by Simon Cox

read by Jason Warden

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The look of the apartment block gave me a chill the wind couldn’t. It was a grim cube of concrete and steel, designed by a communist architect during an age that knew no joy. The low winter sky leached the life from it like a sponge. The inside was little better – a kitchen, a bathroom and a living room with a sofa that doubled as a bed, each room austere, silent and brutally functional. I placed my suitcase beside the sofa. I was tired. The flight had been fine, but the man that the company had said would come to meet me hadn’t turned up, so I had been forced to negotiate a taxi from the airport to the apartment block using little more than sign language. The taxi driver had rolled his eyes and chewed brittle Slavonic words that I assumed were curses.
Outside the apartment, the sun sank below an unfamiliar horizon and darkness crowded at the window. I turned the light on, but jealous shadows still lurked in the corners of the room. At least there was a television for company; I picked up the grey plastic brick of a remote control, pressed the red button and tinny laughter from a lurid variety show flooded into the room. Four clicks took me from a dated drama programme to an old black-and-white film via two sets of news, each read by newscasters that looked like mourning fathers. None of the channels was subtitled or dubbed, and as such I found them disorienting and virtually unwatchable.
A sixth channel, however, showed something quite different. On this channel there was a man lying in a hospital bed in a stark, white-tiled room, motionless and bathed in a faintly bluish light that made everything look chilly and artificial. Nothing more. The bed was too far away from the camera for me to make out his face, and there was no speech and no music; in fact there was no sound at all except for the occasional faint noise of footsteps echoing in the background. At first I thought it was a still image, that the visual transmission had become frozen, but then I noticed a cockroach slither across the tiled floor.
I watched for ten full minutes, entranced, waiting for something to happen, but nothing did. The anonymous man just lay there. After a while I was surprised to find that the surgical nature of the room made me feel a little nauseous, so I turned off the set. I took Sarah’s note out of my pocket and read the last line.
Don’t worry, it said, It’s only for six months.
I looked around the apartment.
“Six months,” I said.
I folded out the sofa and turned off the light. As I settled down to sleep I noticed that the bare plaster walls made my breathing echo slightly, so that it seemed as though there were someone else in the room with me.
The next day, my first at the facility, was difficult. English had not been part of the curriculum when this country had been jealously hidden behind the Iron Curtain, and the most that my co-workers could muster for me was a self-conscious “hello”. The only person with whom I could really communicate was Vasilyi, whom the company had appointed as my assistant for the duration of the project. “I study economic in UK,” he told me with pride, but even with his help every aspect of the day bewildered me. I left work at five o’clock that evening with a dull headache.
The air in the deserted street was cold and dry, and it chilled my lungs as I inhaled. When I reached the block I hurried inside to my apartment, but I discovered that it was barely warmer than outside and remembered that I hadn’t set the heating the previous day. I left my overcoat on as I heated some beans on the stove.
I thought it odd that Sarah hadn’t called, but when I turned on my mobile phone I saw that it had no signal. I felt further from home than I had ever been, and I began to wonder whether coming here hadn’t all been a huge mistake. The light from the screen on my phone dyed my fingers a luminescent green, as though it were the initial symptom of some kind of malady of isolation that was growing within me.
I sat down on the sofa with a plate of beans on toast and scanned the television channels again. I could see my breath in front of my face. The first five channels were still utterly incomprehensible to me, but I was surprised to see that channel six was showing the same programme as it had the previous night. I noticed a few subtle differences; the camera seemed to have moved a little closer to the bed – though not close enough to make out the identity of the bed’s occupant – and the cracked plastic chair beside the bed had been moved. Beside the bed I could see an outdated monitor in a thick plastic housing showing the feeble pulsing of the man’s heart.
Looking at him lying there made me feel uncomfortable, but I felt an overwhelming compulsion to watch the slow rise and fall of the man’s chest, if only to see if anything would happen. After all, what else was there for me to do?
I don’t know whether it was the intolerable inertia of the scene or the dawning recognition of that very same aspect within my own life, but as I watched I became aware of a sense of dread mounting within me. With every pulse on the monitor the feeling rose until eventually the malevolent stillness in that tiled room became unbearable and I was forced to tear myself away from the television. I lurched into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. I looked at myself in the mirror; the whites of my eyes were speckled with red. Mist from my breath bloomed on the glass of the mirror and then faded to nothing.
Suddenly the silence was punctuated by a sharp spike of white noise from the living room. I hurried back in to see that the camera had moved closer still to the man in the hospital bed. I peered uneasily at the screen. I could now make out signs of grime on the sheets, and I saw that the angry red marks that I had thought were bruises on the man’s arm were in fact open sores. An involuntary shivering gripped me, and I quickly turned the television off.
I spent the rest of the evening reading the company orientation literature that Vasilyi had provided for me, but I eyed the television with suspicion, and I could not escape the feeling that there was a presence other than myself in the room. It was with some degree of unease that I eventually went to bed.
I was woken during the night by the sound of a woman sobbing. When I opened my eyes I found that the room was washed in a cold blue light, the source of which I soon realised was the television. I looked over at the table, but the remote control wasn’t there. My heart thudded in my chest as I propped myself up in bed to look around for it, and then I noticed the screen; to my horror it was showing the hospital programme again. The camera had moved even closer to the bed, and I would have been able to make out the man’s face if he hadn’t been lying on his side. His fingers were thin, hooked like claws, and all the while the woman continued her wretched weeping and moaning. I shivered.
I pulled my gaze away from the screen and spotted the remote control lying face down on the floor beside the sofa bed; I told myself that I must have knocked it off the table in my sleep. I snatched it up and turned the television off. I laid back in bed but I didn’t get back to sleep for some time. I couldn’t get the sound of the woman’s sobbing out of my mind.
“You look tired,” said Vasilyi when I arrived at work the next day, “Do you sleep?”
“Not well,” I said. “Listen, have you seen the television programme about the man in the hospital bed?”
“No,” he said.
I spent most of the afternoon staring out of the window at the sky as the day slid past me, and I found myself returning to my apartment with reluctance. The blank walls seemed somehow menacing and the view from the windows was dark and oppressive, so despite my unease I turned to the television as a last resort for companionship. I found, to my relief, that channel two was showing an old James Bond film. It was dubbed, so that Sean Connery sounded just like the 1960s Soviet villains that he was always trying to foil, but even with this handicap I found the familiarity of it childishly comforting. I left it playing in the background as I went into the kitchen to prepare dinner. Gunshots, squealing tyres and that unmistakeable music accompanied me as I chopped vegetables.
Then I heard a sudden snap of static, followed by a familiar silence. I ran back into the living room, and my stomach turned as I saw that the television had tripped onto channel six again. The camera was very close to the man in the hospital bed now, and I could see plastic tubes looping away from his arm and up into a bag that hung from a metal stand. I reached for the remote control, but as I did so I noticed with horror that now the man in the bed was moving, beginning to sit upright. He was emaciated, far beyond the point of malnourishment, and his skin was drawn tight over his bones like a drum; thin hair hung limply from his head in strands, and his eyes stared out at me from deep in blackened sockets. Then he raised his arm and pointed straight at the camera, straight at me, and said something. He repeated it three times, in a voice that sounded like paper being torn, and then his eyes rolled back and he began to scream. I couldn’t bear to look at it, even less to hear it, and I jabbed furiously at the remote control until the television died. With a tremulous hand I wrote down the phonetic approximation of the phrase on a scrap of paper.
I took the piece of paper to work with me the next day and showed it to Vasilyi.
“Where are you hear this?” he asked, frowning.
“On television,” I said.
“Oh. Good.”
“Why? What does it mean?”
“It means ‘You are going to die’.”
He pulled a face and laughed. I tried to join in with him, but couldn’t.
I put up some pictures in my office at the facility in an attempt to combat the drab décor of the room, but there was little I could do to ignore the fatalistic atmosphere that now hung heavily around me. At lunchtime I used the unwieldy desk phone in my office to call Sarah.
“Are you OK?” she said, her voice distorted by electronics and distance, “I haven’t been able to get through.”
“I’m fine,” I said, “I can’t get a signal on my mobile over here, that’s all.”
We talked for a time, using practicalities to avoid touching on the subjects that we both knew would have to be discussed sooner or later.
“Your voice sounds shaky,” she said, “Are you sure everything is all right?”
“No, I’m…I’m fine. I’ve been having some problems settling in, but…it’s just good to hear your voice, you know?”
Then the line crackled and went silent, and when I dialled the number again I got a dead tone. Vasilyi told me that it happened a lot. I didn’t know whether or not she heard the last part.
Five o’clock arrived at my office with brutal inexorability, and, rather than return to the apartment I took the bus to the concrete shopping arcade and browsed without purpose through stark, alien shops; the thought of seeing the man in that awful hospital bed again prompted a cold nausea to rise within my stomach. I tried to hide myself amongst hunched, wintry people, but they spread away from me, and no-one would look me in the eye. At seven o’clock the security guards closed the arcade and I found myself in a litter-blown alcove with nowhere to go but back to the apartment block.
I was the only passenger on the bus that carried me along the chilly streets and back to the apartment. The driver said something to me as I got off, but I hid down in my coat and pretended not to hear him as the bus pulled away to reveal the apartment block. It reared up in front of me, ugly and mute, its darkened windows like hollow eye sockets. As I climbed the stairs a weight seemed to settle itself upon my shoulders.
I paused in front of the door to my apartment, the key clammy in my hand. The corridor was silent and empty, and the buzzing fluorescent lights soaked it in a surgical ambience. I swallowed, turned the key in the lock and opened the door, and, even though I had been half expecting it, the sight of blue light flickering on the wall from the television terrified me.
I rushed in to turn it off, barely thinking to close the door behind me, but as I fumbled for the remote control I could not help but notice what was on the screen. The camera was now positioned at the foot of the hospital bed, looking up towards that hideous face. I saw a cockroach weave its way across the pillow, and I saw that the monitor positioned beside the bed was dead. Hung over the foot of the bed was a clipboard with a sheet fixed to it. On the paper there were two words. I snatched up the pocket dictionary that the company had given me and flicked through the pages, my hands shaking. The first word was brain. I turned the pages looking for the second, knowing what it would be but still dreading the awful confirmation. My trembling finger drew across the page and came to rest upon the word.
Tumour.
The words seemed to be burned onto the page rather than printed, bolder and darker than mere ink.
I heard a click and the rush of white noise, and looked up from the dictionary to see that the terrible hospital scene had been replaced by a hissing static that competed with the heavy throbbing of blood in my ears. I dropped the dictionary and groped at the remote control, flicking through the other channels, faster and faster, but they were all the same. The white noise grew louder and louder until it reverberated throughout the room and inside my head, making my head ache, making me feel sick, forcing me to clamp my hands over my ears. I clenched my teeth, screwed my eyes shut and collapsed down onto the sofa, sweating and breathing heavily, begging it to stop.
Then there was silence.
Hesitantly, fearfully, I opened my eyes and pulled my hands from my ears. The white noise was gone, but the television had returned to the familiar hateful blue of channel six. I didn’t want to look at it, couldn’t bear to look, but I couldn’t stop myself. The camera had retreated to the position it had occupied on the very first time that I had seen the channel, but this time the bed itself was empty, and the sheets had been changed and smoothed as though in anticipation of a new patient.
“Oh no,” I said. I began to feel dizzy.
I felt a warm sensation on my lip and looked down to see a spot of blood on my shirt. I touched a finger to my nose. It had started to bleed.

