Garden of Fiends

by Matthews, Mark

  He brought the bottle to his nose, inhaled deeply. He thought he smelled the delicate bouquet of roses and…oranges?

  Closing his eyes, he tipped his head back and threw down a prodigious swig.

  The liquid burned coldly as it tumbled down his throat, into his stomach.

  Surprised at its potency, he sucked in a deep breath, but the fumes of the stuff followed the good air—consumed it, even.

  Ted coughed, gagged like a teenager tasting whiskey for the first time. He bent at the waist in an effort to catch his breath, fumbled the bottle back onto the bar.

  Like a summer storm, though, it passed quickly.

  Amazingly, Ted felt his head clear, his blood pump a little more strongly, the fog at the edges of his vision lift.

  He stood slowly, looked at the bottle sitting on the edge of the wet bar.

  A thin layer of viscous, black liquid lay at its bottom, not mingling with the clear liquid above it. Where the layers touched, there was a slight fizzing, as if reacting to each other.

  He gently picked the bottle up and examined it.

  The black fluid was thick and congealed, speckled through with darker motes drifting within ropey mucous strands. A gentle shake failed to mix the two layers, but did succeed in increasing the furious bubbling along their boundary.

  Ted sniffed at the opening again, and this time the smell of roses and oranges was strong.

  Underneath it, though, Ted noticed a disturbing smell, gassy and sweet-sick.

  Disease. His disease.

  Before he could talk himself out of it, he raised the bottle to his lips and took another long drink.

  He kept his watering eyes open as the liquid coruscated down his throat, watched the level of the clear liquor fall.

  What made him almost drop the bottle, though, was what he saw coming out of him.

  A thin streamer of black, like crepe paper, swirled from his mouth into the neck of the bottle, moved upward defying gravity, settling into the black liquid.

  He could feel the stuff course through him this time, not just in his stomach but reaching icy tendrils along his nerve endings, licking at his spine.

  When the conflagration reached his brain, he passed out.

  * * *

  “Elaine!” Ted yelled from the bedroom closet, where he was down on his hands and knees. “What do you want me to do with all of these shoes? Can we throw some out?”

  “Don't touch any of those shoes!” came a shriek from elsewhere in the apartment. “I'll be right in there.”

  Ted smiled, shook his head and threw the last of the shoes onto the pile on the floor behind him.

  As he scooted into the closet further, his hands closed around a small, heavy box.

  “What the hell?” he muttered, drawing it out into the light.

  When he saw the battered cardboard box, though, he remembered.

  Nervously, he opened it, peeled the wrapping off and saw the mysterious bottle, tightly sealed and filled to the top with a caramel-colored liquid. The two layers, completely separated years ago, had finally come together like a dark, rich brandy.

  Ted had never known what to make of it, but now, five years later, he was recovered.

  A recovered alcoholic, many years sober. No longer living with the constant cravings to drink, cravings that he had fed without a care for anyone or anything else.

  Unable to part with the strange bottle, though, he'd wrapped it carefully and stuck it here at the back of his closet. Who knew why? Surely, Ted didn't.

  As his life got better, it became part of his past, dimly remembered, nearly fictional.

  “Honey,” came his wife's voice again, closer this time. “I hope you're thirsty...”

  Hurriedly, he repackaged and replaced the bottle in the closet.

  Elaine walked into the cluttered room, filled with packing boxes, carrying a silver tray bearing two delicate, fluted champagne glasses.

  “What's this for?” asked Ted, rising to kiss her.

  “Mmm,” she returned the kiss. “Here's to our new house.”

  She passed one of the glasses to him as he raised an eyebrow.

  “It's just apple juice,” she said in mock annoyance.

  “Well, then, to our new house,” he said, clinking his glass against hers, draining it and dashing it against the wall.

  “Ted!” Elaine laughed in shocked amusement. “You'll wake the baby!”

  “We'll give him juice, too!” he yelled, plucking the empty glass from her fingertips and throwing it against the wall.

