by Shock Totem
“I had a strange dream, mama,” the child says, but is too young to explain.
I thought the lad would grow bored and want to be out playing, but he seems fearful of the forest and clings to his mother instead, never smiling, always in the way.
“What does that man want with you?” he pipes, stroking his mother’s hair and staring at me, his gaze somehow too frank and knowing.
“I do not like the way he looks at you, mama.”
I should be making notes, recording this experiment, but the pages remain blank. For the first time, I find myself troubled by religious questions. What dreams disturbed Lazarus, woken back to life from Eternity? And did he resent the hand that returned him? I ask because there is something unwholesome about the child.
I have watched him fondle his mother’s breast as she sleeps. He sees me and I cannot match his gaze.
12
“Inject him again,” she screams. She will not listen, and her eyes burn with febrile brightness.
I have debated with myself how to proceed. If I take her back to town (if she will go, if she even allows me to touch her now) there would be questions. Her distress has gone beyond hysteria; she believes I made promises and broke them.
Perhaps a tiny grave in the forest, I hint. With flowers. She does not even answer.
The world would condemn me, but I feel no guilt, nothing of the pettiness of right and wrong. I have simply gone further than other men towards the far edge of things. The drug was mainly laudanum, but with something to weaken the child’s heart. Enough so the strain of a fit would be too much. Was it not doomed anyway?
Perhaps I might spin a convincing tale if there were two graves deep in the forest. And no flowers to mark them. How long would an adult live after the microbe treatment? A question amenable to experiment. But of course, there was the hired carriage that brought her that night. Eventually they will think to look for her here. The fatal truth leaks out like water through cupped hands.
We fashioned monsters, Frankenstein and I, though mine has taken a lifetime to create.
David Barber lives anonymously in the UK. He used to be a scientist, though he is retired now and writing stories. He is a puzzle to his friends.
BLOODSTAINS
& BLUE SUEDE SHOES
by John Boden and Simon Marshall-Jones
PART 6: THE MID TO LATE SEVENTIES
As the 70s were approaching their middle age, the music was mutating faster than ever. The saccharine sentiments of the hippie generation—peace, flowers in your hair, and free love—were being painted over in black. Those ideals were being stomped flat by an invasion from the UK, with bands of the caliber of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. Creativity and genres were cross-pollinating, creating vicious, menacing hybrids while pop and rock were sprouting other heads, with thicker and sharper teeth. Hawkwind were delivering sci-fi-laced space rock and Genesis were still getting darkly proggy. Another British band, Deep Purple, were gaining not only considerable hard rock holding power but also legions of hardcore fans. Those bands and others of their ilk were the origins of the future of rock and roll, dark reflections shaded in heavy metal and hard rock, punk rock, and even disco. By the end of this decade the playing field would never be the same.
I SWEAR I SAW YOUR FACE CHANGE...IT DIDN’T SEEM QUITE RIGHT
The year 1972 saw the debut album from Blue Öyster Cult, a band which would soldier on with a tenacity that would ultimately gain them an enormous cult following, if not mainstream popularity. Starting out as Soft White Underbelly in 1967 (then Oaxaca, followed by The Stalk-Forrest Group), in 1971 the band took the name under which they’d become rock superstars from a line in a poem written by their manager, Sandy Pearlman. The “Blue Oyster Cult,” according to the poem, was a group of aliens who had gathered to secretly guide Earth’s history. The band’s music and album artwork were peppered with occult images and themes as well as dark science fiction and alchemy. Over their decades-long career, they would record and release many sinister anthems, from the hits “Don’t Fear the Reaper” and “Godzilla” to the equally chilling later tunes like “Joan Crawford.” Later albums featured songs with lyrics written by one of the originators of splatterpunk, author John Shirley. Blue Öyster Cult still tour occasionally.
During this same period of time and just under rock’s radar, the band Elf, featuring a young Ronnie Dio on bass and vocals, was turning out killer blues rock. Only after taking jobs fronting the bands Rainbow and Black Sabbath in the 1980s would Dio, by then known as Ronnie James Dio, achieve the high level of fame and respect due him. By the time of his death from stomach cancer in 2010, Dio had become synonymous with the term “heavy metal.”