by T.H. Davis

read by Jason Warden

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Free Undercroft Stories PDF

by C.T. Thieme

read by C.T. Thieme

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The River is a perfect mother. She supports you, sustains you, even rocks you softly to sleep, but always with the requirement that you keep yourself afloat. There’s a calm veneer of indifference in her tone. Her true sentiments are rarely spoken outright, yet the power of her love is constantly felt. Her recipe for success in raising children lies in a portion of love just enough to help you grow combined with a challenge, a challenge to rise to your potential and meet your own high water mark. Her love is burdened with full knowledge that the world you will enter does not love you and will not ever love you the way she does. This is the pain first felt in the throws of labor, the pain that never dies. This is the pain of a mother’s love.
We’ve all had boat dreams. That’s what we call them. Even in the middle of winter they’ll come with the full smell of water and heat of summer. A million variations on the same theme. Tonight, I have a boat dream.
The boat, our boat, is the Julia Belle Swain. She’s a stern-wheeled steam ship, an anachronistic Twanian archetype pulled through a wrinkle in time by Captain Dennis Trone. Three decks stepped like a wedding cake with two tall black smoke stacks with bulbs and feathers at the top towering over the box-topped pilot house. Her engines have pushed more than a million miles behind them at a top speed of 14 miles per hour. She’s got enough age on an ancient Mississippi and enough of our sweat, love and secrets to make a world of her own…
I wake up in my sleeping bag and to my surprise I’m sleeping on railroad tracks that descend straight down the steep bluff towards the Mississippi below.. I hear Christine’s voice, full of panic; she’s calling my name.
“Get off the track! Get off the track!” she yells. “It’s coming! The train’s coming!”
I don’t waste a moment. Heeding her words, I wrestle free from the sleeping bag and scramble off. I feel relief, but she’s still screaming.
“Get off the track!”
“Christine, I’m ok,” I shout back. “I’m off.”
But she still keeps yelling.
Then the train comes. I see it tearing down the river bluff, tearing through where I was sleeping.
“Oh my god!” she screams. “Oh my god, no!”
“Christine, it ok, I’m off the track.”
But then I see the front of the train. On it is a body. My body.
Now for some reason being in my body attached to the front of a train hurtling down a hillside towards the largest River in the continental United States was preferable to being safe and sound sans body. Can’t argue with dream logic, I suppose.
“Best get back in it,” and no sooner had I thought this than it was done.
As the train continues down the slope, the speed pulls and strains at my limbs. Pieces of me start flying off, first an arm, then a leg, not really painful, just disconcerting. Then there is nothing more than this white light coming from the middle of my chest. I look up to see the River coming to meet us, and the world went out.
I’m in a basement. I have no body. I’m floating. Daylight streams through windows set high in the concrete walls making for strange shafts through the dusty air. Large translucent pieces of plastic hang from the rafters and move slowly from an unfelt wind. I float towards one of the windows and easily slip through. Coming up the front of the house, I see the front porch. A small child sits there crying. Going up to the child, I ask without words what is the matter. The child’s tear stained eyes look into me. The child raises a finger, pointing up. I float up the outside of the house finally stopping at the attic window.
Behind the window screams a woman. Her eyes are wild. Her hair swirls like Medusa’s snakes. She tears at the apron she is wearing and slashes her hands against the window frame. Everything about her appearance is horrifying, insane, terrifying, but I am not afraid. Despite everything I see in her dark face, I feel…pain. She is in pain. Without a break in the epileptic tantrums, she tells me everything. She loves the child, more dearly and deeply than I can ever understand, but she is dead, and the child, alive. His fear of her keeps her from him. She wants him to know how much she loves him, but he can’t get past his fear.
Somehow, I don’t remember how, I pulled her through the window and guided her down to the child. They are looking at each other. Calm. Deep. Her hand holds his, and the dream fades.
The next morning, at breakfast, I write it all down.
Another 12 hour day has ended, and we’ve come back to our wharf boat, the Baton Rouge in LeClaire, IA. Julia is tied up securely to her side. Orlando Lowe, O, as we call him, had been on the boat since his early teens. He’d come aboard to swap the inner city of Peoria for a broom and the clean view of the River and has never left. O, Christine, Smokin’ Tom and I ordered a pizza and rented a movie. We’ve stuffed ourselves full of pepperoni and beer and are now settling into O’s room as he’s the only one with a VCR. We’re crowded all onto his bed as Smokin’ Tom pops in Child’s Play 2. Then O says in his calm tone, “I had the strangest dream last night.”
The hair rises on my neck. My blood runs cold. And that ain’t cliche when it’s happening to you. I find myself saying, “tell us about your dream, O.”
“I had a dream that I went back to my old house in Peoria. I was crying because they knocked it down, everything but the basement, the front porch and the attic, and I had a long talk with my dead mother.”
I feel tears well in my eyes, half fear, half sorrow, half wonder. The feeling is greater than the sum. “I’ve got something to read you guys.”
Smokin’ Tom stops the tape as I head back to my room and retrieve my journal. After I read them my dream, no one says a word. We grab our beers and head out for a breath of fresh air. No one’s in the mood for Chucky right now.
Sitting out on the wide deck of the Baton Rouge in heavy iron chairs, the star light is about the only illumination we have. O tells us about his mother.
“She was really my grandmother. She was the one that raised me, and when she died she left me the house. Now you ain’t the first to see her either. I have friends that won’t stay over no more. I’d put ‘em up in her old room and they’d come down for breakfast asking who was that crazy woman screaming outside their window all night. Always has that apron on. I remember the last thing she said to me. She looks at me and she says, ‘Candy,’ she always called me Candy, ‘Candy,’ she says, ‘I ain’t never gonna leave you. When you go, I go. My head may grow cold, but I ain’t never gonna leave you.’”
“Guess she hasn’t,” was about all I could say.
We all needed a couple more beers after that and some lighter talk to while away some hours before heading up to our beds. Morning is going to come up on us quick, and we have another run to do tomorrow. O puts his hand on my shoulder as he rises from his chair and says, “Well, I guess you been doin’ some travelin’. I’m goin’ up to bed now, and all I gotta say is this. You stay outta my dreams, and I’ll stay outta yours.” Then he gives me one of those smiles of his that’s brighter than the moon in a night sky and heads up to bed.
Smokin’ Tom brings me a last beer and takes one up to bed with him. Christine gives me a kiss on the cheek, then heads up herself.
Straddling the chair backwards, I look out over the bow of the Baton Rouge. A barge has passed, and the two boats, locked to land and each other, give a brief protest between water and shore then quite down. Those words dance in my head. A train whistle blows, far off, but it’s coming. The stars dance in mirrored reflection on the River, shimmering in the constant current. Those words dance in my head, “I ain’t never gonna leave you. When you go, I go. My head may grow cold, but I ain’t never gonna leave you.”

Find more of C.T. Thieme’s work at http://perpetualheathen.com/

by S.T. Gulik

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by Andrea Dean Van Scoyoc

read by T.C. Parmelee

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The text of this episode is not available, but you can find it and many other selections of Andrea Dean Van Scoyoc’s work here.

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Dusk and her Embrace
Candlelight Tales
Graveyard Games

by Todd Austin hunt

read by Jason Warden

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Victor looked at his wife from the corner of his eye. She sat on the
end of the sofa, reading a paperback romance. Fabio was on the cover,
with some woman wrapped around him.
She squeezed the pages tight between her hands. Her mouth was open in
that dopey expression, like she was a dummy lost in the woods. Good.

