TABLE OF CONTENTS Issue 13, October 2013

FROM THE EDITOR Editorial, October 2013 by John Joseph Adams

FICTION 10/31: Bloody Mary by Norman Partridge All You Can Do is Breathe by Kaaron Warren The Crowgirl by Megan Arkenberg The Score by Alaya Dawn Johnson

NONFICTION The H Word: Reveling in the Literary by F. Brett Cox Artist Gallery: Peter Mohrbacher Artist Spotlight: Peter Mohrbacher by Julia Sevin Interview: Margo Lanagan by Lisa Morton

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS Norman Partridge Kaaron Warren Megan Arkenberg Alaya Dawn Johnson

MISCELLANY Coming Attractions Subscriptions & Ebooks

© 2013 Nightmare Magazine Cover Art by Peter Mohrbacher www.nightmare-magazine.com Editorial, October 2013 John Joseph Adams

Welcome to issue thirteen of Nightmare!

Wow, has it really been a whole year already? It’s true! We launched back in October 2012, so this month’s issue is our anniversary issue—happy birthday to us! You really don’t need to get us anything, but if you insist, now would be a wonderful time to subscribe; or, if you already do, tell a friend!

Thanks to all of our wonderful writers and our ever- vigilant and hardworking staff that have helped us get to this point. And, of course, thanks too to all of you—the readers who have supported us since our inception; we’re glad to see you sticking with us, and to see your ranks growing by leaps and bounds. Here’s to the next twelve months and beyond!

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In other news, over in the Nightmare ebookstore (nightmare-magazine.com/store), I just wanted to point out that we currently have the following ebook bundles available:

Nightmare (Issues 1-6)—$14.99 Nightmare (Issues 7-12)—$14.99 Nightmare (Year One: Issues 1-12)—$24.99

Buying a Bundle gets you a copy of every issue published during the named period. Buying either of the half-year Bundles saves you $3 (so you’re basically getting one issue for free), or if you spring for the Year One Bundle, you’ll save $11 off the cover price. So if you need to catch up on Nightmare, that’s a great way to do so.

Of course, if you don’t want to buy a Bundle, you can also just purchase an individual ebook issue, or if you’d like to subscribe directly from us, you can do that too. All purchases from the Nightmare store are provided in both epub and mobi format. Visit nightmare- magazine.com/subscribe to learn more about all of our subscription options.

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With our announcements out of the way, here’s what we’ve got on tap in October: We have original fiction from Megan Arkenberg (“The Crowgirl”) and Norman Partridge (“10/31: Bloody Mary”), along with reprints by Kaaron Warren (“All You Can Do is Breathe”) and Alaya Dawn Johnson (“The Score”).

We also have the latest installment of our column on horror, “The H Word,” plus author spotlights with our authors, a showcase on our cover artist, and a feature interview with award-winning author Margo Lanagan.

That’s about all I have for you this month, but before I step out of your way and let you get to the fiction, here are a few URLs you might want to check out or keep handy if you’d like to stay apprised of everything new and notable happening with Nightmare:

Website www.nightmare-magazine.com

Newsletter www.nightmare-magazine.com/newsletter

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Twitter www.twitter.com/nightmaremag

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Subscribe www.nightmare-magazine.com/subscribe

Thanks for reading!

John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publisher and editor of Nightmare (and its sister magazine, Lightspeed), is the bestselling editor of many anthologies, such as The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Oz Reimagined, Epic: Legends of Fantasy, Other Worlds Than These, Armored, Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, The Living Dead, The Living Dead 2, By Blood We Live, Federations, The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and The Way of the Wizard. He is a six-time finalist for the Hugo Award and a five-time finalist for the World Fantasy Award. He is also the co-host of Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams. 10/31: Bloody Mary Norman Partridge

The boy never goes out in daylight. Oh, he could, and some do . . . but he doesn’t. Maybe that’s why he is still alive. He holes up in crawlspaces during the day. There are five houses he uses in rotation, all abandoned, none occupied by the dead or the living. As the world spins and sunlight and shadows travel the rooftops of his little town, he listens for a floorboard creak that doesn’t belong, hoping he won’t be discovered by the familiar boogeymen that have made this world their own since the dawning of 10/31—werewolves and witches, mummies and zombies, and other nameless things the boy would rather never see. The boy isn’t very large. The way things are these days, he figures that’s a plus. He is less of a target at night, and for this reason he has come to trust the darkness. Strange to trust darkness in a world overrun with nightmares . . . but that’s the way it is. It is not an exciting life. At night, the boy forages. He clings to the black spaces, shunning lightning flash and Jack o’ Lantern glow. During the day, he matches his silence with stillness. Occasionally, he dozes. Mostly, he spends his time with a flashlight and books, or sometimes a magazine. He likes the old ones with gory covers and pictorial articles about monsters, because they teach him secrets about the things he wants to avoid. On cold days he waits among wall studs and insulation, and on hot days he tucks himself next to cool concrete foundation. He lurks between sour earth and floorboards that rarely creak with tread inhuman or human, and he moves little or not at all, and he reads and learns, and he waits for night. He waits until the pumpkins start to scream.