Another of the more criminally overlooked rock bands from this time was the band Lucifer’s Friend, coming off like the unholy stepson of Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. They dropped their self-titled debut in 1970 and kept churning out records (though never again as dark and heavy as the debut) until they disbanded in 1982. They later regrouped as Lucifer’s Friend II and released one album, 1994’s Sumo Grip, before disbanding again a few years later.
In 1974, a band from New York City—one which would forever change the way the game was played in regard to marketing and promotion—would release their debut album. This band called themselves Kiss.
“Being a child of the 70s, I (John) was intrigued by these guys—I thought them a bizarro mix of comic book supervillains and space aliens. The makeup and fire-breathing theatrics and...hell, Gene Simmons was supposed to have had his tongue surgically forked. How fucking wild is that? I recall a babysitter when I was a kid—I’m going to guess maybe 1976 or early ‘77—she came to the house to watch us kids one evening and she brought some albums by Kiss and Ted Nugent. I don’t think I ever recovered.”
Kiss were everywhere. They had lunchboxes, Halloween costumes, comic books (with the band members’ blood in the ink!), and in 1977 they delivered one of the worst of the so-bad-it’s-cool gifts any band ever gave their fans: a made-for-TV movie called Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park. Kiss are still around, albeit with only two original members, and still release albums with some regularity. They can still out-promote and shill anyone, and that must account for something.
While Kiss was forcing the leather glove of glammy shock rock down America’s teen throats, we had Aerosmith revamping smut-rock blues and taking it to the streets. We also had the seminal New York Dolls preening and pouting with vicious glam abandon and singing about “Frankenstein” and “Trash.” Iggy and his Stooges were bringing the noise and a raw ferocity that was inspiring masses. An inspiration that would be felt for decades. While the fires of expression were very much burning bright, there was nevertheless a sense that the rock dinosaurs of the early 70s were becoming irrelevant, and that the youth of the day were searching for something new and exciting, yearning perhaps for a musical experience that would come close to how it must have felt for the teenagers of the 50s and 60s, when popular music was fresh and vital, alive even.
It would be no exaggeration to say that musical culture was divided between the light and frothy “pop” scene, and the esoteric and bloated “rock” scene, where music was more often than not perceived as self-indulgent. Indeed, that yearning was felt on both sides of the Atlantic—and before long, the seismic rumblings of the earthquake of change were being felt.
I GOT A FEELING INSIDE OF ME...IT’S KIND OF STRANGE, LIKE A STORMY SEA
In the UK, punk emerged from the pubs and clubs of London and other places in the mid-70s, with bands like the Sex Pistols, The Damned, The Soft Boys, The Clash, 999, The Vibrators, and Siouxsie & the Banshees. In terms of “horror,” only the Damned have come close to utilizing such imagery, and then only much later than the period we’re currently dealing with. (Needless to say, we’ll be covering them in a later installment of this series.) It is also a truism that British punk tended to deal with different themes than those of their cousins across the water—mainly street culture, socia
l awareness, and the vacuity of establishment conservatism and conformity. Rebellion was the keyword here. Although it had not yet been christened with a name, the early grindings of Industrial music were poking their pale heads from beneath darkened stones. From the blippy electro-pop of bands such as Kraftwerk to the punk-turned-gothic Gary Numan, with or without his Tubeway Army, to the extremely dark nightmare fuel of Throbbing Gristle. The boundaries stretched, and in places, disappeared altogether. The curtains were torn and set aflame.