He focused his eyes back on the video playing on the tube. Gellar,
his therapist, had given him the tape a month ago. He said watching
it every day would take his mind off Lucy, help ease the insecurity
that made him go to the damned shrink in the first place. He thought
it would be boring, but watching the mushy caterpillar breaking out of
the chrysalis into something equally as ugly, but powerful devoured
his interest for the twenty-seventh time. Lucy knew he went to
Gellar, but didn’t know why he had to watch the video.
He twitched his nose, feeling that dry hardness in his nasal cavity
building up. Jesus, it itched like hell! Ever since Gellar gave him
this weird butterfly prescription, his nose wouldn’t leave him alone.
He glanced at Lucy again. His left hand, slug-slow, crept up his
side. It patted his love-handle, squeezed it. It poked into the flab
above it, vainly searching for some ribs.
Lucy turned a page. The hand froze. She sighed.
The hand’s fingers probed his fading pectorals, wiggled the loose
skin covering his collarbone. They spread out on his neck, rubbing
back and forth while Victor pretended to sigh tiredly. They closed
into a fist and rasped against his beard stubble. Then, at last, one
of them found his nose. Victor had a very large nose. His nostrils
screamed for relief. Placing the tip of his forefinger on the
outside, he inserted most of his thumb into his prodigious left
nostril.
Thwack!
Lucy’s paperback slapped down on his hand, knocking it away from his
nose. She stood over him. Her lips squinched together into what
looked like a tight, purple anus. She lightly backhanded his cheek
with the book.
“Owww!” Victor whined.
“Gitcher frickin’ fingers outcher nose!” Lucy barked. “What the hell
is wrong with you, Vick? Every time I look atcha you’re spelunkin’ in
the booger cave!”
He started to push himself up, but she slapped his hands away from
the couch. “You keep them filthy hands in your lap until you wash
them in the sink. With hot water!”
Victor stiffened. “This is my house, woman…” he began.
Lucy cocked her head to the side, looking at him as if he was the
retard in the woods. “Are you actually gonna try to defend your right
to pick your nose?” She closed her eyes and laughed. “Now get off
your ass and go wash your hands.” She snatched the remote control off
the coffee-table and switched off the television.
“The video’s not over!” Victor said.
“It’s nine-thirty. We’re going to bed. I’m sick of watching that
stupid bug.” He opened his mouth in protest, but Lucy stared him
down. He sighed instead and went to the kitchen sink to scrub his
hands. Lucy grabbed his beer, which was still cold and two sips away
from being a virgin, and poured it down the drain after he was
finished. He licked his lips.
In the bedroom, he changed into his pajamas and quickly slid under
the covers. He turned off the bedside lamp and closed his eyes,
praying that Lucy would not want to have sex. It was the most
disgusting thing in the world, rutting with her. Her body was always
cold and smelled like American cheese. She made grunting, snorting
noises that sounded like a wild-boar. And she had to be on top.
Victor felt his lips moving. “Oh please sweet Jesus, not tonight,
not tonight…” His breath caught. She came out of the bathroom,
wearing nothing. “Uhhh, Lucy?” he whispered. “I’m suffering from
terrible cramps…”
“This’ll make ‘m better.” She got into the bed with him, leaving the
lights off. As she started doing her duty, Victor thought about his
life without this woman, this assmouth. It had been wonderful. He
never flinched at anything. He never knew what it felt like to be
scratched for careless words. He’d always eaten his sandwiches with
one or two slices of Kraft cheese.
When she was starting to slow down, he felt a tingle in his right
nostril. The tingle escalated quickly into a scurrying itch. Lucy
had his wrists clamped down to his sides. He twitched his nose a bit;
soon his whole face began a series of writhing contortions. But the
itch got worse, making his eyes water. It was one of those itches
that feel as if something is crawling across your skin. Lucy
finished, letting go of his wrists. Immediately Victor’s hand shot up
to ease the irritation. He plunged his forefinger, scratching,
catching debris under his fingernail. The itch subsided, and he
shuddered in relief.
Lucy opened her eyes, apparently thinking the tremor was a response
to her ministrations.
Victor yanked his finger out and cowered under her. Her lips
tightened, tightened. Her eyebrows crashed together over the bridge
of her nose. She hissed and backhanded him, careful to drag her sharp
talons across his cheek. Victor yelped and covered his face, but Lucy
was already standing on the bed. Curling her toes inward, she kicked
him in the chest, in the stomach, caught him in the balls, shrouding
his stomach with that belly-ache only a man can suffer. He tried to
roll off the bed, but Lucy kicked him hard in the ass, knocking him to
the floor.
“You goddamned piece of Judasshit! You stay the hell out of my bed
if you’re going to do that. I’ve had enough of you, Victor. I don’t
know what to do.” She jumped off the bed, but Victor raced into the
bathroom on his hands and knees and locked the door behind him. Lucy
thumped into the other side, shouting. “Yes, you just stay in there
tonight. Maybe you oughta sleep in the tub. Fill it up, and keep
your head on the wet side!” She hit the door again, then retreated.
He listened to her grumbling curses, and the swish of her stripping
the bedsheets. Leaning with his back against the door, he gently
cupped his crotch with both hands, groaning softly. The air stung the
scratches in his face, and he felt them slowly filling with blood like
new rivers, seeping down over his heavy jaw, splattering the vinyl
bathroom floor. The mirror was just a few feet away. His heart
thumped at having to look at himself.
He flicked the light switch and stumbled to the sink. Five large
light-bulbs cast shadow eating light in the bathroom, attached above
the large, rectangular mirror. Victor was revealed and he cursed.
The regular, lumpy nose, milky eyes, Leno-jaw. He cursed at the
bloody rips in his face. Tomorrow he had to go to work like this.
She had never scratched his face. All the guys at the post office
knew he didn’t have a cat; they knew he had Lucy, though.
He could already hear those little chuckles– all those brand-new
jokes and the thanks he would get for comic inspiration.
“You fucking bitch!” he shouted. It started a roar and ended a
squeal. As the swishing ended, he heard her laughing. “Don’t laugh
at me!” All squeal.
“Shut up and start your blubbering,” she said lightly. “It’s a
little easier to say those things locked up nice and safe in the
bathroom, isn’t it?”
Victor waited until he heard her leave the bedroom before he started
to clean the cuts. The water made him wince, and a black cloud of
obscenities shrouded his head while he pressed a towel to his cheek to
stop the bleeding. After applying some mercurochrome, he lifted a
stack of towels for a pillow in the tub, but dropped them when that
itch abruptly possessed the inside of his nostril. His eyes watered
immediately, seeped. He shoved his finger in past the first joint,
scratching, scraping away anything that yielded. The itch subsided,
and he pulled his finger out and rolled what he’d found between his
thumb and forefinger. He grinned, thinking if assmouth saw me doing
this…
Chuffing, he flicked the booger roll into the sink. It landed,
spearlike, in a drop of water on the verge of falling into the pipes.
Victor turned the water on full blast and washed it away. Reaching to
shut it off, he saw his hand tremble, and enormous gooseflesh rose on
his hands and arms. He felt his tight-fitting shirt raise from his
skin. His head convulsed involuntary, a spluttery sound too wet to be
a giggle burst from his lips.
The itch had turned into an insane tickling. It felt as if someone
had tied him up and attacked the inside of his nose with a tiny
feather. He first pressed the palms of both hands against his nose,
rubbing up and down, trying to crush the tickle. The feeling
persisted, centralized in his left nostril. It moved in a slow
circle, as if probing some alien territory. Looking in the mirror, he
saw that his face was flushed. His entire frame jerked like an old
man’s handshake. Victor’s eyes froze on the flesh on the upper-left
of his nose, where the bone gave way to cartilage. The skin bulged
out very slightly; he couldn’t tell unless he looked at his nose as a
whole.
The bulge moved quickly and efficiently. Victor immediately thought
of a bug. The thought was punctuated by a gag. He bent over the
sink, his mouth opening and closing exaggeratedly as he tried to keep
from spilling his stomach.
There’s a fucking bug in my nose, he thought, panicking. It still
tickled, but his disgust had overwhelmed the response to that feeling.
He opened his mouth, even grunting, “Leww…”, but he stopped
himself. Lucy would have his balls in her fist and him on the street
if she knew there was a bug up his nose.
He closed his eyes, covered his mouth and inhaled. Then he leaned
over the basin and blew out hard through his nasal passages. A lot of
stuff sprayed from his nose. Opening his eyes, he expected to see a
roach or something crawling in the sink.
The furious white porcelain was mottled with red and yellow. Mostly
red. The sight of all the blood made him gasp. The bug increased its
chitinous probing, closer to the nostril opening than before. Looking
at the blood, Victor said, “The little shit is biting me!”
Spider whistled through his brain.
He covered his mouth and blew gain, harder, keeping his eyes peeled
so he could watch it fall into the sink. He’d watch the flow of water
envelop it, drag it down into the pipes. Three more times, three more
sprays of his blood. The tickle was gone. It hurt now. It grasped
the tissue in there in tiny, sharp claws or pincers. And ripped.
“Uhhhhhhhh,” he breathed. Or tried to breath. The left passage was
clogged. That side of his nose had swollen to the size of a gumball.
A steady stream of red seeped from the opening.
“Lucy. Luucy!” he shouted. His voice was muffled and sounded
comical, sounded like some creature on Sesame Street. Tilting his
head back, he lifted the tip of his nose, which gave him a piggish
snout. Angling himself so the light would shine into the darkness, he
looked inside and saw the spider moving like a wicked little demon.
He screamed. “Luuucy! Luuuucy!”

Her voice from across the house, “What’re you yelling about, Vic?”
“Dere’s somefink in my nose! Comp’ere!”
She yelled back at him, “It’s just another booger, asshole. Eat it
for all I care!”
Victor wanted to cry. He glanced at the roll of toiletpaper. It
wouldn’t come out from just blowing. The damn thing was fastened in
there. He knew it wanted to crawl deeper, maybe down his throat.
Maybe into his stomach. Maybe….
He had to crush the spider inside his nose. He had to kill it before
he could spray it out. Taking a stifled breath, he wrapped his thumb
with toilet paper, so didn’t have to feel it. Gingerly, he pushed his
padded thumb up into his nostril. He touched the thing immediately.
The hardness of it and the minuscule twitchings he felt through the
tissue paper made him gag reflexively. He almost pulled out, but
nothing could be worse than having this damn thing in his head.
Pressing his index finger firmly against the outside of his nose,
Victor squeezed the spider viciously, wincing at the expected squoosh
and burst within.
Nothing happened.
For a moment.
He started to squeeze again when a stream of searing breath whistled
from his nose, burning his thumb and scoring a red trail down his palm
and wrist. Gritting his teeth, Victor yanked at his thumb, but the
thing had clutched his thumb in its pincers.
Unable to believe, Victor began to gibber. He encircled his raw
wrist with his left hand and heaved. His wrist and the knuckle of his
thumb cracked loudly, but the thing held fast. Worse, the twitching
movements were drawing on his thumb. He watched, horrified, as the
creases of his thumb gradually disappeared into his nose. He tried to
inhale, so he could scream, but his chest was heavy and felt thick.
Swiveling toward the door, making inaudible, piglet squeaks, another
blast of scorched air streamed from his unblocked nostril. It
devoured the fingers of his clinging left hand with pain, causing it
to release and flail away. His lodged right hand continued to tug,
causing him to lose his balance and crash against the sink. The edge
of the sink crushed his elbow into his ribs, and his face smashed into
the mirror. The rush of air halted abruptly, along with the little
thing’s
Little thing? he thought, crying. Little thing?
sucking of his thumb into his head. From this angle, he couldn’t see
the left side of his nose. He didn’t want to. The taut circle of the
orifice fitted his thumb like a ring. It burned from the exhalations
and the stretching. In that moment, Victor tried to exhale himself,
but his lungs expanded and contracted with no circulation, like he was
a little kid trying to stay underwater longer than he could.
Can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I have to get out of here.
Just as his sneakers gripped the floor, something sharp and small
poked the soft web of skin between his thumb and forefinger. It
punched through, piercing bone and emerged where his wrist met his
palm. Upon bursting through, Victor’s air passages momentarily
cleared and he shrieked, high and shrill, the sound of a small animal
gripped in the talons of an owl. His shriek cut off with a
vaccuum-like inrush of air. The thing inhaled with the power of a
god, and the incredible wind impossibly sucked Victor’s hand into his
face, breaking his teeth, smashing through the roof of his mouth. The
back of his hand crushed his nose from below, sending shards of bone
into his
Oh, fuck what is it It huuurts huuu
brain, relieving Victor of his life. He collapsed on the floor, his
face unrecognizable. His hand was invisible from the middle of the
forearm up, disappearing into the fresh hole in the center of his
face. The edges of the hole were tucked back, also pulled back by the
inhalation.
“Vic?” Lucy called from the bedroom. “Why the hell did you scream
like that?” The doorknob turned. “Victor? What’re you doing? Open
the door. Victor!”
There was a sound. A wet sound. The sound of a tongue licking
something. Victor’s elbow pointed toward the ceiling, and it began to
move in lazy circles. When it stopped, something hummed deeply,
followed by the sound of teeth ripping through skin, crunching through
bone. With nothing to hold it, Victor’s grisly stump plopped out of
the hole of his face and thumped down on the vinyl.
The door rattled. “Victor? What was that sound? Answer me! Open
this fucking door!”
Victor’s corpse stood. Very straight. Twenty-six slender, black
fingers rose from the hole, gained purchase on the gore-strewn edges.
The tip of each finger had three tiny, red appendages of its own, and
those moved wildly, searching for something. Anything.
“You know I don’t have a key, so open this damned door or I’ll call
the cops . I’ll bet you’d love for them to see you like this.”
The fingers shoved against the sides of the hole, pushing apart. A
crack appeared at the top and bottom of the wound and grew in length
like cracks on a windshield. Very slowly, his body was torn in half
by the force of the thing. Its skin shimmered from the wetness of
Victor’s insides, and once either side of Victor hung like banana
skins around a freshly peeled fruit, it shucked the rest down,
stepping out, leaving the split corpse like a husk. Its body was a
maze of crenellations and ridges uncountable. Two black, empty holes
glared out where eyes should have been.
The thing chewed and swallowed the rest of Victor’s hand and upper arm.
“Tastes like me,” it whispered. “Tastes like me.”
“What was that? What did you say?” Lucy squealed. “What was that
tearing sound, Victor? Open this door!”
From within the dark apertures in its head rolled two eyeballs. The
pupils were a stunning blue, but quickly the color drowned in a
milkiness.
“I’m coming, Lucy. Comes the pretty butterfly.” it said. It
scuttled very quietly to the door. “I’m coming and I’m so sorry.”

by Heather Webb

read by The Attic Clown

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Jack had never been inside a funeral home before, although he’d seen them in movies.
He’d expected a dim, timeless, hushed elegance, redolent of chrysanthemums, roses and despair.

Seated on a scarred wooden chair in Mr. Broussard’s cramped and cheaply-paneled office, he reflected that the aura here was more used-car-lot than funeral parlor, although he might’ve guessed that from the squat, cinder-block exterior of the building, with its peeling gold letters: “Broussard’s Funeral Home and Memorial Park”.