* * * *

The pumpkins sit on porches. They sit there night and day. Some of them for years now. The ones that survived grew and thrived in ways that most pumpkins don’t, while the others rotted long ago. After the first calendar page was left unturned in the wake of 10/31, those ordinary pumpkins began the fast slide from orange to black. Within days their mouths were choked with cobwebs of mold. Within weeks their eyes collapsed into noses and their grins sagged into rotten frowns, as if with some strange withering disease. The ones that didn’t sluice away in the first rains petrified long ago. Those that remain are dry mummified memories of a world that no longer exists, as much a part of ancient history as candy, and costumes, and the idea of trick or treat itself. But those other pumpkins, the ones that thrived— They also sit on porches, but like sentinels. Survivors call them Jacks. They gleam, as if freshly waxed at the pumpkin patch. Razor teeth bear the dewy shine of pumpkin-sap, giving the illusion that a carving knife had touched them only seconds before. And they scream just as twilight disappears, a signal to the new masters of this bleak world as surely as a cockcrow once marked time for those who trod an older and brighter one. But the Jacks are quiet in the daylight, unless something gives them cause not to be. Something like a cat. The Jacks like cats. And this particular Jack, waiting unnoticed on a porch, is no different. But this particular cat is wary. It knows things have changed. This suburban block, its entire world. The family that cared for it is gone, and the place that was once its home is now a hovel for a brutish monster that (long ago) bashed out doors along with the frames which held them in order to accommodate its bulk. Just down the block, that creature sleeps (in daylight) on a pile of mattresses heaped on the sagging living room floor. Were the cat to scent those mattresses, it could still identify a faint trace of its owners. But then again, it would also scent them on a pile of gnawed bones long forgotten in one corner of the kitchen. But the cat has survived, though there is much that has disappeared from its world and its memory. It has forgotten its own name, and other once-familiar behavioral triggers are buried so deeply they might as well be forgotten—the vacuum snap of a cat-food can opening, the heady scent of a catnip mouse, the rhythmic music of its own purr. But some memories and some triggers—the enduring kind—have kept the cat alive, and one of those is still familiar, even in this new world. That is the scent of a rat. A hard fist of hunger swells in the cat’s belly as it creeps toward a fat knothole in the sagging porch. Its green eyes spy rat droppings along the railing that borders the hole, along with threads of gray-black hair around the splintered edges of the hole itself. Close enough now, and still crouching, the cat waits for a meal to appear. It will wait a long time if it has to, but the watcher behind it will not wait. The Jack is ready for a meal, too. The cat has not even noticed it, for the huge pumpkin seems nothing more than an inanimate object. The Jack’s jaws gape silently, stretching into a spiked cavern of a maw. And it is only when that spiked cavern yawns wide that the cat becomes aware. Not of danger. For the cat is only aware of a meaty smell more enticing than a rat, a sudden scent that makes its stomach rumble in a way even the largest rat never could. Yes. This is a scent that stirs very old memories. It’s a T-bone fresh out of the butcher paper kind of scent, and it triggers a hardwired feline response. The animal turns, just a little dizzily, ready to pounce on the prize. Already half-hypnotized as so many other animals have been by the Jacks, the cat is just about to spring directly into the mouth of the creature which has lured it when— A young woman shouts: “Bad kitty! SCAT!” The cat springs from the porch, not even seeing the shadowy figure sitting on a garden swing a dozen yards away. The Jack sees that figure clearly, eyes brightening to fiery red in seconds, gaping jaws ready to scream an alarm. But in this moment seconds might as well be hours, because this game is played much, much faster. “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick,” the young woman says. “Or not.” She fires a sawed-off shotgun. The Jack disappears along with a fat circle of wall. * * * *

The Remington’s recoil bucks the swing backwards, and the young woman laughs as she takes a little ride. Back and forth, back and forth. Meaty orange guts drip down the ventilated wall, and the swing rocks some more as the Jack expires. And the chain creaks for a while, and the woman laughs for a while, and then both sounds are gone at the same time. A few final splats on the porch, and all is quiet. The young woman sets the sawed-off shotgun on the swing, within easy reach. There’s room for two here on the old- fashioned glider, but she’s a solo rider. At least she has been until now. Just her and her pal Remington. That’s the way this ride goes, and every ride she’s taken for the last year, since the dawn of 10/31. It used to be different, of course. Used to be . . . for a lot of people. And lately she’s been thinking. Just lately she can’t stop wondering if maybe, just maybe it would be easier if she wasn’t alone. Not the way she used to play it in that other world before this one. But different this time. Different, like— No. The woman shakes the thought away. She doesn’t like to think. Not too much. That causes trouble, stirs things up. Old things and new things. So she looks around instead. There’s no sign of movement. The cat is gone. All that’s left is her wheelbarrow parked next to the swing. It’s heaped with her belongings, and she rises long enough to burrow into a canvas sack and dig out a can of Friskies. The young woman figures the cat will return if she gives it a reason. Pop. Whisper. There’s a faded fluorescent green Frisbee hiding in the dead weeds of what used to be the front lawn, and she snags it without getting scratched by prickles. She fishes a clasp knife out of her pocket and opens the blade. By the time she’s emptied half the cat food onto the Frisbee, the scrawny black furball is poking its head around the weather-beaten front gate. “Hey,” the young woman says. “C’mon. It’s chowtime.” The cat regards her. She finishes dishing up and slides the faux bowl onto the cracked cement path that snakes from the front gate to the porch steps. Then she settles back onto the swing, raises one boot and tucks it under one knee, and knives a slab of cat food into her mouth. “Ummm,” she says. “Salmon. You’re missing a treat, stupid.” The cat looks at her, still considering. It seems like it takes forever, but the young woman kind of admires that. And then the cat comes. Not to her. To the food.