  “I'm so glad you got better so that we could meet and get married and have a baby and get a house and...” she began, folding herself in his arms.

  “...and break our glassware in the bedroom,” he finished, hugging her.

  “That, too,” she laughed, snuggling into him. They stood there for a few minutes without words. “Do you think...it'll ever come back?”

  “You don't have to worry about it.”

  “I don't,” she lied, kissing his forearm. “It's just that you never talk about it.”

  “I don't like to talk about it. It wasn't a pleasant part of my life, and I don't care to relive it. I got lucky and found a way out...a shortcut that worked.”

  “Will you tell David about it?”

  “I don't know. He's awfully young.” Sensing that she was serious, he turned her around to face him, lifted her chin.

  “It won't bother us anymore. I'm a recovered alcoholic.”

  * * *

  Fifteen years went by, quietly, quickly…

  “Ted!” he heard Elaine call through the mist of sleep. He stirred on the couch, dislodging the newspaper and the indignant cat, who'd also been sleeping.

  “Hmm?” he grunted, sitting up.

  Elaine stalked into the room holding something that failed to register in his groggy mind.

  “I thought you were going to have a talk with David about his drinking,” she said.

  “I am, I am,” he assured her. “I just haven't had the time.”

  “Look what I found on the floor in his bedroom.”

  She held the bottle tightly around its neck.

  It sparkled blue-silver in the Saturday afternoon light, and Ted remembered the store where he got it so long ago now, with its thousands of carnival-colored bottles.

  He remembered burying it at the back of the closet.

  “Oh, God, no.”

  At the bottom of the empty bottle was a tiny bit—no more than a swallow—of thick, black fluid.

  “He's dead drunk in there,” reprimanded Elaine.

  Ted leapt to his feet, his heart racing.

  Dead drunk…or just…?

  “Call 911, quick!” he said, dropping the bottle onto the carpet and fumbling for his wallet. He passed through credit cards and store loyalty cards, through pictures of him and Elaine, pictures of David as a happy, smiling child.

  Here… The business card Sam had given him oh so long ago; the one the shopkeeper had torn up. Now all taped back together, though bent, dog-eared.

  He bit his lip as Elaine rushed uncertainly down the hallway to David's room, the phone pressed to her ear. Ted heard her tell the person on the other end that David appeared unresponsive, that David appeared not to be breathing.

  Dead. Drunk.

  Ted remembered the shopkeeper, wondered if he would remember how to get to his place, if he was still in business.

  If he carried anything stronger…

  About the Author

  John F.D. Taff has been writing for 25 years now, with more than 85 short stories, two collections and three novels in print. His short story collection Little Deaths was named the best horror fiction collection of 2012 by HorrorTalk. His collection of novellas, The End in All Beginnings, was published by Grey Matter Press in 2014. Jack Ketchum called it “the best novella collection I've read in years,” and it was a finalist for a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection. His work has made it onto the Tangent Onl
ine Annual Recommended Reading List the last three years running. His work will appear in Shadows Over Main Street 2 and Behold!

  TORMENT OF THE FALLEN

  by

  Glen Krisch

  When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none . —Matthew 12:43

  Exhausted after hitching for hundreds of miles, Maggie had finally hopped on a Greyhound in Wichita to take her the rest of the way to her long lost father. She passed the bleak gray hours curled up on a bus seat that smelled like gym socks and ancient cigarettes. As the outside world whirled by she tried to recall the good times with her parents. Their smiles, their silly inside jokes. Anything. Every time she tried to focus a memory, darkness would sweep in. Unable to siphon the darkness from the whole, her mind shifted to the engine's soothing whir.

  Maggie woke with drool on her chin when the air brakes sighed long and hard and with finality. She slipped on her leather jacket and followed the other dazed riders as they disembarked into an early evening steeped in cold fog the night before Halloween. It felt like stepping into another world. Instead of the drab desert she'd left behind, she found a street lined with trees bursting with autumn's palette—starburst yellow, burnt sienna, cranberry red. The infusion of color was enough to shake the groggy road miles as she left the station.