From Broussard’s office window, there was an excellent view of the cemetery: a dozen acres of tilting tombstones and plump leering concrete cupids, the back half overgrown with kudzu and weeds, littered with trampled silk flowers, small soiled American flags, deflated balloons like washed-up jellyfish, ribbon tentacles trailing: the detrius of the dead.

Although this was Jack’s first time inside Broussard’s, he was familiar with the cemetery; he and his friends used to skip school and smoke pot there, lounging against the cool canted headstones. He’d lost his virginity there, in the mossy graveyard dirt, with a grim-faced statue of the Blessed Mother of God overseeing the proceedings.

Now, the unchanged headstones seemed to mock him, just as his youthful high spirits and exuberance must have once mocked them.
Jack felt a twinge of nostalgia for those innocent times, when life stretched out before him, an endless and compelling vista of possibilities.
It had only been an illusion, of course. But he longed for the illusion.

Mr Broussard leaned across his desk, entwining his long, pale fingers beneath his chin.
“Mr Driggers,” his voice was dry, thin, and bloodless. It matched the rest of him.

“Jack.” Jack put in quickly. He was not yet thirty. Mr Driggers was his father. He hated his father.

“Jack.” Broussard pronounced, with a chill, dessicated smile which, Jack reflected, couldn’t possibly offer much solace to mourners. “I appreciate you coming in so late, and on such short notice. I’ve had a busy few days, and haven’t been able to close the shop until after eight. Typically, our hours of operation are ten to six. Now, when we spoke on the phone, you indicated that you were interested in the undertaker’s assistant position… the ad in the Penny Saver, correct?”

“No, the Help Wanted sign.” Jack replied. “On the cemetery gate. I was walking by and I saw it. I thought it was kind of funny.”

“Funny.” Broussard pronounced the word as if it were foreign, rolling it around in his mouth as if it were an unknown food he was considering spitting out. “Kind of funny.”

Idiot, why did you say that? Jack berated himself.

“Well, you know,” he mumbled, “Just… a Help Wanted sign on the cemetery gate. It was like the dead were hiring.”

“Ah.” said Broussard. He turned to the window, which overlooked the cemetery, and gazed out into the night, across the darkened necropolis of tombstones. Then he looked back at Jack.
“I didn’t put any Help Wanted sign on the gate.” he said. He gestured toward the window, raising an eyebrow. “You see? No sign.”

Jack didn’t know how to respond to that. He swallowed and said nothing. There had been a sign. A piece of cardboard, hand-lettered, ragged-edged.

“I will assume you were joking.” Broussard stated dismissively. “So. You saw the ad in the Penny Saver. I am looking for an assistant. My nephew served in this capacity for several years, but now he’s left for college out of state, and I find myself once again short-handed.”

Jack stared at Broussard’s undertaker’s hands: smooth and hairless, with abnormally long, pale fingers and scrubbed nails.
No one could ever accuse Broussard of being short-handed, he thought.
He felt crazy laughter burbling up in his throat, but he managed to squelch it and nod earnestly. He needed a job, any job. Badly.

Broussard leaned forward, resting his sharp elbows on his desk, and for a moment Jack did catch the faintest whiff of funeral flowers, dusty and stale, and an undertone of something sharper, antiseptic; it was the smell of formaldehyde, or some similar preserving agent. He remembered it from when they’d dissected frogs in high school.

“Broussard’s is a traditional, full-service funeral home.” Broussard announced, peering across the desk at Jack. “That means that we do our own embalming. Downstairs. We collect the deceased from the hospital; we embalm the deceased and take care of all the burial preparations. We support the grieving family. We assist with the selection of a coffin and a marker. We conduct the memorial service in our chapel. And afterward…”
He nodded curtly toward the window.

“So you can see that I need help.” He continued. “As an undertaker’s assistant, your duties would be varied. You’d collect the deceased from the hospital in the van, assist me with burial preparations, place the deceased in the coffin. You’d set up the chapel- chairs, floral arrangements, tribute cards, attendance book. You’d greet mourners and escort them to the chapel. You’d arrange the burial equipment- the mats and lowering straps- and store it away in the shed afterward. You’d sometimes be called upon to serve as a pallbearer. You’d be in charge of cleaning the lobby, the parlor, and the chapel, as well as maintaining the van and the hearse.”

“When you say, assist in burial preparations,” Jack put in nervously, “Do you mean I’d actually have to help with the, um… I forgot what you called it. Downstairs?”

“The embalming?” Broussard supplied, offering again his chill cresent of a smile. The smile seemed almost painful, as if it stretched the scant flesh of his cheeks unnaturally. “Embalming requires a state license. I hold that license. But, yes. You will assist me with every aspect of my work here.”

Again, Jack caught a whiff of that formaldehyde-frog odor, stronger this time. A wave of nausea rolled over him.
I need this job. Any job, he reminded himself. I’ll get used to it. I can do this.

“That is,” Broussard said archly, “if I decide to hire you.”
He picked up Jack’s application from the desk and rattled it slightly in his long fingers.

“Now, you are 28 years old,” Broussard examined the paper, “and you grew up here in Richmond. You graduated from Canton High, right across the street.”

“Go, Tigers.” Jack joked feebly.

“Indeed.” replied Broussard. “You worked for a number of years at the Kroger store on Kitterick Avenue. Then you went to work for Shackleford, out at the Red River Mine.”

“My girlfriend was pregnant.” Jack put in. “My dad worked for Red River for fifteen years. I never wanted to work there, but it paid good, and I needed the money. It’s really not… my thing, though. I have asthma.”

“It says here that you were laid off in ’06…. that would’ve been the first round of lay-offs. I assume you collected unemployment for awhile. But… I guess my question would be, Mr Driggers,” Broussard set the application down on his desktop and smoothed it thoughfully with the palm of his hand, “Where have you been for the past three years?”

Here we go, Jack thought. He could lie, and Broussard might hire him; maybe he’d even work here long enough to collect a paycheck or two. But sooner or later, Broussard would find out the truth- Richmond wasn’t that big a town- and then he’d be out on his ass, unemployed again.

Jack took a deep breath. “Mr Broussard, I was up at Lawrenceville, in the correctional center there, for eighteen months. Before that I was in county for nearly a year. I got sent up for possession of meth… methamphetamine… when I was 25. That was nearly three years ago, and I’ve done my time, and I’m clean now. I want a chance to start over and live a decent life. I thought about… going somewhere else besides Richmond, but it’s the only home I’ve ever known. So here I am, I’ve rented a room down on Augusta and Parkway, and I need a job. I’m a hard worker, I’ve put the bad stuff behind me, and I hope you’ll give me a chance.”

Broussard looked at Jack for a long time. His face was still as stone, and his unblinking gray eyes appeared glazed over, as if with some sort of film.

Jack felt his cheeks grow hot, and stared down at his hands.

“Eighteen months for possession.” Broussard mused presently. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Well, sir, it’s because of the amount. They said…. possession with intent to distribute. But I wasn’t. Selling, I mean. It was all mine.”

“I see.” Broussard rubbed his fingers together contemplatively. They made a raspy, unpleasant sound. “Boy or girl?”

“Beg pardon, sir?”

“Your child. You said your girlfriend was pregnant. Do you have a son, or a daughter?”

Jack blinked, as if slapped.
“She didn’t… she decided not to have it, after all.” His voice broke stupidly on the last syllable, and he felt a familiar prickling behind his eyes.
Why was Broussard asking him these things? He’d better get the job, after being put through this dog-and-pony show.

Jack hurried ahead to the conclusion of the story, “I don’t know where she is now. I heard she moved to Nashville. My mom and dad are still here in Richmond, but they don’t want nothing to do with me since I’ve been out, so… I’m on my own, looking for a job, trying to find a way to have a decent life. But it seems like no one’s hiring right now. The economy, I guess. I was putting in applications when I passed by here and saw your sign.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Jack wished he could retrieve them; he didn’t want to offend Broussard again by mentioning the sign when Broussard insisted there wasn’t one. But Broussard seemed not to notice. He was staring out the window, as if deep in thought.

“Well, my boy,” he said finally, clasping his slender hands together, “Let’s go downstairs, shall we? I’ll introduce you to some of our clients.”
He laughed his dry laugh when he took in Jack’s bewildered expression.
“The deceased.” explained Broussard. “I have two bodies down there right now, awaiting preparation.”

He unfolded himself, like a stick insect, rose to his full height, and came around the desk, placing a bony hand on Jack’s shoulder as he passed.
“I think you’ll do.” said Broussard. “But I want to make sure. Follow me, please.”

Wordlessly, Jack trailed behind as Broussard pointed out the chapel, the various storage closets. Everything was old, cheap, and very clean.
The dusty smell of dead flowers prevailed here.

“The basement is through here,” Broussard said, indicating a white-painted metal door. “I keep it locked, for obvious reasons. Now, where is that key?”
After rummaging through his pockets, Broussard decided that he’d left the key in his office.
“Walk back there with me, this won’t take a minute.”

As they headed back toward the office, Broussard turned suddenly to Jack and said, “How do you feel about the dead?”

Caught off-guard, Jack stammered, “The… the dead? I mean, I feel fine about them, I guess. I’ve never really known anybody that died. My grandma died, but it was before I was born. But… I’m fine with them.”

“Not afraid of them, are you?” asked Broussard, plucking a ring of keys out of his desk drawer and leading Jack back down the hall.

“Afraid?”

“You know, all these movies. Dawn of the Dead. Night of the Living Dead. Undead. Zombies. So many young people these days don’t treat the deceased with the proper… reverence.”

Broussard unlocked the white door, and ushered Jack down a dim concrete stairway.

The formaldehyde smell was strong here, almost overpowering. Beneath it was another smell, darker and more earthy. Death. A tiny pilot light of fear ignited in Jack’s sternum. He clutched the cold metal rail, suddenly unable to catch his breath. At the top of the stairs, the metal door swung shut with a dull, final clap.

“The dead, ” Broussard said, smiling at him through the gloom, “are like dogs.”

Something wasn’t right here. His face. Not right. Jack struggled for breath, glancing up at the door at the top of the stairs.
Mustn’t let Broussard know anything was wrong.

“Like.. like dogs?” Jack wheezed, through narrowed bronchial tubes. He reached toward his back pocket for his inhaler. Didn’t feel it. He’d left it in Broussard’s office, in his jacket.

“Yes.” Broussard said. “They sense fear.”

Broussard’s mouth opened in a soundless laugh, exposing dirt-stained teeth. His eyeballs had shriveled and fallen back in his head, leaving only dark, hollow sockets. The smell of formaldehyde and death, which had been eminating from him all along, suddenly overwhelmed Jack. Panicked and unable to catch his breath, he made a dash for the door, but he lost his footing on the stairs.

The last thing Jack heard was the dead croak of an answering laugh, and a soft, secretive shuffling- like the rustling of dry leaves- from the foot of the stairs, and then he didn’t hear anything else because the floor was coming up so fast and hard to meet him.

read by Amy Tapia

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She slams her book shut at the sound of his car. Oh God, dinner should have been in the oven an hour ago. Hugging the book to her chest, Margaret hurries into the kitchen and drops it into a drawer filled with dishtowels then opens the refrigerator and removes the casserole she made that morning. Sliding it into the oven, she sets the temperature fifty degrees higher than necessary to make up for the time she lost between the pages of her book. Ted was a stickler about mealtimes.

Upon a bright blue, freshly ironed tablecloth, she sets dinner plates and salad bowls, aligning each with care. Silverware is sprouting from her hands when he comes through the kitchen door.