* * * *

The young woman can’t understand why the others are taking so long. Because there are always others. That’s why she fired the sawed-off shotgun. Oh, sure, she doesn’t like Jacks. She would have smoked that nosy little first-alert hunk of monster anyway. But she wants to know if there are others around, especially the more serious variety of shamblers from the dark. She’s dead tired and she needs to sleep somewhere safe tonight, and this gone-to-seed suburban block of sleepy little nowhere seems as good a place as any to rest her head. Long story short: that’s why she did the dirty with her kick-in-the-door Remington. She figured it would wake up the neighbors. She doesn’t want any neighbors tonight. No. What she wants is to drop fifty milligrams of Diphenhydramine Hydrochloride and sleep like the dead. Hence: the shotgun and the rest of the armory that waits in the wheelbarrow. Hence: the waiting for neighbors. The young woman smiles. Fifty milligrams. Such a neat little number. She thinks of the old days, and other drugs she never measured with numbers. Ones that weren’t so neat, and the places that matched them— No . . . no. Right now, this place is all that matters . . . this place. And this place is quiet. Like: proverbial tomb quiet. It’s only been maybe half a minute since she smoked the Jack, but she’s already impatient, mostly with herself and the memories that chew at her from around the corners. So she closes her eyes and thinks of the fifty milligrams. That’s comforting. And ten seconds beyond the comfort zone she decides that she actually did get lucky and find herself a hunk of deserted post-apocalyptic paradise. And: whoops. That’s when the front door creaks open at the house next door, and the young woman opens her eyes just in time to see the first neighbor. She puts down the cat food can and grabs the shotgun. Surprise, surprise. It’s not a gargoyle, or a goblin, or a zombie. It’s a boy . . . sixteen or seventeen, maybe. But on the scrawny side.