Across the pond, though, it was around this same time that the legendary New York club CBGBs started showcasing bands that would later be identified with the new wave and punk scenes. The club itself opened its doors in 1973, originally to put on bands closely allied to the actual name of the club—Country, BlueGrass, and Blues—but somehow in just three years it left those traditional genres behind and began promoting the likes of The Ramones, Blondie, Television, The Voidoids, The Fleshtones, and Talking Heads. Punk and new wave were set fair to revamp the entire face of music, giving rise to the independent scene we take so much for granted today. No longer did we have the side-long musical and lyrical extravaganzas of the prog-rock and stadium rock eras. Instead, we got short, sharp three-minute stabs of angst and energy, virulently anti-corporate iconoclasm, smashing down the barriers of the rarified musical spheres with joyful abandon and glee. Lyrical content was much nearer the earthly and gritty, very much the antithesis of just about everything which had gone before—in other words, it was much more relevant and immediate, socially and philosophically. If youth had been yearning for something which represented them, they’d definitely found it.
Among the graduates of CBGBs were The Cramps and The Misfits, both of whom had a close relationship with the darker side both musically and lyrically. The Cramps formed in 1976 by the husband and wife duo of Lux Interior and Poison Ivy, and remained active until the untimely death of Lux in 2009. Their take was on the trashier facet of the horror genre, particularly on the grindhouse and B-movie sectors. Song such as “I Was a Teenage Werewolf” and “Zombie Dance” off their debut album, Songs the Lord Taught Us, announced their chosen oeuvre in blood-red letters. Their sound was primal and stripped-back, striking chords with the primitive heart of fans and listeners, a rich vein the band continued to mine with success over the course of a further seven studio albums.
The Misfits, led by frontman Glenn Danzig, went even deeper into the horror genre, practically inventing the subgenre of horror punk in the process. Dark themes abounded, particularly in their second studio album, 12 Hits from Hell, in which they set out their philosophical and cultural stall with song titles such as “Halloween,” “Vampira,” “Night of the Living Dead,” “Horror Hotel,” and “Astro Zombies.” Without wanting to overstate the case, The Misfits were a highly influential band, inspiring much later outfits to emulate both music and their onstage look (stark black and white facepaint, psychobilly hairstyles, and leather clothing). It would be fair to say that, without them, the goth and extreme metal scenes would never have happened in the way they did.
The explosion of the punk and new wave scenes gave an impetus and energy which managed to revive the moribund and ultimately superficial music industry of the day. It kicked it into high gear, leaving us with a legacy that can still be felt even today, nearly four decades on.
And we’ll begin exploring that legacy in the next episode...
John Boden resides in the shadow of Three Mile Island with his wonderful wife and children. Aside from his work with Shock Totem, his stories can be found in 52 Stitches, Everyday Weirdness, Black Ink Horror #7, and Psychos: Serial Killers, Depraved Madmen, and the Criminally Insane, edited by John Skipp.
Simon Marshall-Jones is a UK-based writer, artist, editor, publisher and blogger: also wine and cheese lover, music freak and covered in too many tattoos.
FAT BETTY
by Harry Baker
They say it’s God’s own county, and He’s always had a thing for rain. I’m high and soaked, looking over the valley with a sea of heather at my back, and if the storm lasts forty nights I’ll not be shocked. There’s still a little light over the hills to the east, but it’s cloud-clogged overhead and the sunlight can’t get through to where I’m huddled in anorak and hugging my carbine, praying for that bastard Jamie Cornfeld to make his way quick.
“You miserable sod,” I tell him, when he comes up in his hood and coat with a rifle on his shoulder and a stick in his hand. “To meet up here.” I might have walked down the street with gun in hands and not met an odd glance, let alone a copper.
“Do you good,” he says, and he’s right, although I’ll not say it. “I guess that works, and all.” He’s looking at the carbine. Of course it works. Two tours and more Syrian sand than any crusader saw, it works all-bloody-right. One of them police half-tracks still has the holes.
“All right, then,” he says, this being made clear, and we walk. It’s that steady rain, not too heavy but sure to last all night, and the heather’s wet, its springiness turned soggy. We scare some grouse and they go shooting off; I’d take a pot at them if we didn’t need to keep quiet. Good eating on those birds, though I bet they were fatter when they were bred for it.
“Let’s not fuss about this,” I say. We’ve been walking five minutes, but it’s been on my mind all day. “If there’s trouble, we should shoot them.”