“Hi, honey,” she says with a smile. “I didn’t hear your car. How’d it go, did they like your presentation?”

“Why is the light on in my study?” His voice, whisper soft, carries a familiar edge.

Tendrils of fear snake through her belly. Margaret has no idea what her husband means, but the look in his eyes spells pain.

“What light? What are you talking about, Ted?” She hates the tremor in her voice.

“The goddamm light in my den, that’s what I’m talking about. I noticed it when I pulled in. What were you doing up there?”

His accusation hangs in the air, a noose with her name on it.

Stay calm, she tells herself. Stay calm.

“Ted, honey, I haven’t been in your study. You probably forgot to turn off the light when you left this morning, that’s all.”

His eyes have a feral glow. She knows her stuttered denial only fuels his suspicion. Margaret wants him to stop looking at her like that. She wants the laughing, tender-eyed man she married two years ago. She wants …Oh God…she wants to feel safe again.

Helpless beneath that gaze, she turns back to the table, begins placing silverware beside each plate.

“Don’t turn away from me!”

Three weeks, she thinks, her knees turning to jelly. It’s only been three weeks.

“You think I’m stupid, is that it?”

Suddenly, he’s upon her, his hands digging into her arms, spinning her around so that she must face him.

“You think I don’t know what you’re up to when I’m not around, how you rummage through my things, how you sleep with every man you see?”

For a paralyzing moment, his upraised fist seems suspended in the air. Then, there is only a star shot darkness and she is lying on the floor.

Hold on, she thinks, curling in on herself like a dry leaf. Hold on.

“Answer me, you dumb bitch. Do you think I’m stupid?”

His fingers tangle in her hair, forcing her head up. Blood spills from her mouth, leaving a bright crimson comma on the pristine tile floor.

“Christ. What a mess. Nobody in his right mind would want you. Certainly not me.”

He spits into her captive face before dropping her head and walking away.

Margaret lays unmoving as his footsteps cross the floor. Barely breathing, she counts each step as he climbs the stairs. Only when she hears his study door close, the lock click into place, does she struggle upright and stumble into the bathroom.

I’m okay, she reassures herself, undressing with shaking fingers. I’m okay.

Climbing into the tub, she opens the taps and sits with her forehead pressed to her knees while steam rises around her. She’s safe now. Ted will spend the night in his study. He won’t leave it until she’s in bed. He’ll eat his dinner cold and leave a mess for her to clean up.

Tomorrow evening, he’ll come home with fresh flowers. He’ll arrange them in the cut glass vase he bought her after another of his “moods.” He will be tender and sweet, pouring her a glass of wine, telling her to sit while he sets the table. Ted never apologizes. His eyes won’t see the darkening bruise on her face, or the purple marks on her arms. In Ted’s mind, it never happens. That’s how Ted’s mind works.

What will he do, she wonders, when he realizes I’m gone?

Closing her eyes, Margaret relaxes into the water’s warm embrace, letting a new feeling take hold inside her.

She calls it hope.
——————————————————————————————————-

First Impressions
By Michael Fourman

read by Amy Tapia

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First impressions are big. When I first met Max he seemed compassionate, different from my previous employers. I was wrong.

“I have a little kid,” I explained, desperation forcing my voice louder than I wanted.

My play at sympathy was met with a cold stare from an unyielding granite face. “You can finish your shift, Maggie. I’m sorry.” Sorry didn’t cut it. I’d never been let go from a job before, for any reason. I didn’t know what to do or what to say. My stomach felt like it’d been kicked with one of Max’s size eleven steel-toed boots. Being a single parent was hard enough, but being jobless, too, made life nearly impossible.

In the following months I scoured the town, looking for anything that would pay a wage, but was met each time with the same sympathetic smile and apology. The economy made jobs scarce, and, with just a high school diploma, I wasn’t exactly at the top of anyone’s hiring list. As my labored search became more frantic, I had to make tough choices. The car payment and credit cards were no longer priorities, but I kept food on the table and a roof over our heads. Mac-n-cheese served as supper most nights, and I barely had enough money left to keep the utilities on. I worried but never cried. I was scared but stayed strong. When unemployment benefits ran out, my frantic search became a predatory hunt for something, anything, that would earn me a paycheck. Finally I caught a break. It wasn’t my ideal job, but it beat the alternative.

My friend, Pete, warned me, “Are you sure about this? I mean, I know that area of town. It’s dangerous.”

“Dangerous? It’s not like I’m catching king crab on the Bering Sea. I’ll be fine.” My light-hearted response placated Pete but did nothing to ease my nerves. I’d buried concerns for my own physical safety under the hopes of financial security.

So I focused on my new job, starting with my wardrobe. With the last of our money, I bought several skirts and a nice pair of heels. It felt good to dress up and not go to work looking like a grease monkey in Max’s shop. Stress had consumed me with doubt, but the nice clothes strengthened my confidence.

As I prepared for my first day on the job, I battled fear for control of my body. It took over an hour to fumble through my make-up, and then I fussed with my hair for another hour. First impressions are big, and, after a finicky couple of hours, I was finally ready to impress.

Our final box of Mac-n-cheese became our dinner, and, without milk, the sauce would once again be watery. Bobby’s mouth drooped with disappointment, “Mac-n-cheese again?” It ripped my heart to see him disappointed; I prayed my new job would make a better life for us. It had to.

“I have to go — wouldn’t want to be late on my first day,” I announced. “Bobby, be good, for Pete’s sake.” Pete’s frown and obvious disapproval flattened my attempt at humor.

Bobby flashed me a gapped-tooth grin, “You look like Cinderella, Mommy.” Although my life felt like anything but a fairytale, it was moments like those that kept me going.

The foreign sound of my clicking heels on the sidewalk brought back memories of Sunday church services, but they were quickly shoved aside by Pete’s warning replaying in my mind. Walking through this part of town was unnerving. But at least I wasn’t on the Bering Sea. My pace slowed as I reached the entrance to the Venture Building, but my heart continued to beat frantically. Trash overflowed the lone receptacle used to collect greasy fast food bags and discarded newspapers. A nearby traffic signal clicked through the go, caution, stop routine several times. Oh good, “Jesus Saves”, according to the balloon font graffiti defacing an adjacent parking garage. Anchored to the sidewalk, I stood, palms sweating, contemplating how to make the most of my first impression. Would I be witty or keep it professional? My mental conversation was interrupted by a dark sedan creeping along the curb.

The tinted car window descended, and a well-dressed man leaned over like he was lost and needed directions. “How much?” he asked.

He seemed nice. “Fifty,” I nervously replied, climbing in. After all, first impressions are big.

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Lee Pletzers is a writer who is very active in the genre world, online and off. Over 40 short stories have found publication in anthologies and magazines, zines and online.

In September 2009 his first novel, The Last Church, was released by BBS books. Lee is an avid reader and reviews for HarperCollins and Hachette via SFFANZ (Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand). He is a member of AHWA (Australian Horror Writers Association) and a founding member of SpecFicNZ.

Lee has edited 4 anthologies, worked as editor and reviewer for Sinisteria horror magazine, has translated one novel from Japanese to English and edited several novels for small press authors. In 2008 he created the popular social site for horror writers at: http://horrorwriters.ning.com/

You can find him online at: http://thestoryteller.co.nz
His Facebook fan page is located at: http://is.gd/4vGOJ

by Joe Darnall

read by Daniel Jose Older

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Larry had needed a break. It had been bad enough that fat fuck Henry Garrison bugged the shit out of him on a daily basis, but what with that Henderson woman OD’ing he just needed a quick and quiet way out of town. He told himself, it wasn’t his fault that stupid bitch couldn’t hold her stuff. He had built a pretty good rep by selling the goods, most of the time. He hadn’t known she had kids. Not that it would have made much difference. If it wasn’t him it would have been somebody else. Larry looked out over the parking lot from behind the dumpster where he was crouched. The light overhead had been out for weeks and he had done a little business there a few days ago. Nothing like a dark corner, he thought. It works for cockroaches, rats and runaway pushers. He snickered a little at his joke. He needed an easy mark. His piece of shit Nova was on the fritz again. He had heard that in Mexico, if you separated the “No” from the “Va” you can figure out why it didn’t sell. To hell with that car, he thought. It was time for an upgrade for the ride out of town. That is when he saw it.
It was a beautiful Dodge. He had trouble making out what model it was from his dark little spot. It seemed to be in the dark too. He walked out towards the car, careful to stay hidden as much as possible. He turned his head and looked for Hank Garrison’s patrol car or any of his moron sheriff’s department cronies. He was all alone. He tried to open the door. Locked. Oh well. To make an omelet they say. He went to the dumpster and grabbed a broken piece of curb, and walked over to the window of the car.
“Hate to do this girl, but you left me no choice.” He raised his hand over his head and looked down at the window. The pop-up door lock looked like it was up. No way. He had just tried it. He looked and saw a police car driving slowly up the street toward him. He ducked behind the car and peeked through the windows. The cop car drove slowly past.