* * * * If the boy hadn’t been asleep in the crawlspace when the shotgun went off, he never would have taken a chance like this. But he was asleep. Not dozing this time. Dreaming the sweetest kind of dream—a rescue operation. Marines rappelling from choppers. Shock troops on the ground. Monsters screaming and gunfire barking. Demon blood running in the gutters. All in the middle of the day. So the boy exits the crawlspace double-quick, expecting that the cavalry (in some form) has arrived at long last. After all, he’s certain he heard the gunfire— maybe he heard some of the other stuff, too. He advances through the dark house, banging down the hallway like a drunk, yanking the front doorknob. He hasn’t yanked a doorknob that way in a long time, not since that last unwary, expectant night when he went trick or treating and left the old world behind. But now— No Marines in the street. No Marines at all. Just one person there waiting . . . a woman. Maybe eighteen? Maybe twenty? She’s sitting on the porch swing in front of the old Miller place next door. At least he thinks it is a woman. It’s hard to tell. She looks a little bit like a few of the witches he’s seen. And no . . . she doesn’t have a broom. She has a shotgun, and it’s pointed right at him. That makes it difficult to concentrate. On the woman, especially. Because she is dressed like a witch, or someone’s idea of a witch. Big boots . . . the kind the boy's dad always called Doc Martens even if they were really some other brand. Ripped black hose and a ruffled black skirt. A tight orange-and-black striped sweater and— “Don’t move,” the woman says. Their eyes lock. Hers are behind a mask. Not an expensive one. A little blonde princess mask, chopped off just under the pert little plastic nose so the boy can see the woman’s lips and the violet scar that slices past them and — “You’re moving again,” the woman says. “I told you not to do that.” This time the boy freezes. He thinks maybe he should raise his hands, but that would be moving too, wouldn’t it? Maybe he should ask her if he should do that. Maybe — A rumble-of-thunder kind of sound, just across the street. Only bigger than thunder. Angrier. Like part of the world just caught a big left hook and is pissed off about it. The boy’s head jerks to see. Oh, no. He’s moving again, and he wasn’t supposed to do that. But the woman is moving, too. She rises, whirling, a sawed-off shotgun in her hands. A cyclops bursts through the ruined doorway of the house across the street. Scaled and the color of a dead fish, the monster ducks its huge head and dips its shoulders as it clip-clops off the porch, pug-dog nose twitching as it catches human scent. Then it leers, and the bloodshot eye in its forehead blinks a single time, narrowing as it spots the young woman with the gun. A moment later the cyclops is charging, head inclined beneath a horn as thick as a rhino’s horn, hooves bucking a double-gallop beat across the cracked pavement of Maple Street. Just that fast, the woman puts the shotgun to work. Thunder fills the street, each blast severing the previous one’s echo. The storm of sound caroms between sagging houses, and the monster roars in reply. Windows rattle. Stray shot bucks off the pavement, shattering one window and pockmarking another as the woman continues firing, hunching tight, her muscles tensed against the Remington’s recoil, her cropped red hair flying back as if blown by a heavy wind. The cyclops hunches, too— staggering backward with each blast as shot excavates a cavern in its belly—first stripping dead-fish scale, then flesh and muscle, and at last the part the killer with the shotgun thinks of as the chewy center . . . the sweetest secret treat of all. The hot stink of gunpowder wraps the woman like a shroud. The sawed-off shotgun is empty now. She drops it and draws a revolver from the holster strapped around her waist. She cocks the hammer as the cyclops totters on cloven hooves, its blood spattering cracked pavement like red rain. The monster’s massive chin tilts forward, and then it avalanches. The pavement bucks and ripples as the horned beast meets the street. The woman’s back is already turned when that happens. She advances on the boy. “They call me Bloody Mary,” she says, her footfalls marking the spaces between her words. “What’s your name?” The boy barely hears the question. The half-a-princess mask and the eyes inside it say more than words. The woman’s eyes are piercing. Burning. Below them, that violet scar runs like an arrow from the woman’s cheek to her jawline, and it points at the revolver below, at Bloody Mary’s finger on the trigger. That finger is twitching— just a little, and not enough to pull the curved bit of metal —but the finger doesn’t stop. Twitching . . . twitching . . . The cyclops is twitching too. And then its hooves rattle against bloody roadbed one last time and it’s dead. The boy still doesn’t speak. The woman does. “It doesn’t really matter,” she says, breaking the silence that seems very small in the wake of the shotgun roar and the roar of the cyclops. “I mean, your name. If it’s Joey or Mark or Bill. Those kind of names don’t mean anything anymore. Names should mean something more now. They need to get up and talk and tell you something. That’s all they’re good for.” Bloody Mary turns and leaves the words hanging in the air, like the stink of gunpowder. At least, it seems that way to the boy. And the next thing he knows, the woman has yanked a chainsaw alive. She sets to work on the cyclops’ horn, whirring metal teeth spitting fragments of bone and flesh as she severs it like a dead branch. The horn hits the street. Bloody Mary picks it up, hefts it, turns, and enters the house the boy exited. At that moment, the boy is ready to run. He glances at the front porch of the old Miller place—the shotgunned hole in the wall and the dead Jack puddled before it in a melted heap, already buzzing with flies the size of rats. He eyes the cyclops, waiting for another twitch. He stares up the street and down, listening for a werewolf’s howl, or the shuffling steps of a mummy, or the heavy tread of a stitched, dead giant charged with lightning and dark magic. After all, another monster might have heard all that noise . . . and that means another monster—or more than one—might be coming. But the boy hears not a single footfall. The only thing waiting for him is the woman’s voice, coming from the open door. “You get one chance,” she says, “and then this door closes.”

* * * *

That night is the first one (in a long time) that the boy spends as he’d once spent so many nights—in a house, in a room filled with bright light, with another person. But not his mother, and not his father, and not a brother or sister. All those people are dead. Bloody Mary is not like any of them. She sits at the dining room table, the disassembled shotgun spread across the wooden surface. The room smells of gun oil and propane, and the only sounds are the hiss of the camping lantern in the middle of the table and the scrape of little metal brushes she uses to clean the Remington. The black cat is sleeping on a bundle of blankets in the corner, and though Bloody Mary says nothing about it, she often glances at the animal. The cyclops tusk lays on the edge of the table, the meat around the root turning black. Though Bloody Mary stares at it, too, her thoughts are elsewhere now . . . and so are the boy’s. “When you killed that Jack,” he begins. “The one on the porch of the old Miller place. Did the lights go on?” “What do you mean?” “Well, did its eyes start to glow before you killed it? If that happened, someone might have seen you . . . and the house, too.” “You mean something might have seen me. Back at Halloween Central Control, or whatever you want to call it.” “Yes.” The boy stares down at his hands lying in his lap, suddenly nervous about the light in the room, and the drapes that aren’t drawn, and the windows that reveal nothing but opaque blackness out in the street. “I guess that’s what I mean.” “Uh-huh.” The violet scar on Bloody Mary’s cheek bends like a drawn bowstring as she smiles. “You think that something would care about you? Specifically? Something smart . . . something that’s actually in control? Is that what you’re saying?” “Well . . . ” “Like maybe: the gods of this new world, or the dead god from the old one, or maybe the universe itself? You figure one of those things would single you out for special attention?” “I don’t know anything about gods or the universe. I only know that it doesn’t pay to take chances. And I know the Jacks see things, and then the other things come. They’re like guard dogs. A few weeks ago I was scavenging in one of those big warehouse stores and a Jack saw me. The next thing I knew, six goblins riding giant bats were flying around the parking lot. A couple of them got inside the store, and I barely had a chance to hide. They almost found me and—” “Nice little story. I’m sure it has a happy ending, and you scuttled away and hid like a roach. But why do you think the Jacks would care about you? Specifically? You’re no threat. You’re not even much of a meal. You’re not even two bites.” “Yes I am.” “Not for a werewolf, you’re not. Right now you’re barely even two bites for me. And I’ll bet that cat over there would chew you down to gristle and bone if it was hungry enough.” The boy looks down at his hands. They just lay there in his lap. He has to admit that his fingers are very narrow, and his palms seem like they can barely hold the skin that covers them. Truthfully, that is the case, so he doesn’t say another word. “You’re thinking,” Bloody Mary says. “That’s a start.” The boy nods, but he doesn’t speak. “Look at me,” Bloody Mary says, and the boy raises his head. Their eyes lock. And he’s surprised at the eyes inside the half-a-princess mask. Because even in this moment—here, in a room like this, with a cat curled in the corner—Bloody Mary’s eyes are piercing . . . burning . . . angry . . . just as they were in the moments after she killed the cyclops. “You’ve got a lot to learn before something cares enough to notice you,” she says. “Someone, too. That’s Lesson One—remember it.” Bloody Mary’s head inclines. The scar on her cheek points at the work on the table below. She reassembles the shotgun. Clicks, snaps, metallic slaps. The sounds remind the boy of a machine running. Then Bloody Mary loads the weapon, each sound percussive, measured. After that, it is quiet in the room. “You can sleep where you want,” Bloody Mary says finally. “I’m sleeping upstairs.” * * * *

