Shock Totem 3: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted

by John Haggerty

  I could not hear his answer over my screams. I stared into the falling white sky, a soft ceiling crashing down to smother me, and the bugs swirled and laughed and showed their black crayon teeth, and the wind pushed drifts into Caden’s tracks until they filled with laughing snow bugs—and vanished.

  Amanda C. Davis is a Pennsylvania engineer with a green thumb, a growing collection of comic books, and a fondness for terrible horror films. You can find her work in Triangulation: End of the Rainbow, Necrotic Tissue, and Goblin Fruit, among others.

  Learn more about her at www.amandacdavis.com.

  WORM CENTRAL TONITE!

  by John Skipp

  So I’m burrowing into this dead guy’s eyeball, having dispensed with the lid-flap at last. Hard work. Painstaking. Tough to dissolve.

  But tasty? Yes.

  Worth the effort? Absolutely.

  A little perspective is a wonderful thing.

  For example:

  I’m not a big eater, but I do love to eat. I mean, sure, I shit my own body weight daily. But as graveyard worms go, I am fairly svelte.

  Not like Braxis, already plowing straight through the glazed pupil beside me like an animate sausage arrow in relentless bullseye mode. That guy is so fucking fat he can barely undulate without popping his casing, but away he goes, tail flipping past my face, riding the gravy train straight down the optic nerve railroad.

  He will beat me to the brain, no question.

  He always does.

  There’s a lot of traffic at Worm Central tonite. Fresh meat. Always a cause for celebration. People haven’t been dying fast enough lately. I’ve got a bad feeling this dustbowl town is drying up.

  But here in the socket, pushing through to the goo, things couldn’t be more moist and juicy. I could wallow in here all day. I love those moments when I see how they see as a pure experience, disconnected from the conclusions they draw one micro-instant later, when the rest of the relays kick in.

  But there is no substitute for the Big Picture.

  As such, I squirm through, swallowing just enough to show me blue skies in a green world. The last sights they saw, before closing forever.

  Then I’m squeezing through the cracks in the bone—somebody definitely took a hammer to this clown—and on my way to the main course.

  Most of the worms I know like to soak in muscle memory. What it felt like to have arms. What it felt like to have legs. Some are all about the genitalia, those uncanny vibrations. (I went through that phase.)

  Some mystics seek out the heart, in search of love. I tried that, too.

  Most head straight for the guts, and what they know. Being none the wiser is fine with them.

  Me, I like to know what it was like to grapple with it all. To have ALL those things going on at once. To have words to describe it.

  Again: a little perspective is a wonderful thing.

  But to each their own. Tonight, we dine. Riddling this otherwise-empty vessel with the only life it will ever know again.

  Remembered, one bite at a time.

  Tonight, I will learn how this poor bastard lived. How he died. How much TV he watched. How much he hated his job. How much he got laid. How many people he hurt. How many times he smiled and meant it.

  What he thought about his place here on Earth.

  Not a bad gig for a worm, all told.

  I slither after Braxis, grab my front row seat, take a big bite of cerebral DNA…

  …and the first thing I taste is his fear, the wild synapse-flashes of his meat’s impending end. It combines with the eyeball-memory of the swing and connect, a hammer indeed, cracking skull and yanking bone back out, the claw end wet and caked and red…

  Very scary. No doubt about it. In terms of intensity, it beats the fuck out of Scarface: a movie this dimwit clearly loved.

  But here’s the thing. The end is the end, every meat-go-round. I will die soon, too. Just another squiggly vessel.

  But my memories will pass on. From flesh to flesh to flesh.

  No real end.

  And no forgetting.

  As such, I snuggle into the cranial folds. Chew past the terror-bites, as they gradually give way to deeper, more rewarding bounty.

  Just another night in Worm Central.

  Forever and ever.

  Amen.

