I wish we had not come.
On the side of streets we see animals with their stomachs burst open. The holes steam in the cold air, and creatures crawl in and out of them like makeshift termite mounds. The air here smells faintly of carrion and flies crawl everywhere.
I cannot sleep at night anymore. Maybe it is just the fear that comes with my night-time thoughts, but in the quiet of dark, when I can concentrate more on the terror, I’m plagued with the idea that thousands of creatures are scampering across my brain. I feel an almost irrepressible urge to scream for someone to cut open the top of my head and get them out. The rustling sound in my ear is constant now. I hear high pitched noises, like a radio tuning in and out. I sometimes think it is them talking to each other, and that their voices are like screaming.
I like to think that I am mad… or if I am not mad, that I will quickly turn so, to escape the horrible reality of things.
*
At the heart of the contagion zone, in what was once the Grand Theatre, we find a giant writhing mass of pungent flesh, like a tumorous cocoon. Those that are already here avoid it. Everyone thinks we have found their Queen. We look at ways of setting it on fire, until we see the tattoo on the membrane holding them together and we realise it is a person… or at least was a person at some point. It is now just a bag of writhing creatures. We back away slowly. The things inside are bigger than any we have seen so far.
Shrimp big.
The thought of how the skin still holds together horrifies us. If we listen closely we can hear a faint gasping sound, like a whimpering balloon, or a person struggling to breathe.
We had been told to expect, with the mutations, that the ones that kept the host alive the longest would start to prevail. At the time we thought that news was good – that it meant we could live longer. Stupid!
*
I’ve been getting calls from the hospital on my mobile. I looked up the number and it’s the research department calling. I keep letting it ring but they keep trying. I accidentally opened an email from them and it had a picture attached to it. The picture is called head_x-ray_stage_4_advanced.jpg I have not looked at it yet and closed the email before I could read the message. When I think about it, I feel a dark pricking sensation creeping across my brain.
Perhaps it is just fear. Perhaps it is not. But it feels like… it feels like… I find myself in front of the mirror, with a razor blade in my hands, turning it over and over in my fingers, sometimes forgetting what it is for or why I am stood there. Whenever I think of using it, I feel a hundred fears piercing through my head all shouting, Don’t, but another core part of me feels strangely calm, and right now, that part of me is Queen. It is, perhaps the only moment I have been calm, since I have no more future moments to worry about. A perfect moment, spoilt only by the pain as I make the first slice across my scalp. I slash deeper, and feel the stab of the horrors burrowing away from the light and tell myself this is not happening. As I cut down after them, I feel my mind opening up, and imagine that they are flying out of me, like winged evils bursting from an opened box, and I feel that I am cured.
The Retribution of Elsie Buckle
by Lucy V Hay
“Elsie Buckle had a calling: murder.”
The woman in Billy’s bed snatched Billy’s cigarette from his nicotine-stained fingers and pressed it to her own lips. Billy sighed: women always wanted to talk after sex! Well, he would go along with it. For now.
“Great intro.” Billy chuckled as annoyance flashed across the face of the buxom woman lying next to him in his makeshift bed in the garage.
“Don’t interrupt.” There was something amusingly prim about her manner, at odds with what they’d just done . . . And what Billy would like to repeat.
But the woman expelled clouds of smoke, instead. “You ever hear of Elsie Buckle?”
Billy shrugged. He didn’t care. “Maybe.”
His gaze moved over her curvaceous form. The woman was in her late thirties, Billy guessed; perhaps a little plain under those panda eyes and caked-on panstick. Nevertheless, she knew how to make the best of herself. Long flowing hair, generous breasts, a teeny-tiny waist and ample bottom. Yup, not bad at all.
But Billy’s bedfellow’s eyes narrowed. “No, of course not. She made sure of that . . .”
Barely listening, Billy reached out and cupped one of her full breasts with his big hand. Irritated, she slapped it away.
“. . . What did I say?” Her voice was like a school ma’am’s.
Billy held his hands up. “Sorry, miss. Carry on.”
The buxom woman rolled over in the tangled and grubby bedclothes, extending her shapely legs in the air. “Women are thrown away so readily,” Elsie said. “Married off to the first people who’ll have them, by fathers anxious to be rid of them.”
