by Mr. Deadman
Deadman's Tome Monsters Exist @ 2017
Deadman’s Tome is owned by Jesse Dedman
Editing by Jesse Dedman and Theresa Braun
Cover Image by George Cotronis
All of the content is either property of Deadman’s Tome, of other owners under an agreement with Deadman’s Tome or Jesse Dedman, or of other parties that have agreed to allow their content in the online and print editions of the anthology. Do not copy material from this published document without permission of its owner(s) and author(s).
Preface
Do monsters exist?
Animals, once thought to be extinct, have been spotted around the world. They've lived amongst us, hidden away from satellite feeds, hunting cams, and various other surveillance methods. If the Tasmanian Devil, for instance, can live in the outskirts of Australia without anyone knowing, then what else is out there?
As technology advances, secrets somehow manage to hide in plain sight. Scientists discover new animals, new mutations, and strange creatures more often than you think--from vampire rats, walking sharks, and spider pigs.
So, how can we assume that nothing out of the ordinary, or cryptid, lurks in the shadows? Unknown creatures probably stalk from behind the shadows, roam the harsh outskirts of our world, thrive in the deepest depths of our oceans, and dwell in unexplored caves.
All of this begs the following questions: Is there a Bigfoot? There have been documented sightings of Yetis and other odd humanoids; and while there are fakes, convincing footage does exist. What about Chupacabras? Strange forms of coyote have been spotted all over the globe. The locals in certain areas claim to have seen this strange canine mutation drinking the blood from livestock. If it's a hoax, why would so many claim to see such horrific things? Finally, what about the Fort Worth Lake Monster which has come up on police reports?
Investigations often contain holes and investigators sometimes make mistakes, leaving us with many unanswered questions.
In Monsters Exist, 14 authors delve deep into the unknown, play on our fears, and probe into the things that shouldn't be. Pope Lick, Bigfoot, Chupacabra, Congo Spiders, Mothman, Pumpkinhead, Kelpies, giant monkeys, and more, this collection features a gallery of iconic monsters.
So, I ask again: do monsters exist? By the last page, you will believe. I'm sure of that.
Mr. Deadman
Table of Contents
Preface
Master Vermin
Wallace Boothill
Legend Trippers
Theresa Braun
The Murder of Crows
S.J. Budd
Wicked Congregation
Gary Buller
Playing Dead
S. E. Casey
Lake Monster
Mr. Deadman
Never Sleep Again
Calvin Demmer
The Voice from the Bottom of the Well
Philip W. Kleaver
Eclipse at Wolfcreek
Sylvia Mann
No. 7
William Marchese
Criatura
John Palisano
Bitten
Christopher Powers
Kelpies
Leo X. Robertson
Bloodstream Revolution
M.R. Tapia
Master Vermin
Wallace Boothill
The dense summer air, which held much of the day's heat hours after sunset, also held the smell of rot and hunger, like spoiled food heaved up from an over-eager stomach. It was enough to wake Pete from his sleep. The stench should have repulsed him, made him shut his window and light a candle, but it triggered some long forgotten memory of some nameless place. He dressed in the dark, slipped into his shoes, and climbed down the fire escape and into the alley.
Unlike some cities, Baltimore has blocks which are truly dark at night, but you never have to walk far to reach light. Pete's block was well lit, but the alley wasn’t. Rounding the corner of his building to the street, he heard something rustling in the trash cans, something too small to be a cat or dog, but too large to be a rat. Although, the rats had been getting pretty damn big.
Over dinner the other night, Pete's friend Shaina had offered an explanation for the phenomenon.
“I heard it’s because they eat dog shit,” Shaina said after draining her beer.
The restaurant was the sort of faux-rugged city hotspot where the wait staff had sailor tattoos, nose rings, and expensive sociology degrees. The yuppie clientele was an equally predictable part of the landscape; one such couple, a husband and wife sitting opposite a toddler, shot Shaina a scowl.
“What?” Pete replied in a pointedly low voice.
A mutual friend of theirs who worked in the kitchen served Pete and Shaina the food sent back by picky customers.
“Rich people feed their dogs protein-enriched food with more nutrients than their fucking Pomeranian can digest, so you get protein-enriched dog shit. Rich people can’t be bothered to pick it up, so it sits out there in the alley, and rats eat it. Give it some time and you got a race of giant, mutant shit-eating rats.”
“Okay, well, I’ve some real gargantuan bastards in my Dumpster. Doubt my neighbors shell out for gourmet, fortified kibble.”
“Dude, yuppies are getting braver. People move to Baltimore to play ‘Sim City: Gentrification Edition’ and price poor people out of the neighborhoods they’ve lived in since the ‘60s because they think the row homes are cute. Did you know some of the people I meet for work have never even heard Baltimore called ‘Charm City’ in their life? But you better believe they’ve heard it called ‘Bodymore, Murderland.’”
Shaina leaned forward across the table, making sure Pete didn’t miss one emphatic, beer-scented note of her rant.
“Uh, huh. Hey, Shaina, where’re you from again?”
“Fuck you.”