  John Skipp is a New York Times bestselling author, editor, zombie godfather, compulsive collaborator, musical pornographer, black-humored optimist and all-around Renaissance mutant. His early novels from the 1980s and 90s pioneered the graphic, subversive, high-energy form known as splatterpunk. His anthology Book of the Dead was the beginning of modern post-Romero zombie literature. His work ranges from hardcore horror to whacked-out Bizarro to scathing social satire, all brought together with his trademark cinematic pace and intimate, unflinching, unmistakable voice. From young agitator to hilarious elder statesman, Skipp remains one of genre fiction's most colorful characters.

  FIFTH VOYAGE

  by WC Roberts

  I drained the bottle and christened his skull

  with a caravel of skin and bone

  launched on Cherkee Lake, near Morristown,

  where the floodwaters crested.

  7 July 1948

  The Post unrolled out of Memphis,

  held with arms outstretched, become my sail

  with eyes cut out or torn from the text

  to serve as knotholes for voyeurs

  pining for worlds to come.

  I straddled his back and he carried me

  spewing curses and a mouthful of red clay

  across the still, green waters of youth

  eyes in the sky brought down to earth

  by cowbirds and swarms of black flies

  along the banks of Panther Creek.

  They make their deposit in bone meal and Gore

  my dreams of reaching the other side

  etched in stained glass by Truman

  and panhellenic feats of stillborn congeniality.

  After traveling the byways of East Tennessee, WC Roberts settled down in a mobile home up on Bixby Hill, on land that was once the county dump. The only window looks out on a ragged scarecrow standing in a field of straw and dressed in WC’s own discarded clothes. WC dreams of the desert, of finally getting his first television set, and of ravens. Above all, he writes. His poetry has been published in Illumen, Mindflights, Aoife’s Kiss, Basement Stories, Labyrinth Inhabitant Magazine, Scifaikuest and Star*Line, and is forthcoming in Space and Time Magazine and The Martian Wave.

  STRANGE GOODS

  & OTHER ODDITIES

  Dismember, by Daniel Pyle; Blood Brothers Publishing, 2009; 306 pgs.

  Horror isn’t always about monsters jumping out of the darkness or maniacs torturing innocent souls. Sometimes, when done well, horror can be about the larger issues in life that keep us grounded in everyday existence; issues of family, bereavement, and a loss of freedom. In these instances, the terror depicted on the page pulls you in and makes you shudder—not because something might leap out and grab you, but because you can see, through the written word, how fragile life can be.

  Dismember, a fast-paced yet introspective tale of innocence lost, is one of those works. The story spans twenty-three years, from an unfortunate car accident in the mountains around Denver to the exploits of the lone survivor of said accident, one Dave Abbott, on his thirtieth birthday some years later.

  Davy has grown up isolated and afraid, held captive by a sadistic and introverted mountain man named simply Mr. Boots. Not a lot of his time in seclusion is explained in the text, but you still get the feeling that Mr. Boots did certain things to little Davy that folks in civilized society would cower in the corner, cover their eyes, and shudder when presented with. I, for one, was happy with the lack of explanation. I have no need to read about a child being abused, sexually or otherwise, which the text suggests but never goes into detail about. These ugly situations are handled beautifully, with passing allusions that stick with the rea
der, because in many ways what we imagine in our own minds is much worse than the writer could possibly describe.

  On his thirtieth birthday, Davy—now Dave—goes ahead with his plan; he will reassemble his dead family, through kidnapping and force if need be. From then on, the book follows five separate points of view: Dave; an eleven-year-old boy named Zach; and the Pullmans—Libby, Mike, and their son Trevor, a divorced family trying to find a shred of normalcy after the end of their marriage has forced each parent to cope with the emptiness of a life with no partner.

  This particular aspect of the plot I found most intriguing. I loved the interplay between the two separate halves of this family unit. For once, there is a divorced couple who aren’t constantly at each other’s throats. They have a mutual respect for each other, though the reasons for their separation are readily apparent. They work together to raise Trevor, and neither would think about using him or their love of him as a weapon against the other. As I said, refreshing.