Billy took the cigarette back, leaning against the bare garage wall. A chill stole its way down his naked skin. “There must be worse things?”
The woman arched a single eyebrow. Billy smiled, exasperated: Carry on! “So, Elsie ended up stuck with Jack. He was as good a husband as you might expect, which isn’t saying much. Men will be men, Elsie always said. So she'd bided her time . . .”
“. . . Elsie is you, right?”
“No!” The spell broken again, the woman sat up. She grabbed her dress and pulled it on over her head, hiding her curves from Billy’s sight. “My name is Rosa.”
“My mistake.” Billy rolled his eyes, grinding the cigarette out on the concrete garage floor.
He grabbed his trousers, from the crumpled heap of clothes. Now a repeat performance no longer seemed on the cards, Billy was keen for Rosa to resume, so he might get on with the job she was contracting him for. He’d known her game all along, of course: Billy was realist enough to recognise he wasn’t exactly irresistible.
She’d pitched up that evening, face drawn and white, her cheeks tracked with tears. When Rosa shed her coat to reveal her dress stained with blood, Billy was less horrified than intrigued. He knew what would be coming next (him). The nature of Billy’s business meant women were always willing to put out for him if it would sweeten the deal.
Making bodies disappear was Billy’s specialty.
Rosa sighed. “So, Jack lasted six years. Perhaps Elsie had to work up the nerve? She killed him with a hatpin to the heart, after her attempt to poison him went disastrously wrong . . .”
Billy grimaced. Still, there were worse ways to go, he knew that: he’d seen enough death scenes and cleaned up after them.
“. . . They'd lived on a farm back then, so getting rid of Jack’s body wasn't difficult. Elsie got her eldest (then aged five) to help feed her father’s grisly remains to the pigs.”
Billy shuddered at the thought, drawing another sharp look from Rosa. This time Billy grinned, grabbing Rosa’s waist and pulling her to him. Perhaps he was in luck after all, because she let him, placing her arms over his shoulders, her generous breasts pressed up against his bare chest.
But disappointingly, Rosa made no attempt to kiss Billy again. “The little girl seemed a bit upset at the loss of her father, but Elsie figured Rosa would get over it.”
Billy nodded. Now he understood the woman’s place in the story.
Rosa disentangled herself from Billy’s embrace. “So, after Jack came Arthur; then her stepson Martin, and even her own son, Julian. All of them abusive, entitled, smug. Typical men, as Elsie would say.”
Billy bristled at this second, unwarranted generalisation. “Not all men?” But Rosa ignored him. “As she got older, Elsie was unable to hold an axe like she used to. Instead, she got her thrills via her beloved younger girls, Germaine and Emily.”
“She taught her daughters . . . to kill?” Billy pulled his trousers on, wondering if he’d been had. He’d heard many a strange tale in the backroom of the garage, but this one seemed a little far-fetched.
“How else would they learn?”
Rosa had a point. Belatedly, Billy realised he’d interrupte
d again. He gestured for her to continue. Get it over with.
“Germaine was a dominatrix. Imagine: torturing men AND getting paid for it! Even better, if she got too excited, getting rid of bodies was easy . . .” At this, Rosa tipped an imaginary hat to Billy. Despite himself, he smiled back at her. There was always a demand for guys like him, it was true.
“But it was Emily who was Elsie’s pride and joy. A magnet for millionaire bankers and business types, Emily worked her way through a multitude of high-profile men, gaining their assets.”
Billy whistled through his teeth with appreciation. “Clever.”
Rosa fixed him with a stare. “So, Emily mastered what Elsie and Germaine had not. Poisoning’s such a useful dispatch method, especially when there’s so many concoctions that defy detection.”
Then Rosa sighed, a bitter half-smile playing on her lips. “But Elsie’s eldest daughter, Rosa, was a major disappointment. As far as Elsie knew, Rosa had never killed a living thing. The shame of it!”
Billy knew better than to interrupt this part of the story. Women always needed to make their confession. As if words cleansed them of their misdeeds, no matter how terrible.