  Maggie had been on the run for so long that she hardly remembered the time before. Her senses were permanently heightened to the dangers surrounding her, both human and demonic. Sometimes it was difficult to distinguish one from the other, but danger was danger, no matter its guise.

  The beautiful trees couldn't hide the industrial blight surrounding her. Keeping to the shadows, she clutched her jacket closed against the crisp wind. She needed to find shelter, and soon. She was too tired, too cold, too alone.

  Maggie had traveled to Aurora, Illinois based on an internet rumor. Before that, she'd been in Phoenix, sharing a motel room with a bunch of other runaway teens. The faces of her roommates changed almost daily, but that was just fine by her. Personal attachments were complications she didn't need at this point in her life. Maggie spent most of her time on the streets or at the public library. Even among the loners Maggie was an outsider. Most of the kids had come from broken homes. With their newfound freedom they indulged in destructive behaviors, but not Maggie. All she ever wanted from life was normalcy and a bit of happiness every once in a while. But jaded even at the age of fifteen, she knew that could never happen.

  No one knew that Maggie could see demons, at least no one in the real world. Online, Maggie had built a new persona. As “JennyHalloween” she could anonymously open up to others who claimed similar experiences. Most of these people were fakes and wannabes, Maggie knew, but she still found some small comfort interacting with them.

  Two weeks ago, while at the library, Maggie slipped into her JennyHalloween alias and browsed message boards focused on paranormal phenomena. On her favorite board—Torment of the Fallen—she read a supposedly true story about a homeless man squatting in an abandoned house in Aurora. According to the story, not only was the house haunted, but the man was also possessed by evil spirits. These types of stories were so common that Maggie had nearly dismissed it like all the others. What drew Maggie's attention was the name of the homeless man: Desmond Gabriel. The same name as Maggie's dad. Though she hadn't seen him in a decade, the uncommon name tied to the supernatural made her think there might be some truth to it. At any rate, it was worth her time to investigate.

  Now, as she exited a final industrial block—with its shuttered windows, rusted fencing, and decades of graffiti scribbled across crumbling brick walls—Maggie Torrence entered a residential area that didn't look to be in any better condition. She paused at a four-way intersection and removed the scrap of paper covered in her loopy script from her jacket pocket.

  She didn't have to check the address, but she did anyway: 670 Gable St.

  A gust of wind sent a riot of fallen leaves cartwheeling down the potholed street. Maggie sighed and turned down Gable. She wouldn't allow for any hope. In all honesty, she couldn't remember how it felt anyway. From an early age, hope—real, unguarded, heartfelt hope—had always been a path leading to disappointment. She tried to convince herself that checking out this rumor had only been an excuse to go on an adventure. Many of her transient friends in Phoenix would take to the road on even slighter whims. Even so, what kind of adventure involved a constant struggle to avoid the attention of police officers, perverts, and bible-thumpers aiming to save her soul? Hope, if it really did exist, wasn't a part of Maggie's makeup, but curiosity was, and that's why she now found herself a few blocks from possibly reuniting with her dad.

  These homes were clearly built to house the workers for the nearby factories. They were tidy bungalows with modest yards and limited privacy, but with the factories shuttered for good, many of the homes were now vacant and boarded up. As she walked she heard a heated argument about some guy named either Cheddar or Cheater (or possibly both), the deep driving bass of expensive stereo equipment, and the tired growl of a dog chained in a front yard.

  Crossing to the next block, Maggie noticed this neighborhood had the Halloween spirit. Stacks of gruesomely carved jack-o’-lanterns huddled on porch steps, their wicked eyes and slavering mouths glimmering with candlelight. Cling-on witches and ghosts peered from front windows. An axe-wielding clown guarded one carport, while in the next driveway a trio of raggedy scarecrows crouched around a campfire, a giant, charred rat hanging from their roasting spit. Clearly the macabre had found a willing audience in this section of town.

