects. Her other interests include history, mythology, cooking shows, crafts, superheroes, gaming, and spoiling her four cats as she trains toward eventual crazy-cat-lady status. She can be found online at christinemariemorgan.wordpress.com/
Edward Morris is a 2011 nominee for the Pushcart Prize in Literature, also nominated for the 2009 Rhysling Award and the 2005 British Science Fiction Association Award. His short stories have appeared in The Starry Wisdom Library (PS Publishing;) The Children of Gla’aki (Dark Regions Press), and Eternal Frankenstein (Word Horde Books.) He is currently writing a superhero novel called I am Lesion for the National M.S. Society and finishing a science-fiction horror meganovel called There was a Crooked Man, which Barry N. Malzberg pronounced “fit to stand on the same shelf as Earth Abides and The Day After.”
Konstantine Paradias is a writer by choice. His short stories have been published in the AE Canadian Science Fiction Review, Atelier Press’s Trident Magazine, and the BATTLE ROYALE Slambook by Haikasoru. His short story, “How You Ruined Everything” has been included in Tangent Online’s 2013 recommended SF reading list, and his short story “The Grim” has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Stephen Mark Rainey is author of the novels Balak, The Lebo Coven, Dark Shadows: Dreams of the Dark (with Elizabeth Massie), The Nightmare Frontier, Blue Devil Island, and The Monarchs; over 100 published works of short fiction; five short-fiction collections; and several audio dramas for Big Finish Productions based on the ABC-TV series Dark Shadows, featuring members of the original TV series cast. For ten years, he edited the award-winning Deathrealm magazine and has edited anthologies for Chaosium, Arkham House, and Delirium Books. Mark is an avid geocacher, which oftentimes leads him to discover creepy places—and people—that wind up in his horror stories. He lives in Greensboro, NC, with two precocious house cats, one of which owns a home decorating business. Visit Mark’s website at stephenmarkrainey.com.
Pete Rawlik, a longtime collector of Lovecraftian fiction, in 1985 stole a car to go see the film Reanimator. He successfully defended himself by explaining that his father had regularly read him “The Rats in the Walls” as a bedtime story. His first professional sale was in 1997, but he didn’t begin to write seriously until 2010. Since then he has authored more than fifty short stories and the Cthulhu Mythos novels Reanimators and The Weird Company. He is a frequent contributor to the Lovecraft ezine and the New York Review of Science Fiction. In 2014 his short story “Revenge of the Reanimator” was nominated for a New Pulp Award. In 2015 he co-edited The Legacy of the Reanimator for Chaosium. Somewhere along the line he became known as the Reanimator guy, but he fervently denies being obsessed with the character. His new novel Reanimatrix is a weird-noir-romance set in H. P. Lovecraft’s Arkham, and will be released in 2016. He lives in southern Florida where he works on Everglades issues and does a lot of fishing.
Brian M. Sammons is the weird fiction line editor for Dark Regions Press and the Chief Editor for Golden Goblin Press. He has been a film and literature critic for over twenty years for a number of publications and has penned stories that have appeared in such anthologies as Arkham Tales, Horrors Beyond, Monstrous, Dead but Dreaming 2, Mountains of Madness, Deepest, Darkest Eden, In the Court of the Yellow King and others. He has edited the books; Cthulhu Unbound 3, Undead & Unbound, Eldritch Chrome, Edge of Sundown, Steampunk Cthulhu, Dark Rites of Cthulhu, Atomic Age Cthulhu, World War Cthulhu, Flesh Like Smoke, Return of the Old Ones, Children of Gla’aki, Dread Shadows in Paradise, and more. He is currently far too busy for any sane man. For more about this guy that neighbors describe as “such a nice, quiet man” you can follow him on Twitter @BrianMSammons
Lucy A. Snyder is a four-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author who wrote the novels Spellbent, Shotgun Sorceress, and Switchblade Goddess. She also authored the nonfiction book Shooting Yourself in the Head for Fun and Profit: A Writer’s Survival Guide and the story collections While the Black Stars Burn, Soft Apocalypses, Orchid Carousals, Sparks and Shadows, Chimeric Machines, and Installing Linux on a Dead Badger. Her writing has been translated into French, Russian, Italian, Czech, and Japanese editions and has appeared in publications such as Apex Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, Pseudopod, Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, Steampunk World, In the Court of the Yellow King, The Library of the Dead, Seize the Night, and Best Horror of the Year, Vol. 5. She lives in Columbus, Ohio and is faculty in Seton Hill University’s MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction. She also writes a column for Horror World. You can learn more about her at lucysnyder.com and you can follow her on Twitter at @LucyASnyder.
Sam Stone began
her professional writing career in 2007 when her first novel won the Silver Award for Best Novel with ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards. Since then she has gone on to write several novels, three novellas and many short stories. She was the first woman in 31 years to win the British Fantasy Society Award for Best Novel. She also won the Award for Best Short Fiction in the same year (2011). Stone loves all types of fiction and enjoys mixing horror (her first passion) with a variety of different genres including science fiction, fantasy, crime and Steampunk. She currently resides in Lincolnshire with her husband David and their two cats Shadow and Freya. Her works can be found in paperback, audio and e-book. sam-stone.com
Jeffrey Thomas is an American author of fantastical fiction, the creator of the acclaimed milieu Punktown. Books in the Punktown universe include the short story collections Punktown, Voices From Punktown, Punktown: Shades of Grey (with his brother, Scott Thomas), and Ghosts of Punktown. Novels in that setting include Deadstock, Blue War, Monstrocity, Health Agent, Everybody Scream!, and Red Cells. Thomas’s other short-story collections include Worship The Night, Thirteen Specimens, Nocturnal Emissions, Unholy Dimensions, Doomsdays, Terror Incognita, Aaaiiieee!!!, Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood, and Encounters With Enoch Coffin (with W. H. Pugmire). His other novels include Letters From Hades, The Fall of Hades, Beautiful Hell, Boneland, Subject 11, Beyond the Door, Thought Forms, Blood Society, Lost In Darkness, The Sea of Flesh and Ash (with Scott Thomas), and A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Dealers. His short stories have been reprinted in DAW’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories, St. Martin’s Press’s The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and Undertow Publications’ Year’s Best Weird Fiction, and he has been a finalist for the Bram Stoker and John W. Campbell awards. Thomas lives in Massachusetts.