“Fat fuck.” He whispered. His hand went to the handle of the car door and it gave. He pulled it and the door popped open. Larry looked at the chunk of concrete in his hand and back at the open door. The chunk fell on the blacktop and he slid into the front seat. Closing the door, Larry slid over the big gearshift on the floor and into the driver’s seat. His hand shot to the floorboard as he looked for the keys. No dice. He leaned over and tried the glove box. Locked. He sat back up and sighed. His head fell back and looked at the black roof. Under the flap of the visor, was a glint of silver. Larry smiled and pulled the flap down, and out fell a key. Larry held it up and looked at the keychain.
“1971 Demon 340.” Larry traced the smiling little devil with a pitchfork and smiled again to himself. “The trinity; boss, bitchin’ and cherry.” He turned the key over in his hand and winced with pain. Blood sat bright red on his hand, and glinted on the middle tine on the fork held by the smiling cartoon devil. He licked the drop of blood in his palm and tasted the saltiness of it. He smiled and stuck the key in the ignition and started it up. It rumbled like nothing he had ever heard before.
“This just might be my lucky day.” Larry gunned the engine and drove out of town on the small back road that led to the highway and the bridge out.
Larry grinned as he pressed the accelerator and the Demon pressed him into his seat. It hugged the turns and flew down the tar and chip back roads. He thought this is what his Nova would have done, back when it was new and didn’t leak oil in big black spots where ever he parked. Back when it had the trinity. He snickered. Part of him knew his faded green Nova had never driven like this. Not on its best day. Larry didn’t even slow down as he turned the corner and headed towards the county line north of town. The full moon cast the shadows of the trees onto the road. The tree line broke and he came to an open stretch of field on each side. The rusty barbed wire fence flew past him as he reached to turn on the radio. The music started at once. Larry sang along as the hay fields flew by around him.
“…truckin’…mm…chips cashed iiin…truckin’…like a do-ah mannn….” Larry felt the car seem to float over the little hills in the road. He looked down and saw the needle hovering around one-twenty and decided to back her down a little. He let off the pedal and waited for the car to slow. It didn’t. He turned his foot and tried to pry up the stuck pedal. It wouldn’t budge. There was a flash on the side of the road. A small herd of Whitetail deer were at varying distances from the car as it flew towards them. Larry slammed his foot on the brake. The pedal didn’t move and the car didn’t slow. A large doe jumped right in front of the car. Larry threw his hands up over his eyes, waiting for the crash. It never came. After a second, Larry put his hands back down on the steering wheel and looked behind him. He could see the deer jumping across the road. His eyes went forward again. The road was empty again. He slouched as far as he could and reached down into the floor. His hand grasped the gas pedal and he pulled as hard as he could. Nothing. He sat back up and looked at the speedometer. It still read one-twenty and steady. He scrambled. There was nothing behind the pedal. There was no cruise control. By now he was sweating and the radio was too loud. He reached to turn it down. The knob only spun. He turned it all the way. It didn’t click off. The next song was playing now. He heard John Fogerty screaming about his traveling band.
The road still flew by. Larry pressed the clutch to the floor. If he couldn’t stop the car, he would blow the engine and find another one. It might not have the trinity (boss, bitchin’ and cherry) but it would be better than this. The clutch went to the floor, but sound of the engine didn’t change. Larry pumped the clutch and brake. Nothing happened. He reached for his seatbelt. There was nothing there. He felt around for the lap belt and there was nothing. He turned his head and frantically looked for the belts. Still nothing. His head was spinning. One-twenty on a back road was fun and all, but he was coming up to the bridge and there were always cops there.
“Get a grip, Lar. Just get a grip.” He reached down and pushed on the gearshift. He would stop it all right. Nothing like a shredded tranny to stop a car doing one-twenty, he thought, the faintest smile on his lips. He pushed with all he could muster, with no luck. He had to think. The radio was blaring. It was a song he remembered.
“…ridin that train, high on cocaine, Casey Jones you’d better, watch your speed….”
He had to stop the car. Or at least slow down some. Cops always sat by the bridge to catch the speeders heading to get booze across the line. If he could just slow down enough, the shoulders should be soft enough to not get hurt too bad. It had to be now. The soft shoulders of this strip of tar and chip turned into concrete with “rumble strips” before too long. He hit the brakes again and again, but nothing happened. The radio had changed again. This time it was a voice he didn’t recognize.
“You’re listening to the best songs of late, great 1971….” Larry kept pressing with both feet on the brakes and feeling the pedal hit the floor. “This song goes out to Larry McElwain out on Utterback Road….” Larry stopped what he was doing and looked at the radio. “Better slow down, man. To help, we have a song to Larry, from the Beatles….” Larry looked at the radio, eyes large and buggy. He heard Paul sing “The Long and Winding Road”.
The bridge was coming up fast. He had blown past the stop sign that let traffic onto the well lit two lane highway that crossed the lake. Soft shoulder or not, he had to get out of this car. He grabbed the door handle and pressed the button. He shoved the door and it didn’t budge. He reached across his body and pulled up on the lock. He pressed the button again and threw his shoulder into it. It didn’t move. Larry could see the bridge up ahead. He swung his elbow into the window. There was a flash of pain and nothing more. There was no satisfying explosion of broken glass like in the movies. No fast moving air, no busting glass. He swung again. His jaw clenched and he winced in pain. As he came to the bridge, he saw the beige police car that he knew would be there. He flew by it, but as he did, he looked in and saw the deputy’s face. Their eyes met for a split second before Larry and the Demon were gone. Larry knew he had been seen. No getting away in this car. Not anymore.
Larry had a crazy thought as he got to the top of the bridge. He didn’t hesitate. He pulled with all his strength on the steering wheel. The wheel turned, and nothing happened. The wheel spun back and forth, but the car didn’t swerve. He couldn’t believe it. The gas didn’t work. The brakes, the steering wheel, the doors, the loud assed radio, nothing worked. In the rearview mirror, he could see the red and blue lights. They were far behind him, but moving closer. It couldn’t be right, Larry thought, not at a hundred and twenty. He looked down at the speedometer and the needle had slowed down to ninety. That deputy was gaining. No two ways about it.
After ten minutes, the deputy was right behind him. After thirty, there were so many lights; he couldn’t tell how many were behind him. After an hour, he saw the beam of light from the helicopter overhead. Larry laughed a little.
“All they want is for me to stop.” Larry wiped the tear from his cheek. “Hell, that’s all I want to do.” The radio voice came on again.
“Busy night traffic wise, folks. We are tracking a high speed pursuit just across the county line, and its old troublemaker Larry McElwain. Looks like this time, his luck has run out. In honor of the brave men and women of the Calloway County Sheriff’s department, here is Stevie Wonder with his 1971 hit, “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours” on the only station that gives you the best of 1971.”
Larry had to get out of the car. He tried to break the window again. His elbow was swollen and purple and his fists were bloody. He reached under the seat for a crowbar or something to bust the window. The car hit a bump, slamming Larry’s chin into the steering wheel. Flashbulbs popped across his eyes and his head fell backward. His mouth was bleeding. He blinked hard and tried to shake off the cobwebs. When he could see straight again, he noticed a light coming from the right. The bump must have jarred the glove box open. He looked up and saw a line of police cars across the road. A road block. He reached into the glove box and took hold of the hard, heavy grip his hand fell upon. He pulled it out swung it down toward the blood-smeared window. As he reared back, the brakes screeched, slamming his head into the steering wheel. The car came to a stop a few feet short of the blockade. Larry fell into the door and it gave way lightly. Larry fell out of the car onto his hands and knees. He tried to stand up. He thought he heard voices, but what he really heard was John Lennon singing a song Larry had loved back in late great 1971.
“Instant Karma’s gonna get you….”
Larry got to his feet and turned toward the flashing light. Garrison fired. Larry lay on the warm asphalt and felt himself get cold. He could hear his breath whistling in his lungs.
“why onnearth are you there… communget yershare…” Larry’s voice trickled until it was nothing more than a rattle.
Sheriff Garrison walked over to where the body of Larry McElwain lay and kicked the pistol from his hand. He bent and checked his pulse.
“Hey Sheriff, nothing came back on that car. It’s somethin’, ain’t it? It’s gotta little damage to the bumper where he must have hit something. No telling what.” He handed the keys to the sheriff.
The sheriff looked at the keychain with its smiling cartoon devil and the pitchfork “M”, and then back over at the black car with the twin hood scoops. A chill ran down his back and lifted the hairs on his neck.
“It’s something.” The sheriff said.
“Sheriff? You okay? Look like you seen a ghost.”
“You won’t find anything on this car.” The sheriff felt his face flush.
“Sir?” the Deputy stepped closer.
“I was a deputy when some guy was running Amphetamines out of Mexico back in the ‘70’s tried to outrun some state boys in Trigg County. When he finally stopped, they took turns popping him. Twelve shots before he went down. We responded as backup.” The sheriff stopped, taking a ragged breath.
“Can’t be the same car sir, that was thirty years ago.”
“It’s the same.” The sheriff dropped his eyes. “Dent in the driver’s side bumper. It’s about six to eight inches long, and there is a crack in the grille. A small one, just above the dent.”
“Yeah, I just wrote it up in the paperwork. What did McElwain hit?”
“McElwain? He didn’t hit anything. That fella thirty years ago hit a little girl and killed her. Didn’t even slow down.” The Sheriff wiped at his eyes, remembering seeing that little girl’s twisted body.
“So what do I do about the car, sir?”
Sheriff Henry Garrison stood and walked over to the open door. He could still see the little girl’s blonde hair stuck in the blood on the ground underneath her. He could see the white coroner’s sheet stained with her blood. Though it had been thirty years, and athletic Deputy Hank Garrison had become overweight Sheriff Henry Garrison, he smelled the unmistakable smell of “new car” coming from inside of the Demon. Taking a latex glove out of his pocket, he pushed the door closed. Overhead, the streetlight flickered and went out.

by Jeremy C. Shipp

read by Paul Elard Cooley

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Text removed at author’s request, but you may still listen here

by Amanda Borenstadt

read by T.C. Parmelee

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In a memory as clear as yesterday, I was a girl of eight, kneeling on the flagstone floor of our cottage watching over my father’s body, waiting for him to awaken. Until Ivan, my father’s friend and employee, put a blanket around my shoulders, I didn’t notice I was shivering. An autumn draft whisked about the old house and ruffled my black hair. It got colder in the little vale in the Carpathian Mountains than in California where we used to live, but I think my trembling was do to the horror earlier in the night rather than the chill.

Some called my father “eccentric” while others, such as his sister, muttered “insanity” behind his back. I thought then, as I do now, that he was a genius. Mother thought so too. Before she died, they conducted research together. I remember old leather bound books, bits of parchment, photocopied pages littering the table so that we had to eat dinner picnic style on the living room carpet. Talk was always about ancient legends and old newspaper stories of unexplained deaths and disappearances. While other children were read to sleep on storybook princesses and talking rabbits, I was told tales of vampires, werewolves, and other creatures that lurk in the shadows of human society.

While my mother was dying, the only change in their routine was the location of their discussions. The nurses grew accustom to the documents strewn across Mother’s hospital bed. She demanded that Daddy not halt his studies for her sake. He quit his position at the University without telling her, but I have a hunch she knew.

Daddy kept writing, but years later I discovered his only published works during that period were short stories in fantasy and horror magazines and the odd blurb in a tabloid beside articles about actresses giving birth to mutants. It seemed any credible journal had abandoned him. No wonder Mother’s last words to me were, “Stand by your daddy, Letty. Never believe he’s crazy no matter what anyone says.”

Just days after the funeral we packed up and moved to Romania. My father bought a stone cottage that had been vacant for decades. Locals claimed it was built by a mysterious foreigner known for his reclusive habits and nocturnal wanderings in the forest.

Ivan accompanied us on our move. Perhaps my father knew the old man would one day need to take guardianship of me. I don’t know what legal arrangement they had, but my aunt didn’t send for me until after Ivan’s death, a year after that strange and terrible night. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

There I knelt by my father. His face was ashen and his brown eyes were wide as if still staring at his terrifying assailant. It lay nearby in a pool of dark blood with three sharp wooden spikes protruding from its chest. The face contorted in pain and anger already showed signs of decay, though it was killed only hours before. I remembered what my father had told me, that this being, this Mr. Radul was centuries old.

“Only kill him if absolutely necessary, Ivan,” he had told our friend in a wistful voice. “Only if Letty’s in danger. This man is a living antique more precious than the oldest Mesopotamian vase.” This was weeks before Ivan and I saw the creature. It’s all well and good to speak so blasé when danger is nothing but theory.

I believe Daddy had been tracking Mr. Radul’s whereabouts for months. He may have actually lured him to us, though I never asked. My father was fascinated with the undead; spirits, poltergeists, Haitian zombies, but especially vampires. But Mr. Radul had no intention of being a topic of a dissertation, a test subject, nor interviewee.

We were gathered around the thick wooden table taking an evening meal of eggs and bread, when the door swung open, letting in a frigid wind. Like death, it extinguished our candles and hearth fire. Silhouetted against the night, a tall figure stood in the doorway. I heard Daddy’s chair scrape the flagstone floor and then his voice, choked with awe.

“Bună seara, prieten ,” my father said in Romanian, by way of a greeting.

“You are no friend of mine.” The stranger’s voice was jagged ice to my ears. His thick accent was impossible to identify. It rang of languages long dead. The emerald eyes glinted in the darkness as it moved into the room.

The door slammed, making me jump. I was enveloped in inky blackness until the candle flames and hearth fire sprang back to life. The figure strode toward my father, who stood with hand outstretched in welcome. I knew he’d been eager for this moment. “I can taste it, Letty,” Daddy told me earlier in the evening. “He will come.” I didn’t doubt him, though I wasn’t privy to the source of his conviction. It must have had something to do with his frequent excursions. He’d be gone days, sometimes weeks, while Ivan and I kept to the old house and amused ourselves with games and books.