When Bloody Mary climbs the staircase to the second floor and the door to the master bedroom closes, the boy wanders through the other rooms with a flashlight. He can’t settle in any of them, so he goes to his usual spot— the crawlspace above the second floor. He doesn’t realize until later that the bedroom below his nest is the one where Bloody Mary is sleeping. He lays there in the dark, listening, but she doesn’t make a sound. Soon the silence is almost hypnotizing, and it seems to ring in his ears. Then he begins to hear other things, echoes from the day—the shotgun blasts, and Bloody Mary’s words, and the sound of the Remington being cleaned and assembled. Each sound seems to have its own particular cadence, and together they seem to lull him more than the silence as he considers the woman in the room beneath the crawlspace, and who she might have been before, and who she is now. And those thoughts travel in circles, and the circles form suppositions that lead to Bloody Mary’s eyes, and her mask, and her scar, and the things she carries, and the boy’s thoughts follow that path . . . ’round and ’round and ’round. Before he knows it, he’s asleep. It’s a long sleep, and deeper than any he’s had in the last year. When he awakens, he is disoriented. Then he remembers the events of the previous afternoon, and the previous night. The first thing he feels is safe. That is a surprise. He rolls over, grabs the flashlight, and thumbs the button. Bloody Mary’s face is only a few feet away, behind the half-a-princess mask. The flashlight beam catches her eyes, and— Teeth flashing, the woman slams the pistol against the boy’s head. The flashlight flies from his grasp, and the batteries pop out, and then it is dark. Now she’s on top of him, straddling him. His arms are pinned against ceiling joists, and she jabs a stiff index finger behind his jaw and below his ear and his mouth comes open like a picked safe. Then her revolver is between his teeth, and she jams it deeper, deep enough so that he tastes gun oil and gags on it, and he thrashes, arms trapped beneath the hard bones of her shins, and then— Bloody Mary is still. Absolutely. Like something dead. On top of him, bent over him, unseen but undeniable. She doesn’t move an inch, and neither does he. “Lesson Two,” she says. “Never let your guard down.” The gun barrel slides from the boy’s mouth. By the time he catches his breath, Bloody Mary is gone. The boy swallows, and he tastes blood.