“Is that what the locals call Greenwich, Connecticut? Didn’t you once tell me you were on the high school sailing team?”
Shaina let out a short, snorting laugh. “I never should’ve told you about that. And you’re from Iowa, so I don’t wanna hear it.”
“And we both left it all to come to Bodymore, Murderland.”
“At least I’m doing something here. I teach kids to tie their shoes while their parents are nodding out on the bus. How’s pouring cocktails for tourists going, Pete?”
“Got me there. Yesterday I waited on some people working for a Fernlied employee. Don’t worry, I used rail liquor and charged them for top shelf. I would’ve spat in each drink if my boss wasn’t watching.”
“Well, aren’t you a working class hero? That’s what you mean by ‘direct action’, huh?”
“Direct action’s what we should do at Calloway Homes.”
Fernlied Group was an out of state development firm specializing in “urban revitalization.” The firm’s latest endeavor was turning the former site of Calloway Homes, a housing project referred to by city officials as “troubled” into luxury condominiums. Pete and Shaina had attended countless community action meetings and rallies protesting the development. Last week they marched outside city hall for hours in 90 degree weather, holding signs urging city leadership to not cooperate with Fernlied. The next day a below-the-fold headline on the front page of the Baltimore Sun announced that Fernlied Group would receive substantial tax incentives for doing business in East Baltimore.
“As much as I’d love to run a sabotage mission, I need my job more than
I need a fuckin’ felony charge. Don’t let me stop you.”
“Hey!” yelled the father of the family at the next table. “I work for Fernlied! Nothing better happen at that construction site. I’ll remember both of your faces.”
Shaina spun around in her stool to tell the man that he was a capitalist leech, profiteering off the byproducts of institutionalized racism, and suggest he go fuck himself, but Pete put a hand on her shoulder and reminded her they might have time for another drink if she didn’t get them kicked out.
“Welcome to Baltimore, hon’!” Shaina shouted at the man, flashing him a grin. “You must be new in town.”
At certain hours of night, like the hour that night when Pete found himself inexplicably walking south, trendy restaurants and boutique stores felt like outposts on distant planets, no matter the neighborhood. The smell that drew Pete from his home was stronger on the street. Pete suddenly possessed the ability to follow his nose. Maybe this was how animals felt when called to their breeding ground, he thought. The stink was still unmistakably rotten, but in its foulness it was strangely appealing, like one’s own sweat after exercise.
Something ran over Pete’s foot.
He looked down and saw a rat a few yards in front of him. It sat up on its hind legs, pointing two perfectly black eyes at him. This rat was too small to be the creature rattling the trashcans in the alley behind his apartment, but on the empty sidewalk under the amber streetlight, it commanded a presence beyond that of vermin. It twitched its nose in the air, surely smelling the sweet rot.
With a flick of its tail, the rat dropped back to all fours and darted out of sight down the street.
The rotten stench pulled Pete through the streets like an invisible thread. He thought of the cartoons in which characters hover dreamily through the air, following smell-lines wafting from a pie cooling on a window sill. Wherever the smell originated, it lay in the direction opposite that of the Sisson Street Dump, the only place remotely near enough to Pete’s apartment to generate such a powerful odor. Still, with each block south, the odor grew in potency until it took on a near narcotic effect. Pete knew he wasn’t sleepwalking, but part of him also knew he wasn’t in control.
Pete had walked these blocks countless times, at all hours of day. He knew where sidewalk pavement was cracked, where to expect motion-detecting lights to come to life, where the dogs barked, which stores had signs that stayed lit after closing, and which ones went dark. Tonight, however, the street looked like a featureless tunnel and all the familiar sights were like specs of dust floating just outside the corner of Pete’s eye.
The smell called Pete eastward, not that he noticed himself turn. He also failed to notice the thin woman in the long tank top until she put a hand on his shoulder.
“Excuse me,” said the woman, “my name is Bernice and I was wondering if you could help me.”
Pete opened his mouth but couldn’t say anything.
“They put me out of the shelter,” Bernice continued, “because of this.”
She lifted her right arm and pointed to a shimmering blister stretching from her armpit to her elbow. It was a bloated, yellow sore rimmed in necrotic grey. Pete’s split second assumption was that it was an infected injected site, but in the light he could see this was something else.
“What’s that?” Pete asked.
“It’s just a rash.” Bernice lowered her arm. “But the people at the shelter said they don’t wanna be around it, called me unsanitary. Shit, like it was my idea to get this thing. I ain’t wanna be in that place anyway, sir. They got rats.”
Pete hated being called sir by anyone who had a harder life than he did. “What can I do?”
“I just need bus fare so I can try to find my sister.”
“Sure thing.”
Pete reached into his pocket, but it was empty. He had forgotten his wallet when he left his apartment. Come to think of it, he had forgotten his phone and keys as well.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. I thought I had—”
“It’s okay,” Bernice interrupted, patting her chest. “He knows your heart.”
People hit Pete up for money almost every day, but he had never seen anyone with as much unspoken desperation on a face as the woman in front of him.
Bernice walked past Pete.
“Wait!” Pete called.