  The imagery was unsettling, but no fear stirred in Maggie Torrence. She knew which bugaboos were real, and none of these horror avatars had any counterpart in the real world. Outside of man, the only evil beasts walking this earth were demons. And luckily, Maggie hadn't seen any in many weeks.

  “Girl, what'chu lookin' for?” a voice called out from a telephone pole's shadow. “Need a toke? Somethin' to soothe your worries?” A stooped old man wearing a black and gold tracksuit stepped from the shadow. A dim streetlight splashed dirty yellow light across his grizzled face.

  For some reason, Maggie stopped in her tracks. For some reason, she looked him in the eye. Perhaps it was loneliness that made her drop her guard. Perhaps she'd been on the road so long that she craved any amount of personal interaction. She stood staring into his bloodshot eyes. He was a small man, and they stood eye to eye.

  “I don't want anything,” she said.

  “I don't feed wants, girl. Just needs. What'chu need?”

  “Nothing from you,” she said, having her fill of his pusher talk. When she tried to step around him, he moved to block her path.

  “Lemme get a look at'chu, girl. Maybe we can worka deal.”

  The man reached for her arm. Maggie brought a fist down on his wrist so hard he grunted and staggered back. As he cradled his arm, his pain turned to fear when Maggie pulled out the knife sheathed close to her ribs inside her jacket. Her heartbeat ticked a notch faster, but just a notch. She'd been on her own long enough that she'd had to bloody her fair share of people who wanted to do her harm.

  She stepped toward him, raised the blade.

  “You, girl…” he said, leaning closer, examining her face. “I thought that was you.” He gave off a raspy chuckle. His fear faded away to nothing and he raised his palms outward in a placating gesture. “You're right. You don't need nothin' from me. I was wrong, and I'm sorry.”

  “What are you talking about?” she said when she knew she should've just run away.

  “I know who you are. Nice to meet you, JennyHalloween.”

  * * *

  After shifting away from Maggie's knife, he turned down Gable and walked away, his feet crunching dried leaves.

  Maggie watched him for a few seconds, unsure of what to do. “Wait,” she called out and started after him, still holding the knife, ready to slash and run if needed.


  “JennyHalloween. Never thought I'd meet JennyHalloween,” he said in a singsong manner. When she reached him and equaled his strides, he turned to her and added: “Or, should I say, Maggie Torrence.”

  “You… how did you know?” she stammered. Finally unnerved by the encounter with this stranger, her heart started to pound in her chest. “Who are you?”

  “Name's Cheddar.”

  “That doesn't tell me who you are.”

  “I'm a friend of your daddy's.”

  “My dad… is friends… with you?” She looked him up and down and couldn't rationalize the association.

  “Don't sound so surprised, girl. You wouldn't know your daddy from my left butt cheek if you put 'em side to side.” He gave her a wink. It wasn't a pervert's wink, more that of a favorite uncle.

  “So, you know about Torment of the Fallen?”

  “Yeah, and about a dozen other freaky sites your daddy told me to post on.”

  “He's alive…” Maggie stopped in her tracks and whipped the address from her pocket. “This address: 670 Gable Street. Is he…” she paused again, scanning the address of the nearest house. 624. She jogged until she found the house marked 670. “Is he here?” she called out over her shoulder as Cheddar hurried to catch up to her.

  “Your daddy found you. Took some time, but he finally found his little girl.”

  670 Gable Street didn't have any Halloween decorations. The once tidy yard was overgrown and brittle brown with the season. Maggie, full of joy, full of excitement, full of real, unguarded hope, turned to rush up the sidewalk. Cheddar clamped a firm grip on her left arm, hard enough to bruise, and spun her toward him.

  “You best listen to me before you decide you wanna see good ol' Des,” he said low in his throat, the easy banter gone from his voice.

  “Let go of me!” She wriggled in his grip, feeling and sounding like a little girl, but he didn't relent. She remembered her knife and brought it level with his throat, her hand trembling. Cheddar didn't cower. “I'll cut you!” she said, her voice cracking on the last word.