* * * *

It begins that morning. First, the chainsaw. Then, the sawed-off shotgun. Neither comes easy to the boy. But he keeps at it—that day, and the next, and the one after that . . . and into the next week. Soon he doesn’t look so much like a scarecrow dancing with a hurricane when he works with either tool. That’s what Bloody Mary calls them: tools. She has others, and the boy learns about them. They are smaller, and the boy likes them better. A hatchet. A combat knife. A revolver. At night, they sit in the house. Sometimes they talk, but not about the things the boy wants to know. There are many things he wants to ask Bloody Mary. He wants to ask about the mask she wears. He wants to know who she was before, and how she came to be the person she is. These are the things that used to matter before 10/31, the things people called secrets. But as he watches and learns, he begins to think that maybe secrets aren’t really that important anymore. Because whoever Bloody Mary is now, she is not the person she once was. Anyone can see that much is true. Anyone who heard her name would understand. And there are other things that matter to the boy, anyway. The things Bloody Mary teaches him. And a million little things that wouldn’t seem to matter to anyone at all. The hiss of the propane lantern at night. The rustle of her black skirt against her legs, and the cadence of her boots on the hardwood floors. The open window beyond the dining room, and the things that might be lurking on the other side of it . . . or might not. The smell of the mint tea Bloody Mary brews, a foraging prize with mingled scents of peppermint, lemon grass, and spearmint. The shotgun, positioned just so for an easy grab. The cat—comfortable now with both of them— curled next to the Frisbee plate on the floor. The boy calls the cat Blackie; Bloody Mary calls it Spike. The cat doesn’t pay much attention, unless either word is followed by the vacuum pop of a cat-food can. And so the nights become a kind of routine, almost comfortable in the wake of the day’s lessons. As always, there are never many words between them. So as the night stretches on, the boy reads his familiar books and magazines, only now he does not read them by the glow of a flashlight. Bloody Mary works the cyclops tusk with a long thin knife, paring . . . notching and excavating . . . carving. One night she tells the boy about the art of scrimshaw, and whalers from the days of old, and the bones and teeth and tusks of creatures once thought to be monsters. That same night she finishes embellishing the tusk and sets it on the table. Immediately, the boy recognizes the chainsaw etched on the side. “Life imitates art,” Bloody Mary says. “Sometimes. And sometimes life runs in circles. And there are monsters everywhere—for everyone, for everything, for every time and place. Those aren’t lessons, but I do believe they’re things that are true. Sometimes.” Bloody Mary spins the tusk on the table, and when it stops the killing point is aimed at the boy. He sips his tea, considering her words. The hiss of the propane lantern seems louder in the silence. He stares at the tusk, at the etched chainsaw waiting there. He can almost hear it growl. He takes another sip of tea. All of a sudden, he’s sleepy. Too sleepy. He rises and tries to take a step, but it’s as if he left his legs behind him on the chair. The boy topples and goes down hard. Bloody Mary stands over him. He hears the dull rattle of a pill bottle in her hand. “Lesson Three,” she says. “Never trust anyone.” Then she gets out the handcuffs.

* * * *

The boy doesn’t know if it’s the thunder that wakes him or the rain, but there’s plenty enough of both to go around. Lightning flashes fill the sky, bathing the pasture before him in harsh white light. Has to be he’s a good piece out of town. Grass and mud stretch to an indistinct treeline, and between him and that there are only sheets of rain. Walls actually, for it’s coming down even harder now. The boy shakes his head, clearing the cobwebs, waiting for another lightning strike. A peal of thunder . . . boom . . . and then a hard slash of crackling white splits the sky like a hammer-strike on black glass. And in that moment he spots Bloody Mary’s wheelbarrow, twenty feet away, near a clutch of old oaks. But there’s no sign of Bloody Mary, and the wheelbarrow is empty. The boy starts to stand and feels a pull against his wrist. Another flash of lighting and he sees he’s handcuffed to a post, the empty handcuff locked around an old eyebolt screwed into rotting wood. Probably used to chain a bull here, he thinks. And then, just a little dizzily: Bulls must have seemed like monsters, once . . . Once upon a time . . . He doesn’t know why he thinks that. He doesn’t know why Bloody Mary drugged him, or locked him to a post, or why the wheelbarrow is sitting twenty feet away as empty as a broken promise. He only knows that the crawlspace scavenger who lives down in his gut doesn’t like to be exposed this way. Before he learned to use the tools, being trapped in the open was his greatest terror, and now that push has come to shove it doesn’t seem like that has changed. So his first impulse is to run. He jerks against the eyebolt, but it holds firm. Must be the rotted post is not so rotten. But he has not been trained to give up easily. He jerks against it again and— A pool of light starts to spread behind him, somewhere over his shoulder. Not white light, like the lightning; this light is orange. Ten feet away, in the mud by a leaning barbed-wire fence, the glow grows brighter, spilling across the muddy pasture. The boy turns to face it, and he finds something waiting—something with triangular eyes and razor-cut teeth. A Jack. Its eyes flare as it spots the boy, and orange beams cut through the black night and the rain and shine directly on him. Panic knots the boy’s chest—just for a moment—and Bloody Mary’s words mock him in memory: “You think that something would care about you? Specifically? Something smart . . . something that’s actually in control?” The Jack starts to scream. And now the boy’s anger rises, because the sound tells him that something does care . . . something dangerous. He yanks against the cuffs again, and the short chain makes a sick little clicking sound that isn’t even a rattle. Metal slices his wrist as he yanks one more time, and harder, but the eyebolt doesn’t budge and neither does the old post. Then another lightning flash explodes above him, and he spots something in the mud at his feet. Bloody Mary’s revolver. Just as he bends to snatch it up, two sounds rise beneath the storm. The screech of a bat . . . and a goblin’s cackle. The boy’s head jerks up. The screaming Jack is in full hellfire blaze now, and he doesn’t need lightning to see the things riding toward him in the night sky. They’re coming for him. Goblins mounted on bats, black reins in their clawed hands and bits jammed into the bat’s fanged maws. A grin creases the reptilian face of the goblin riding point, and his fanged teeth part like a rat-trap. He roars a command, one-handing the reins, jerking them taut. His mount’s wings dip, and the great bat dives, and as another bolt of lightning rips the night the goblin sets a meat-hook whirring on a long chain held tightly in his other hand. The boy does not hesitate. He fires the revolver. No panic now; no anger. Just a conditioned response. Six shots in the cylinder, and he burns them down quickly. A head-shot blasts the goblin with the meat-hook out of the saddle, and the twisted green monster hits the ground a full second before a rain of his own skull fragments slice through the mud. The second rider makes it closer, and this time it takes two shots, but the boy kills the goblin just the same. The dead rider pulls rein with a reflexive jerk so that the giant bat piles into the barbed-wire fence, launching the goblin’s corpse into a headfirst slide that ends in the blazing glow of the Jack’s screaming smile. Three more goblins fall dead in a handful of seconds. And that’s it. The boy has done his worst, and the revolver’s tapped. The only thing left is his twitching finger, and the hammer falling on an empty shell casings, and more goblins coming his way. Too many more. The boy sucks a deep breath and waits for the inevitable. That’s when Bloody Mary’s sawed-off shotgun starts to boom. Again and again. By the Halloween blaze of the Jack, the boy spots her charging through the rain, orange light gleaming against a blacker slash of motion in the black of night, the tail of Bloody Mary’s thick leather duster flapping in her wake like an escaped shroud, blasts of Remington fire exploding from her grasp and carving a trail before her. Mounted goblins dive from the sky, investing dark faith in their numbers, mistaking the young woman with the riot gun for easy prey. But there is nothing easy about Bloody Mary, and she does not stop until the work is finished. Soon the goblins—and the Jack—are all dead. And then it is over, and all that remains is the lightning and the rain, and a pair of retreating bats cutting a path through the storm. Heading for parts unknown.