Bernice stopped and looked over her shoulder.
“Let me give you the address of my friend. She’s a social worker, and she stays up real late. She should be able to help you.”
Pete repeated Shaina’s address to Bernice three times, since he didn’t have pen or paper.
“Bless you, sir. And be safe.”
Bernice turned northward as Pete turned east. Shaina would demand Pete buy her a drink, or more like five drinks and a plate of French fries.
He could hear her in his head: “The fuck you think you’re doing sending a homeless lady with rotten skin to my door in the middle of the night? What if I caught whatever she had? I’d come to your apartment and rub my sores on your face! ‘Social worker’ doesn’t mean ‘street people concierge!’ How would you like it if I gave send rich dipshits from Silver Springs up your fire escape so you can make them mojitos at 3 a.m.? Dumbass!”
He also knew that she’d only make a fuss because she wanted a free drink. Pete had known Shaina long enough to know she would also berate him for not sending Bernice to her, if he hadn’t. Shaina was always bitching no matter what.
The encounter with Bernice shook Pete from his trance long enough for him to come to a handful of realizations. For one, Bernice had been the only living being he’d noticed since seeing the rat. Secondly, nothing in any direction was familiar, except for the name of one of the nearby cross streets. The street itself looked like the aftermath of a mid-range earthquake, and the gutters were clogged with trash. The only tree on the block was growing out of the collapsed roof of a house on the corner. Though the rest of the houses appeared to be semi-habitable, they all had sagging awnings, peeling paint, and rusted iron bars over the first floor windows. A dozen cars parked on either side of the street corroborated Pete’s notion that someone lived there.
On the opposite corner was an abandoned lot, large enough to have accommodated a house bigger than any other on the block. It was a landscape of disembodied car parts, covered by thick weeds. The darkness kept the lot’s secrets, making it look something like wilderness.
A sudden wind, the only wind Pete had felt all night, blasted across the lot, making the desiccated shrubbery quiver. The gust was so heavily perfumed by decay, Pete nearly swooned. His eyes watered and he doubled over, gripping his knees to stay steady. The wind had only just passed when the vegetation of the field came to life. The sound of hundreds of tiny paws pattering over soil alerted Pete to the movement in the lot. Tiny bodies in numbers beyond counting, only barely visible in the night, rushed in the direction of the wind’s origin.
Pete knew his path as he walked.
Row houses gave way to block after block of flat brick facades with narrow windows. The journey east led Pete past an increasing number of abandoned properties. Some buildings had windows patched with sheets of plywood, others were open and led into gutted structures. They all seemed to follow him like the gouged out eyes of portraits in an endless gallery. Huge gaps in between the properties became more frequent. Eventually, the streets ceased to have cars parked along them. Working streetlights became as sparse as trees. All signs of habitation were gone.
Every breath Pete inhaled deepened his olfactory trance. He lost track of how many blocks he’d traveled, and didn’t even notice when he crossed a street. There was a nagging notion at the edge of his consciousness that somewhere not so long ago, people had lived here.
Where had they all gone?
Though he was unconscious of his companions, Pete was accompanied by thousands. Rats of all sizes streamed through the gutters in legions, all drawn by the same force that pulled him along. They paid no more mind to Pete th
an he did them.
In the thrall of the stench, Pete collapsed to his knees when he reached the source.
The former site of Calloway Homes occupied a full block. In its years as an active housing project, it was comprised of three apartment buildings in a horseshoe arrangement around a public lawn. Only one building, at the top of the horseshoe, still stood, a full story higher than the other buildings in the neighborhood. The lawn was nothing but dust with two backhoes parked on it. The whole site was surrounded by a low chain-link fence.
A vinyl banner stretched across the fence read: “Coming Soon! Affordable Upscale Condominiums in a Vibrant Neighborhood.”
The angular royal blue lettering portrayed a chipper domestic modernity, but was contradicted by doomsayer prophecy spray-painted across the banner in red: “E Baltimore Starves 2 Death!”
Next to the banner, a much smaller sign read: “Property of Fernlied Group, LLC. Trespassers will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Maximum penalty: one year imprisonment, $5,000 fine, two years’ probation.”
Only then did Pete acknowledge his fellow travelers. The rats formed rivers in the middle of the street. The flux of their position made them hard to number, though there were easily tens of thousands. Across a battalion streaming from an alley to Pete’s right was someone joining this convention. A middle-aged man in a filth-caked suit wandered blank-faced out of the alley, rats rushing like water around his ankles. Pete’s mindless gaze met that of the man, and he realized it was the father Shaina had clashed with in the restaurant. The man nodded at Pete, his expression not changing.
Pete returned the gesture.
Soon more people, also with hypnotized expressions, emerged from corners. Some were clad in business casual, suggesting an affiliation with the man stumbling out of the alley, and others wore construction boots and vests, but most looked like they could be from Pete’s neighborhood, or Station North, Charles Village, Cherry Hill, Bolton Hill, Winchester, Waverly, Patterson Park, Park Heights, Sandtown, Pigtown, Mondawmin, Mt. Vernon and Canton.