“Germaine killed a little boy when she was just nine by pushing him out of her tree house, for making fun of her dress. Emily followed when she was twelve, inviting an over-amorous boy to drink a deadly cocktail of berries.”
Billy watched the memories flit across Rosa’s face. She was no longer in the garage with him, but lost in the past. He felt something stir through him again: surely not sympathy? Perturbed, Billy buttoned his shirt, averting his eyes from Rosa’s.
“But Elsie never found any evidence of murder in Rosa’s room: no knife; no chemistry set; not even a solitary drop of blood on her clothes! She never stopped hoping Rosa would follow in her footsteps. Then one day, inexplicably, Rosa did.”
Rosa took a shaky breath, bracing herself. “Elsie was watching a cooking programme with a brandy one evening. Emily was sitting with her mother, having become a widow for the fourth time just weeks earlier. Germaine was also home, taking a relaxing break from the torture brothel.
“Peering at Rosa – Elsie was far too vain to ever wear her glasses – the old woman smiled, beckoning her to come closer. It was only then Elsie noticed Rosa’s tear-stained, tormented face. ‘I’m nothing like all of you!’ She hissed.” Rosa exhaled, drawing Billy’s gaze again. Shame was etched on her features now. “. . . Except I was, because there was an axe in my hand.”
Rosa stared at Billy, still wringing her hands. As so many of them wanted, she craved his forgiveness. She needed him to say, It wasn’t your fault, or even just, I understand.
Women were so predictable.
Still feeling uncomfortable, Billy simply shrugged. Rosa snapped back to the matter in hand, just like that. She wiped the tears from cheeks and reached inside her coat. She pulled out a carrier bag.
“Is this enough?” She presented him with wads of cash, neatly bundled with plastic bands.
Billy cast an eye over them all, checked them. “That’ll do.”
Moments later, Rosa left Billy’s garage, but not before she’d pressed a key for her mother’s home into his hand. He assured her he took pride in his work; no one would ever know what had happened in the small country cottage. Rosa gave him a wan smile and bustled out, into the darkness.
Letting himself into Elsie’s home later, the tang of blood and shit in the air assaulted Billy’s nostrils. Death was something Billy was used to, but loosened bowels and raw terror always made their mark in every murder house. But a job is a job and Billy’s pays very well.
Rosa had told him her mother and sisters would be found in the lounge. Billy picked up his buckets, cloths and sprays and traipsed through to the next room, whistling, protective suit rustling as he walked.
Elsie still sits in her chair. Her dead arms hang either side, a brandy glass broken on the floor. The old woman never managed to so much as stand. Though her body is intact, her head is cleaved open where Rosa brought the axe straight down the middle of her mother’s prone skull.
Billy recognises Emily because she is substantially younger than the other two bodies in the room. He also remembers her blonde hair from Rosa’s story, though blood now cakes her locks in a gluey mass. The youngest Buckle girl lies face down, multiple axe wounds in her back and shoulders where Rosa had stood over her, raining down blows.
Germaine sprawls a few feet from her sister, one arm extended, as if trying to protect her younger sibling. But that arm is no longer attached to her body. Her forearm severed, it looks as though Germaine then rolled onto her back, only for Rosa to bring the blade down onto her sister’s sternum, opening up a gaping wound in her unprotected chest.
So it is not the bodies that shocks Billy. He’s seen hundreds, maybe even thousands over the years. It’s not even the violence. Though the Buckle house is bad, he’s seen worse.
Billy wanders towards the body with the severed arm, transfixed by it. He would have expected a grimace of agony as her death mask. Instead, the woman on the floor’s face is peaceful, beatific, angel-like, as if she’s been released of a lifetime’s suffering.
Because of this, Billy is able to tell that the dead woman in front of him is perhaps in her mid-forties, much older than the woman who’d lain in his bed a few hours earlier. Which means, at his feet, now: Rosa . . . The real Rosa.
Even before he feels the finger tap him on his shoulder, Billy realises his mistake. He turns, to see his lover. What had she said? Oh yes: getting rid of bodies is easy. She’d never really needed him at all.
Billy flinches, knowing what’s coming to him, yet unable to do a damn thing about it. He sees the glint of the axe blade in her hand.
His last words: “Hello, Germaine.”