* * * *

The boy wakes in a barn. In truth, he hasn’t slept very well. During the night, rats ran circuits in the hayloft and above his head, their claws scrabbling over the crossbeams. Big ones . . . ones that made a fine meal for the cat, who wears the expression of a satisfied glutton as the boy wakes and pulls on his boots. Bloody Mary eyes him from a dark corner. Her clothes are drying on a rail. She’s wearing cargo pants and a black t-shirt, and she’s busy cleaning the mud off her boots. “You did well last night,” she says, always spare with a compliment. “Now it’s time to move on.” The boy sits up, rubbing his wrist. It’s still raw from the handcuffs, and his fingers are swollen. “Maybe another week. Another week and I’ll be ready—” “You’re ready now. You proved that last night. I’ve taught you all I can . . . well, almost. The only thing left to learn is the easy part, and you’ll learn that today.” “The easy part?” “Yes.” “What’s that?” Bloody Mary smiles. The scar on her cheek arches. “Pushing the wheelbarrow,” she says. “Even a zombie could handle that.”

* * * *

The wheelbarrow is heavy. The boy discovers that right away. There’s the shotgun, the chainsaw . . . all the other tools. The boy wonders why Bloody Mary travels this way. Even now, it’s not hard to find a car and fix it up so it will run. But Bloody Mary says that it’s better to take things slow . . . and, anyway, most places are exactly the same now. There’s really nothing different to see anywhere, so there’s no real need to cover lots of ground. The only thing out there is more emptiness, and the occasional monster to fill up the corners. So the boy hefts wooden handles and pushes. Maybe five or six miles a day. Sometimes less. Sometimes more. Soon blisters fill his shallow palms and line his narrow fingers. Then the blisters heal, and he sprouts a second set. When those crust over, his hands are bigger than they were when he spent his days in crawlspaces. And so he pushes. The next day, and the day after that, and one more, and then another. The next time dead skin peels from the boy’s hands, the flesh beneath is thicker, and callused. That’s when Bloody Mary gives him a pair of black gloves. By that time the boy doesn’t need them, but he wears them just the same.

* * * *

It goes like that for a long while. A year . . . nearly two. Enough time that the seasons make the circuit, and run it ’round again, and Bloody Mary and the boy mark summer nights and winter nights with shared memories of other nights that came the year before. And then another morning comes, and the memories are put away, and (sometimes) new ones take their place in the course of the coming day. Most memories are marked in time with the percussive sound of gunfire, or the whirring roar of a chainsaw, or the sharp wet sound of an axe cleaving meat from bone. Others are marked with softer sounds—the wet sizzle of a Jack’s flaring eyes, the dragging whisper of a mummy’s footfall as it passes through a dead cornfield, the crackle of storm-blown leaves as they crumble against a hungry zombie’s unblinking face. These are sounds to remember, and they linger long after they are gone. But the boy holds other memories closer, for things are different now. He is different. Older. Not a boy anymore at all. And the memories he holds closest are those of Bloody Mary. He does not understand why. In some ways, she has treated him no better than the shadowy things that ran the world to ground. By that token, she may be little better than a monster herself. But Bloody Mary is also the one who has kept him alive. He knows that much is true. She taught him; she trained him. And they are together, and have been, and will be. That is true, too. Maybe that is why he guards his memories (jealously), even as he guards her. He holds them close and keeps them safe, and he shares them not at all. Her smile, the curve of her scar, her piercing eyes behind the half-a-princess mask. The ride of her muscles beneath her skin, and the sound of the first breath she takes after she falls asleep. The way she talks to the cat when she thinks he isn’t listening. The easy glide of her walk, and her hand on his shoulder when she wakes him, and the sound of her brush as she rakes it through her red hair (much longer now than that first day on Maple Street). Other memories are tangible . . . almost touchstones. The scrimshaw cyclops tusk, buried deep in a canvas bag that holds the young man’s belongings. Or the black gloves he wears each day. Or the revolver that turned five cackling goblins into carcasses on a storm-swept night, which he wears low-slung in a holster on his hip. These are the things he values most—the tangible and intangible. He cannot think of them as possessions, for he does not own them, any more than he owns Bloody Mary. Still, there is nothing he holds dearer. There is nothing he thinks of more often. And that is a mystery to him. For all he knows, bundled and wrapped and knotted ’round a dozen roses all of it might be nothing more to Bloody Mary than a fistful of memory’s grist, but to him it means so much more. To him, it is everything. And so is she.