Now the object of my father’s life-long obsession stood glaring over him. I tried not to move, not to breath. Mr. Radul’s focus was on my father, as if Ivan and I were nothing but a couple of house cats, mute and ineffectual witnesses.

“Sir,” breathed my father, “you are most welcome in this house.”

“Velcome? I need no velcome from you. Dis is my house and you are trespassers of my property and my business.”

“I assure you, Mr. Radul –”

My father’s words were cut off as the creature’s fingers grasped his throat. My father made a strangled choking cry and his eyes rolled back.

“No!” I shrieked, leaping from my chair. Ivan’s arm flew out in front of me, halting me from lunging at the murderous creature. The vampire bit deeply into my father’s throat. I heard the gurgling swallows as it drank Daddy’s blood while I watched in horrified silence. Something like a sated drunken smile curled the creature’s lips as it let my father’s body crumple to the flagstone floor. It turned to me.

I shuttered and realized Ivan was no longer beside me. I gasped as the vampire took a step forward, my father’s blood smeared across its gaunt face. Suddenly its body convulsed and it let out a scream I can hardly explain except to say that it was something like a hundred Tasmanian devils. Then I noticed the source of its vexation. The point of a wooden stake jutted out from its chest. Ivan had speared it from behind.

The creature collapsed. Ivan pounded two more stakes through its back. Thick dark blood oozed from the wounds and the body arched and then went rigid. Mr. Radul finally joined his ancestors in eternal sleep and Ivan and I were safe.

I knelt beside my father’s body, but I did not grieve because I knew deep inside my being he would reawaken as an undead. The faith of children isn’t easily daunted.

Hours passed and still no change. I began to nod off. The scrape of the vampire’s now putrid body being dragged out the door by Ivan jarred me awake.

“The smell is unbearable. Didn’t you notice?” said Ivan.

I didn’t answer, but studied Daddy’s face for any change. He looked like carved stone, cold and still.

When Ivan returned, he knelt beside me. “Letty, if he is… that is… has become one,” stuttered Ivan, avoiding the word, “we should put him below ground before dawn.”

Relieved to have something to do besides wait, I scrambled to my feet and grabbed a candle before hurrying to the kitchen, where I threw open the cellar door. I lit the way as Ivan struggled to drag Daddy down the steps into the dark abyss of the cellar. I insisted on making my comatose father comfortable and tucked wool blankets around him.

“He’ll be cold when he awakens,” I said in my innocence.

Ivan put a consoling hand on my shoulder. The tender gesture relaxed my vigilance and my frustration poured forth in tears. “Why isn’t he awake?”

Ivan crouched down and pulled me into an embrace. “He will awaken, Letty. You see, decay has not touched his body. It’s only a matter of time.”

“But I want him awake now.”

“Shh,” he soothed into my hair. “Your father was never sure of the exact process. Sources about the timetable for the return are contradictory. It may be hours, months, years. We just don’t know.”

At the first rays of dawn, the body of Mr. Radul spontaneously combusted. Within moments he was nothing but ash blowing away in the autumn wind. The ground was scorched where he had lain and nothing grew properly in that spot ever after.

For a year Ivan would allow me to fall asleep beside my father in the cellar and then carry me upstairs. For a year we waited. Then, one October morning, I awoke, still on the little pallet in the cellar, and I knew Ivan was dead. I found him slumped in a tapestry chair before the fire, his favorite book of poetry sprawled face down upon the floor. Robert Southwell. I picked it and glanced at the page to which it was open and read, “Remember, man, that thou art dust.”

Not a fool, even at the age of nine, I resolved to hide my father’s still perfectly preserved body before going for help. There was a low narrow recess in the back of the cellar where the walls were still bare earth. The bricks meant to finish the job were stacked nearby. I tied our goat to the blanket on which my father lay and together we dragged him into the recess. Then I spent the better part of the day bricking him in. To an outsider it would appear the cellar ended at that wall, or so I hoped. Only then did I walk down to the village to throw myself on their mercy.

Ivan was buried just outside our home. The villagers were so suspicious of that house that they didn’t want Ivan’s body lying among their own. The women descended on me. They took turns caring for me, having felt I’d been neglected without a mother’s care. I was groomed, dressed, and over fed before I was sent across the Atlantic to my aunt’s house in New England. I was educated in the best private school, doted on by various well meaning but persnickety relatives, but I never lost my resolve to return to my father’s crypt.

At twenty-one I went back to Romania accompanied by my dear friend, Harry. Our cottage was still unoccupied. The villagers were even more spooked by it after Ivan’s death and Daddy’s mysterious disappearance.

I went to the house, leaving Harry in the village. He was a darling, but I wanted to be alone. As I walked through the door, I felt as if I were stepping back in time. The furniture, books, even my rocking horse, stood covered in cobwebs. I passed through the kitchen, past dusty jars of preserves, and a kettle on the stove for tea never made.

I stopped at the cellar door and pressed my palm against it, as if I could feel what lay on the other side. So eager all those years and now petrified, I felt my heart pounding. As I opened the door, the hinges groaned in protest. I drew my flashlight from my purse and shone it down the stairs.

Dark places never bothered me as a child. It wasn’t until my teen years that I began to fear them. It’s my father, I reminded myself. I crept down the steps not knowing what I’d find, a skeletal corpse, an uncorrupted body, a sleeping vampire?

As best I could, I’d been gathering information on the subject- writing to friends of my parents, reading any scrap I could get hold of. I put together that the discrepancy between the undead/rebirth time spans of various fabled vampires was due to the fact that some victims drank the blood of their predators after being drained and some didn’t. My father never drank his attacker’s blood. Mr. Radul hadn’t intended to create a protégé of my father and therefore he went into a thirteen-year dormancy after the attack.

I didn’t presume that it would be thirteen years to the day, but I suspected it would be this month. Had it happened yet? Had Daddy awoken? Maybe it was just a fantasy, that year of sleeping by his side. Children will invent what they wish were so.

I shone my flashlight onto the brick wall I had built. Still intact. I walked to it, the dust of thirteen years in my nose, rats scurrying into the corners of the cellar. My fingers caressed the rough red bricks. I marveled at the job I’d done as a child. The wall went straight to the ceiling.

I breathed a breath of resolve and dropped my purse, stood the flashlight near it, and dragged an old wooden ladder over. I climbed up and began pulling out bricks and tossing them behind me. I tore at that wall until my nails were ragged and my knuckles bled.

Finally, when I’d opened a hole as large as two doorways, I picked up my flashlight, which was beginning to dim, and shone it inside. My father lay just as I remembered. No rat had ravaged him. No spider dared spin a web from him. There was a sprinkling of dust over his cold pallid face and the wool blanket I’d lovingly draped over him thirteen years before. I smiled in relief and felt warm tears on my cheeks. “Daddy,” I whispered.

I approached in solemn steps, then knelt beside him and reached out to touch his marble-like cheek. Would he recognize me after so long?

Planning for a wait, I went back to the village to buy groceries and collect my luggage. Harry drove me back that night. “You sure you don’t want me to stay?” he asked, after parking the little rental car in front of the old stone house.

“We’ve been through this. I’ll call you as soon as he awakens. I promise. Go back to the inn and rest easy. It won’t be tonight anyway.” I didn’t tell him that I worried Daddy would be confused and it might not be safe for him to meet Harry immediately upon awakening.

Before I climbed from the car, Harry thrust a crucifix and a UV flashlight into my hands. “Just in case, Letty.”

I boiled a pot of tea and went down to set up camp in the cellar so I could spend every possible moment beside Daddy. I was concerned he’d be disoriented when he awoke and would need me.

All evening I watched and waited by the light of my oil lamp. My mind began to play tricks on me. I’d stared at my father so long, I imagined his eyes moving behind their lids and the very faintest of smiles on his cold thin lips.

I must have dozed off at last because I was thrust awake by a long low groan. I fumbled for the knob on my gas lamp and turned it up. My father’s body was twisting and arching. His mouth gaped and let out another groan. I saw two long fangs like thorns, tapered to needle thin points. My breath caught in my throat and I felt a rush through my limbs and heart. I’d have my daddy back after all these years.

He rolled onto his stomach, rose to all fours, and stretched catlike. Still on hands and knees his head swiveled to face me and his eyes flipped open. Pale gray, they were. Nothing like the dark mahogany brown they were in life. They beheld me without recognition.

“Daddy,” I said, “it’s me, your Leticia.”

He made a sound like a gasp or else a hiss. I trembled as I scooted backwards away from him.

“You’ve been asleep thirteen years. You’re disoriented. It’s me, Letty.” I crouched, ready to spring up and run.

His nostrils flared and his eyes widened. “Hunger,” his voice rasped.

“I have…” My voice faded. He wasn’t hungry for food. He crawled toward me with a voracious leer. I grabbed my bag and scrambled to my feet. Ignoring the tears welling in my eyes and my doubts about Harry’s theories concerning ultraviolet light, I pulled out the UV flashlight and switched it on. To my relief and horror, when I shone it on his face, he yelped in pain and I heard the sizzling of flesh.

I shut it off. “I’m sorry. Please — “
He sprang at me, but was halted in midair by a shot that rang in the enclosed space of the cellar. He fell hard. I turned around and saw Harry at the bottom of the steps with a revolver in one hand and a wooden stake in the other.

I gasped as he hefted the stake, then I spun to face my father with my protective arms spread wide. “Daddy!” I cried, as the stake streaked past and impaled him through the chest. I reached him before his life fled. He fell into my arms and I stumbled to my knees.

I cradled him in my lap. His eyes flickered and I saw something familiar in them, before they closed forever. His lips moved and his voice was wistful as it had been in life when he thought something especially precious.

“Letty.”

-the end-

by Ann Hite

read by Amy Tapia

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Mama warned Nellie against marrying Hobbs Pritchard. She saw the future in her tealeaves, an omen, death. Mama refused to attend the ceremony, which wasn’t much to speak of, just the Baptist preacher, a Bible, and words; words that bound Nellie for the rest of her life.

But, Hobbs was so cute. His eyes reminded her of a crystal-clear winter sky; it didn’t take much to make Nellie see life his way. In those first days of sweet romance, if Hobbs Pritchard asked her to jump off a bridge, she would have done it with a smile on her face. Mama always said not to love a man too much; a woman should save some love back to care for herself. Nellie loved Hobbs with everything in her; besides, she had to marry him. He kissed her full on the mouth and ran his hand inside her shirt and that sealed the deal.
Their honeymoon consisted of one night in the back room of Mr.

Hamby’s store. Hobbs paid real good money for the privilege and decided he needed to get his money’s worth. His body hammered into Nellie, drinking that love she offered in one sloppy gulp. When it was over, he left her alone, no kiss or hug, but he wasn’t much on either. Nellie lay on the cot thinking of ways she could soften him.

Hobbs moved Nellie to Black Mountain the next day. The leaves had turned the mountain a brilliant orange, red, and gold. Mama cried like a baby. She stood in the door of the farm, twisting her long skirt in weathered worn fingers. “Nothing will ever be the same. You’ll never come back home, Nellie girl.”

They settled in a cabin two miles up the mountain from Hobbs’s family. The winter was colder than Nellie could remember, but Hobbs always brought food home. Still, the cabin walls seemed to close around her. With the first spring thaw, Nellie took to walking the paths through the woods.