  The corruption of purity is the overriding theme of the novel. Author Pyle brilliantly juxtaposes the horrors Dave experiences in his childhood with those of Zach and Trevor, the two boys he abducts. And Dave, himself, is a more than worthy villain. I found myself rooting for him to come to his senses, for someone to save him from himself, during different sections of the book, because I felt for him and his situation. This is a man who’s still in many ways just a boy; he grew up alone, with a strange, cruel caretaker, and he only longs for the peace and comfort he’d experienced as a child. Sure, the guy is in need of years and perhaps decades of therapy, but the amount of love and caring he displays cannot be denied. This makes the violence he enacts all the more vicious. He is an emotionally stunted sociopath, and it’s not his fault in the slightest.

  I especially appreciated the different viewpoints within the book. The transitions from the thoughts of the children to those of the adults were well-done and believable. The kids acted and spoke like kids, and the grown-ups were satisfactorily flawed yet likeable. And the end...I won’t tell you about it, because it will ruin the surprise, but let’s just say it was completely unexpected, shocking, and brilliant.

  Dismember is a fantastic read, folks. Fast-paced and at times brutal, it carries the emotional weight that makes you want to turn just one more page. It focuses on the little things and lets it sink in how much we take something as simple as taking a bath for granted. Congratulations to Daniel Pyle. He’s written something special here. It gets one heartfelt recommendation from me.

  –Robert J. Duperre

  Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler; Featherproof Books, 2009; 158 pgs.

  This book is a nightmare, a dark and haunting nightmare. It is a novel made up of small apocalypses, the world ending again and again, figuratively and literally. It is a shadowy view through a kaleidoscope held under water in a stagnant pond, written in thirteen or so chapters, with short stories and vignettes tied together yet totally independent of each other. The world is dead or dying. The skies are raining mud or glass, or both. People are sick, molding and swelling, dying. Their stories told in a fractured prose that blends black poeticism with a surrealist tone. It is an example of Bizarro done right.

  “Smoke House” seemingly addresses the mourning process of a family who has lost a child. Several half-page pieces named for elements like “Water” and “Dust” are disturbing portraits of a world gone mad and its inhabitants trapped in the maelstrom. Hopelessness has never been painted as beautifully as in some of the pieces contained here.

  The book itself is a thing to behold: gorgeous, made to look like an aged library tome complete with catalog tag on the spine. Scorch Atlas is written in a clear and artful manner. The attention to descriptive detail is flawless. It is brutal in its violence and bleak snapshot of the world as her spin begins to slow, her skin begins to sag and gray—a prophetic literary flipbook of the End Times. If you like your fiction daring and left of center, and you like to be haunted by the visuals of what you have read…Scorch Atlas!

  –John Boden

  The Scream Queen’s Survival Guide, by Meredith O’Hayre; Adams Media; 2010; 211 pgs.

  A year or so ago I reviewed a little book by Seth Grahame-Smith titled How to Survive a Horror Movie. This new book by Meredith O’Hayre reminds me a lot of that earlier book, and that’s a very good thing. Scream Queen is pretty much the same idea: A humorous what-to-do, look-out-for, and how-to list for you to follow if you should ever find yourself stuck in a real-life horror movie and want to make it out alive. This time around there is a slight feminine point of view, as befitting the Queen in the title. But for the most part this is a good guide for both sexes when facing drooling zombies, chainsaw-wielding psychos, creepy little kids, and even the Devil himself.

  In addition to the expected funny survival tips to all the old tropes used in horror flicks, the book offers a few unique tidbits along the way. Scattered throughout are sections like “My Bad: Fuck-ups on Film,” where the author gives examples of gaffs and boo-boos from famous fright flicks. One of my favorites was one that I missed in the 2005 remake of The Amityville Horror where the stars drive over to Starbucks for a nice latte...despite the movie being set in 1975. And yet the book does make some boo-boos of its own, like when it lists Duel as Stephen King’s first movie—it was actually Steven Spielberg’s first. But hey, turnabout is fair play and all that.