SPELLINGS
By K.J.B. Rickard
Would you mind helping out an old fellow?
Would you mind thinking carefully about the following words and how they are spelled?
GAR-NAR-TIC FAL-ON-DER. GAR-NAR-TIC FAL-EEN-DIC. GAR-NAR-TIC FIN-NET.
I realise they are unfamiliar to you.
Don't worry. These are ancient words from a long dead language. Go back and repeat them. Just do it phonetically:
GAR-NAR-TIC FAL-ON-DER. GAR-NAR-TIC FAL-EEN-DIC. GAR-NAR-TIC FIN-NET.
Concentrate on sounding out each individual syllable of each word in your mind.
Do it slowly.
Do it deliberately.
GAR-NAR-TIC FAL-ON-DER. GAR-NAR-TIC FAL-EEN-DIC. GAR-NAR-TIC FIN-NET.
Picture the words as you sound them out. Imagine them in the centre of your forehead, right where your third eye would manifest.
If you wish to, you could repeat them out loud.
GAR-NAR-TIC FAL-ON-DER. GAR-NAR-TIC FAL-EEN-DIC. GAR-NAR-TIC FIN-NET.
Now I want you to consider the words one final time. This time there is one additional word at the end. When you reach it, I want you to burst out into the universe with its power.
Take a deep breath in.
GAR-NAR-TIC FAL-ON-DER. GAR-NAR-TIC FAL-EEN-DIC. GAR-NAR-TIC FIN-NET.
AMEN.
*
For the past few centuries many of your favourite horror writers, from H.P. Lovecraft and R.W. Chambers, through Dennis Wheatley in the nineteen seventies, right up to Clive Barker and Stephen King in the modern era, have enthralled you with tales of the macabre.
But buried in their words and paragraphs is the darkest of magik and the most evil of intentions.
The majority of readers only see the story. Those of us that can truly spell and understand grammar see the deeper purpose to the stories and the reasons for their continued success and popularity. These modern alchemists understand the grammar is from grimoire and that to spell is literal.
In this modern world, with the convenience of mass communication via book and screen, it is far easier to create an active piece of magik to reach around the globe to thousands - and in the case of Holy
-wood cinema - millions of humans’ consciousness. How many times have you heard or read a character say something akin to, “I renounce Jesus Christ in favour of Satan”?
That’s at least once.
As you read it your mind said it, too.
Here you have a tale from a mind, a person, you know nothing about.
Well I'll let you know. I'm an opportunist. What better opportunity is there to spread chaos than to enter a competition with guaranteed readers of the work? As a practitioner of Abramelin ritual, the more people I can collect into my conscious spells, the greater my outcome.
The more powerful is my evocation.
By taking part in this tale, my experiment in spelling, you have helped me bring forth a daemon named Nuada. (Try saying that out loud.)
Not a demon like the Christians' bastardised version of the word. Don't worry about good and evil. Not at this stage. Nuada is a daemon evoked purely to improve my world.
And, I suppose, yours too.
That is if you remembered to sit in a salt circle when you pictured my spellings.
Did you?
Full of Surprises
by Scott Merrow
"Stan, my kids are gonna love this puppy," Mrs. Adamson gushed. “He's so cute and cuddly. And so. . . I don’t know. . . so spontaneous.”
Stan Stanislawski was the owner of Stanimals Pet Shop. "Yep, animals are full of surprises, Mrs. Adamson." He smiled. "Just full of them.”
The woman hugged the puppy closely, and it licked happily at her cheek as they left the shop.
When they were gone, Stan locked the door behind them and put the CLOSED sign in the window. In the rear of the shop, he opened the cellar door and went down the stairs.
The basement was a jumble of broken cages, empty boxes, and old pet toys. Nestled among this debris was a large table, which held an assortment of stainless steel utensils. . . cutting utensils. There was also a covered bird cage on the table and a large crate on the floor next to it.
There were customs forms and shipping labels on the crate, and one crudely painted word: "Python." Stan pried off one of the slats. Sure enough, a large python was coiled up inside. The bright light made it stir. "Not yet, my friend," Stan said. "I have a couple birds to attend to first." He replaced the slat.
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