Hobbs stayed gone most of the time on business. One morning a fog moved in as she walked the path. Familiar landmarks disappeared, but Nellie had a good sense of direction and didn’t worry too much until she saw a man standing in the path ahead.

“Are you lost sir?” He was ill-fit for the area, a town man, dressed in tailored clothes, but his knees were dirty.

“The fog plays tricks on people.” He looked through Nellie.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. “Well, I got to get home.”

He nodded and walked into the woods and disappeared into the fog.

Nellie’s mother in-law came to visit that afternoon after the fog burned off and the day turned cheery. Hobbs had been gone for nearly a week; Nellie began to feel his absences like a tiny cut on the end of the finger; she would forget it was there until she touched on it and then, the pain would cut right through her.

“Hobbs is just like that honey. You can’t go changing a man. If that’s what you got in your head, forget it. He’s too much like his daddy.

That man made a name for himself, a shameful name with women, but you look at me; I’m stronger for it.”

The words crashed through Nellie’s mind. “I’m sure Hobbs is not like that. He loves me.”

“Well, sure he do, Nellie. It ain’t got a thing to with love.

It’s more like a sport; you know a man’s thing.”

Nellie rushed forward with talk to shut up the foolish woman. “I saw a man in the woods today. He looked lost. I asked him if I could help, but he just spoke nonsense.”

Mrs. Pritchard grasped her chest. “Lordy be child, that’s the ghost of Merlin Hocket. He came here twenty years ago to measure the mountain. Worked for the government. Got lost in the fog and walked off a cliff. Found him dead in the creek. It preserved him right nice since the water was so cold. Folks that see him always have some kind of doom come their way. I ain’t never heard a soul say he talked to them.”

“He didn’t look like a ghost.”

“Most ghosts don’t look like ghosts. They look like you and me.”

She looked around Nellie’s cabin. “You’re spending too much time by yourself. I want you to come help us quilt. Us girls meet every Thursday.

You plan on being there.”

“What kind of doom?” Nellie thought of Mama’s tealeaves.

“Last person to spot the ghost was Mrs. Carson; her husband burned in his barn three days later. Of course, I always said he was making shine and the still exploded, but that’s not for me to say. The time before that was when the government people brought that Spanish influenza, gave it to Henry Marks. He died in two days. It like to have wiped out half of the mountain. We don’t have to worry about that anymore. All them government people have now is the depression, and Lord knows we here on Black Mountain know all about lack of money. We could teach those rich fools how to live.”

Nellie nodded hoping Mrs. Pritchard would leave.

“Now, you just plan on quilting. I’ll send Tom around for you.”

“Thank you, but I’m not much of a quilter. I like gardens. I’m going to plant me a nice one right out there.” She pointed to the flat piece of land before the yard sloped off.

“Quilting is just as important as gardening. Did your mama teach you anything?” Mrs. Pritchard said this over her shoulder as she left.

Nellie marked the corners of her garden plot. Flowers in between rows of practical vegetables would be just the frame for the mountains in the distance. On a clear day, she could see rows and rows of mountains like waves rolling in on the beach. She saw the beach once as a child. Daddy took her and Mama on a trip to the Low Country of South Carolina to see his parents. Poor as they were they had the best place in the world to live.

Nellie hadn’t seen her grandparents since the day Daddy died and they came to take his body home. Mama said that was fine because he loved that country so much; she couldn’t imagine him anywhere else.

Nellie’s garden plot was rocky and hard to turn with the hoe, but Nellie put all her energy into the work. This helped keep the images of Hobbs with other women at bay. He wouldn’t do that to her. She knew this, but sometimes, he lost interest as she talked; his eyes glazed over, and he never noticed when she quit talking in mid-sentence. But, that was just his way.

Two weeks later, he came home late and jumped on the bed; he torn at her nightgown buttons. She pushed at him from a deep sleep. The back of his hand crashed across her face.

“You’re my wife. I can do what I want.” He ripped her gown away; the only gown she owned.

The smell of whiskey, sweat and something sweet-roses maybe-gagged her. “Hobbs please.”

He punched her head. “Shut up!” He forced himself inside of her.

Fear paralyzed her. When Hobbs was finished with his fun, he rolled over and began to snore. The smell drove her from the bed and she lost her supper.

Her husband was sleeping with other women. What could she do?

Hobbs came to life around two the next afternoon. Nellie heard him slamming around in the house. She worked with her hoe, turning the dirt for her garden. Planting season would be upon her.

“What are you doing, woman?” Hobbs stood in the door without a shirt, his pants unbuttoned.

She prayed to God that she would be spared from him and kept working the dirt.

“Talk to me woman! I make plenty of money selling shine. You don’t need no damn garden!”

“I’m making a garden, Hobbs.”

“We need a child, a boy to follow in his old man’s footsteps.

Come here.”

She looked at the man who once thrilled her and now made her sick and continued to turn the dirt.

“Did you hear me?” His voice roared.

Nellie stopped hoeing. “I want to go back to my mother.”

Hobbs covered the distance between them in three steps, grabbing the hoe and throwing her to the ground. He punched her until she became numb and accepted she might die. He shoved her face into the fresh damp dirt.

When she woke, he was no where to be seen, but Nellie didn’t take any chances. She lay still for a while, waiting. The taste of salty blood was in her mouth. Finally she struggled to her feet and walked the two miles to her mother in-law’s farm.

Mrs. Pritchard was washing clothes by the creek. The horror on her face told Nellie how bad she looked. “What in the world happen child?”

Mrs. Pritchard jumped to her feet.

Nellie wasn’t sure that her voice worked. “Hobbs beat me.”

Mrs. Pritchard stepped back a step. “What did you do?” When Nellie didn’t answer, she spoke again. “It’s just part of life, dear.”

Nellie’s ears rang. “I want to go to my mama.”

“You can’t go. You’re Hobbs’s wife. A husband can do what he wants.”

Nellie turned to leave, a dull thought knocking in her head.

“Not my husband,” she whispered.

“What did you say dear?” Mrs. Pritchard stepped forward. “Let me see to those bruises and cuts.”

Nellie kept walking. “Thank you, no.”

“Don’t cause no more trouble for yourself, Nellie. He’s probably left for a while. Fix him a real nice dinner and make yourself pretty.”

Nellie laughed at the sky and kept walking. Mrs. Pritchard kept talking, but Nellie couldn’t hear her.

She walked home through the woods, slow, thinking. The strange mad stood in the path-this time with no fog. He stared into her eyes.

“Sometimes, you think you’re lost but really you’re not.” He turned and walked away.

That afternoon, Nellie chopped firewood; over and over, she split logs into pieces. Then, she heated water and soaked in lavender Mama had sent with her. She chose a loose fitting dress and allowed her hair to hang free, flowing down her back and over her shoulders. A fire warmed the cabin; extra logs were stacked on the hearth; the ax leaned against the firewood. She waited in the rocker until sleep got the best of her.

Hobbs bent over the rocker, a hand on each arm, trapping her.

“Look at you. I guess a good beating now and then does just the thing. Makes you realize how lucky you are.”

She smiled as if in a dream and thought of the man in the fog.

“What you smiling at?” He smelled of whiskey.

“I’ll show you if you let me stand.”

He grinned and moved away. “Now, don’t you try anything funny, or I’ll beat you again.”

She stood and dropped her dress to the floor. Her body reflected the burses, but Hobbs didn’t seem to notice. “I want to show you what I can do, Hobbs.” She guided him to the floor on top of the rug in front of the hearth and dropped to her knees beside Hobbs, leaving the terrible compromise in the shadows. The person who mounted Hobbs turned the wind into the hot breath of the devil. She embraced the heat and opened her mind to freedom. And, for a fraction of a moment, she owned him.

When he slept, snoring on the rug, she stood, clasped the ax in her hands; the weight slung over her head nearly buckled her knees. The room spun and thunder rumbling in the distance shook the cabin. The moist air would bring a fog. She swung with all her might and splintered her prison.

Her sin spilled all over the rug Mama had woven and Nellie deeply regretted that.

A fog moved in at dawn rolling into the open windows. She worked on the clean up until the fog burned away and the sun rode the sky. The fireplace coals and ashes were sprinkled over the rich dirt of her garden.

As the hoe turned them into the ground, she repeated a prayer.

“Dear God forgive, please forgive me.”

His head was all that remained. Even she couldn’t destroy his face; instead, she pushed it through a hole in a hollow tree on the edge of the property, overlooking the garden.

Three weeks passed and the weather turned hot. Nellie gave the whole cabin a good cleaning and found time to plant her garden. When Tom, Hobbs’s baby brother, came for her on Thursdays, she went to the quilting, smiling. At night, she slept the sleep of innocence, safe. In the sixth week, she wrote a letter:

Dear Mama:

Your prediction came true. I am now free to plant my garden.

Love you forever

Nellie

She walked the letter to Mrs. Pritchard’s house, hoping Tom would carry it to Mama on his next trip down the mountain.

Mrs. Pritchard held the letter in her hand. “What’s Hobbs say about this?”

Nellie shrugged. “Hasn’t been home.”

“Has he ever stayed gone this long?”

“Oh yes, he stayed gone eight weeks in the winter.” Nellie pointed to the letter. “You can read it if you like.” Mrs. Pritchard could read a flour sack.

“I can’t read your writing.” She shoved the letter at Nellie.

Nellie read it aloud. “You see, nothing bad.”

“What was your mama’s prediction.”

“Doom. She was right.”

Mrs. Pritchard looked away. “Tom said you have a mighty bad smell up there around the cabin. Said it smelled like something dead.”

“I know that smell is horrible. I had a coon hanging around, but I haven’t seen him in six days. The smell is coming from the old hollow tree.”

“Get some lime out of the shed, sprinkle it around the tree and in it. He probably crawled in there to die. Could be rabid.”

“I bet you’re right about that.”

Nellie scooped her a small sack of lime and walked home.

Two months went by and Nellie was nested in the cabin good. Mrs. Pritchard got real desperate, sending Tom down the mountain in search of Hobbs.

Nellie just smiled, shrugged, and worked her garden, which flourished. Each morning Nellie got out of bed, threw up, and went to work in the garden before she could coax a piece of bread down. Sometimes she thought of the hollow tree, but mostly she thought of the future and actions she needed to take.

Tom came home, telling his mama that Hobbs hadn’t seen his girlfriend Rose in over a month. Nellie had dropped by for some flour-she was running low-and just bit the inside of her lip until it bled. Tom started asking her questions about what Hobbs was wearing the last time Nellie saw him. She said she couldn’t remember, probably his old overalls. He wore them all the time.

“I want to come look around the cabin.”

“You’re welcome.” Nellie looked him dead in the eye.

That night it stormed. She found an old shirt of Hobbs’s and a pair of overalls. She stood in front of his shaving mirror and cut her hair until it was close to her head and she looked a lot like a boy. At dawn a fog rolled in and Nellie harnessed the horse, stuck a hat on her head, and hid her belongings under the seat. She didn’t take much, only some old dresses she could tear apart for baby clothes and the hundred dollars she found on Hobbs. She wished she could visit Mama, but the prediction had been right.

Nellie could and would not go home.

Tom Pritchard passed her on his way to search her cabin. He would find a fire burning, breakfast dishes on the table, a bright new rug, hooked by Nellie, and a note saying she had gone for a walk in the woods.

Years later when Maria begged her mother to tell a story, Nellie told the legend of Black Mountain, and how the young wife who grieved over her husband walked off into the fog never to be found.