  There are fun and informative bits about Japanese remakes, slashers, vampires, and all sorts of bump-in-the-night boogiemen, each accompanied by survival tips and a quote from the Scream Queen herself. Furthermore, the sources are wide and deep for this book, from the creepiest of classics to the most current fright flicks, like Daybreakers and HBO’s True Blood series. There’s even a nice appendix of “Must-see Scary Flicks,” but with such films as Turistas and Urban Legends: Final Cut on the list I’ve really got to question the author’s horror street-cred.

  If you are a horror-movie junkie like me you’ll love The Scream Queen’s Survival Guide. It’s a quick, fun—and funny—read that manages to impart a fair bit of horror info and trivia along the way. If you are not a horror fan...then I don’t think you’re reading this anyway, but who knows, this book just might make you a fan. Weirder things have happened after all.

  –Brian M. Sammons

  Alice (Neco z Alenky), by Jan Svankmajer (director, writer); starring Kristýna Kohoutová; 1988; Unrated; 86 min.

  Jan Svankmajer, a Czech filmmaker who has generated comparisons with David Lynch, made the leap from shorts to feature films with this surreal adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s classic children’s book. Kristýna Kohoutová is the only live actor in the film; the rest of the characters are animated by means of stop motion animation. Even Alice herself is an animated doll when she shrinks—a neat innovation. Svankmajer uses very little dialogue in the film, most of it being voiced by Alice as narrator, preferring to let his bizarre assembly of animated dolls, animal skeletons and stuffed animals convey the story through action. This is a major plus, since the dialogue is overdubbed from the original Czech.

  Svankmajer mostly sticks to Carroll’s framework, although he gives everything a darker feel. This is no Disneyfied adaptation for children. The White Rabbit is a complex character, snapping his teeth ominously while alternately running away from and chasing Alice and eating the sawdust that leaks out of him when he is injured. The caterpillar is more subtle, consisting of a stocking with false teeth and eyes. Nothing in Svankmajer’s world is wholly inanimate, as scissors and even Alice’s own stockings are imbued with life to suit whatever effect he has in mind.

  One particularly jarring impression is created when Alice voices speech connectives such as “said the White Rabbit” and there is a close up of her mouth. The effect is enhanced by the disconnect between the overdubbed English being out of sync with the filmed Czech dialogue. It wears a bit thin by the end of the movie, but it’s a fine, creepy effect all the same.

  I’ve showed this film to several people sinc
e “discovering” it on Netflix and no one can tear their eyes away from it, even while being profoundly disturbed by the visuals. This is one film that no review can quite do justice to. I suggest you track it down and see it for yourself. You’ll be glad you did.

  –Nick Contor

  The Taint, by Drew Bolduc and Dan G. Nelson (directors); starring Drew Bolduc, Colleen Walsh, Kenneth Hall; 2010; Unrated; 70 min.

  I normally don’t dig low-budget independent flicks. While you get the occasional pleasant surprise, far more often than not there’s a reason those bargain-basement films stay underground and unknown. Quite simply, most of them aren’t very good. That’s why when I get a request to watch and review one of those films, I usually pass. But I do try to keep an open mind, so if a movie has a trailer I’ll usually give it a look to see if I want to invest 90 minutes or so in it. That is why I watched the trailer to The Taint. Two minutes later I knew I had to see this movie. Why? Because it looked completely, totally, absolutely crazy. Now, I didn’t know if it would be any good, but it sure looked like something I had to experience for myself. But I thought the same thing about A Siberian Film and August Underground.

  That is not to say that this movie is like those others in tackling unpleasant subjects in a serious light. No. The Taint firmly has its tongue stapled to its cheek. All the gross, disgusting, vile things this movie does are done with a smile on its dimwitted, gapped-toothed, vacant-eyed face. It revels in its repulsiveness and thoroughly enjoys its exploitation of all things crass and icky. It is offensive, rude and crude, and it’s completely fine with that.