“Yes,” says Jamie. Good that he’s not arguing. Jamie and me haven’t worked on anything this big before. In fact, Jamie and me haven’t partnered before, although we know each other from other odd jobs. I don’t think he’d have approached me first, except that he knows I’m a safe pair of hands and that I don’t like the Big Man.
We’re quiet for a while longer as it gets dark, until I put my foot in a puddle. My boots aren’t quite waterproof anymore.
“Shit,” I say. “No weather for hiking.”
“We have to walk up. They watch the roads,” says Jamie, and he’s right and I’m quiet once again. Up ahead there’s something white sticking out of the heather, just showing through all the grey in the air. It’s a short, rough-cut pillar, white-washed for visibility, and up on top there’s another rock, whitewashed as well, shaped like a circle or a square with its corners chipped off. A rough little cross, then. There are lots up here, old things, marking paths and parish boundaries. This one must have played signpost to travellers for centuries, before whatever line it marked got forgotten or grown over. It’s a good sign. We’re on track.
“You remember the road here?” Jamie asks me. “Not much sign of it now.”
I don’t remember (a little before my time), but my boot scuffs against a patch of tarmac, and with a bit of a squint I can see straight lines beneath the scrub. We follow them past the cross. Around the edge of the plinth there’re moor flowers arranged almost like a pattern, and as we pass I see a mound of litter piled against the other side.
“Someone didn’t clear their picnic,” I say, joking, as if anyone would still picnic up here.
“No,” says Jamie, shakes his head. I see what he means; it isn’t even proper litter, but food still sealed in plastic, sopping wet supermarket and food-aid packaging. Weird that it was left up here, and I say so.
“It’s traditional,” says Jamie, with a sort of sneer. “A bite for Fat Betty.” He says that last bit like it's a saying, or a nursery rhyme.
“What's that?” I ask.
“Something my nan used to say. Stupid bloody name for a cross.” He presses on, not wanting to chat, maybe feeling a little odd talking about his nan with a gun on his back and murder on his mind. I take a moment to look: the cross isn’t two stones at all but one big cross, with the top cut away and shaped. The carving has weathered right down, but there’re circular hollows in the face of it and in one of them coins have been left, coppers and silver. I scoop those out and pocket them.
Jamie’s seen me; he points and says “You reckon you’ll need that after tonight?”
“It�
��s a couple of cigarettes’ worth,” I tell him. “It adds up.”
“My god,” says Jamie. “I get lumbered with a penny-pincher for a job like this.”
“Waste not want not,” I say. “Don’t sneer. It’s an old-fashioned thing, sure, but you never know where the next pack’s coming from.”
Under the cloud the moors are rolling, and pretty soon we’re walking along the old railway line where they hauled coal from the mines upon a time. There’s a bump on the horizon just visible, which is the early-warning station at RAF Flyingdales, a great pyramid shape surrounded by barrack-blocks and razorwire. There’s nothing worth shooting a nuclear missile at around here, but the big pyramid keeps turning slowly and there’s a garrison of trigger-happy squaddies from London and Birmingham who lend muscle to the police when things get hairy. I don’t like doing the job in sight of that place, but I don’t say so. I reckon Jamie will have another sneer at me if I do.
The road coils down the hillside, very steep, and the slope beyond turns into a near-sheer escarpment down to the valley. We go into the middle of the road, the steepest bit, and from his bag Jamie takes a saucepan lid with the plastic handle removed. He puts it carefully in the centre of the road and shifts grit and mud to hold it in place on the slope.
“You take this side,” he says, and goes up onto the escarpment. I find the ditch we picked out earlier: the tarp comes out of my anorak and over my head. I wait. It’s darkening. I can’t see the early-warning station any more.
It’s a Friday night. Every Friday night the Big Man comes driving over the moor with the takings from the games. He lives on the farm near Stockdale, fortified so that even the police would have a headache going in, but his games need players and so they have to take place nearer the main roads. Being a tight git, he likes to carry the money himself, and Jamie Cornfeld knows the route because he worked for the Big Man right up until the unpleasantness at Pickering, which is itself a story long but worth the telling, some other time.