* * * *

“You should move,” Bloody Mary says. “It’s stupid to sleep under an apple tree—those things are going to thud on you all night.” The young man doesn’t say a word. They are in an old orchard. He has been foraging (alone) all day in a nearby town while Bloody Mary swam in a river and baked herself on a rocky ledge in the sun . . . with the sawed-off Remington in easy reach, of course. Now they are camped beneath apple trees, branches untrimmed for years, ripe fruit there for the taking. Earlier, the young man convinced Bloody Mary that it was not a good idea to have a fire, because (if anywhere) this valley of oak and low fog and two-lane country road was true pumpkin country. It was always best to be wary in such places, where Jacks seem to thrive, but now he thinks better of it. Though the day was like summer, the crisp night air has turned chill. It’s cold enough (and windy enough) that apples have begun to fall. He wishes he’d built a fire. The cold doesn’t seem to bother Bloody Mary. She lays beneath the stars on a patch of earth still open to the sky, cocooned in a down sleeping bag. Zipped up tight, the cat curled at her feet. She calls the bag a “mummy bag,” and the young man always says that it is well- named. He figures it’s a deathtrap. Something grabs you in the night while you’re wrapped up in such a thing, it could drag you all the way to hell before you had a chance to get free. That’s why he sleeps under loose blankets. “Like a hobo,” Bloody Mary says. And, of course, that’s why he is cold tonight. “You’re still awake?” Bloody Mary asks. “Yes,” he says, happy to put his thoughts away. “Me, too,” she says, sitting up. Her pill bottle rattles, and then her canteen sloshes. There go fifty milligrams. The young man knows she won’t be awake for long. “You should watch that stuff,” he says. “That’s why I’ve got you. To protect me when I put my brain in neutral.” “I knew there was a reason.” “That’s one of them, anyway.” That stirs him. The young man waits for Bloody Mary to say something else, wondering if she will. And after a long while she does, but it’s nothing he expected. It’s a question. The only question, really . . . the one they never talk about. She’s staring up at the stars when she asks it. “What do you think happened? I mean, really?” The young man considers his answer. He’s weighed multiple theories, some of which made the rounds before the world took its final tumble into darkness. All of them make some kind of sense, in one way or another. A rift between dimensions, the collapse of barriers between worlds. A curse related to forgotten rites of pagan western cultures (see: Celts, see also: Druids). A reality born from a collective unconsciousness grown too dark. The rise of the devil, the fall of god . . . and every hypothesis that fit (not so neatly) in between. But the young man likes the simple answers best, and he knows the words he speaks are true. “The monsters came,” he says. “That’s what happened.” “And now they’re everywhere,” Bloody Mary adds. “Yes . . . and everyone.” Bloody Mary says nothing to that, and the young man says no more. A moment later, her first sleeping breath is caught by the rising wind.

* * * * She’s under now . . . Fifty milligrams deep. Dreaming her dreams, and they’re of him, as they have been lately. She doesn’t even know his name, and maybe she shouldn’t find out, because those things never worked out very well for her pre-10/31. But maybe this time— And then there’s a sound. It drops through her dream and finds her. A thud . . . or a couple of them. Harder thuds than apples would make falling on a sleeping man — Bloody Mary tries to stir, but she’s so far under. Next comes a groan, and then another. Louder this time—a guts-kicked-in kind of sound. And then another sound, an undeniably brutal one, like an axe handle slamming unprotected flesh. Suddenly, Bloody Mary’s eyes flash open. She’s not fifty milligrams under anymore. There’s a full moon, and by its glow she sees the monster standing there, looming over the nest of hobo blankets. The blankets are a twisted tangle, and she hates to think of the man (whose name she doesn’t even know) wrapped in them, because that would mean that he is dead, and— Just then, the monster drops a broken branch on the ground, as if he doesn’t need it anymore. Nothing stirs in the blankets. Nothing else moves, anywhere. And then the creature whirls as if catching her scent on the night air, and it sees her. The cat stirs at her feet. One glance at the monster, and it hisses and bolts. Bloody Mary struggles with the mummy bag, but the creature is too fast. And strong. The stitched things charged with lightning and dark magic are all like that, and this one is no different. She can see its sloping head in the moonlight, the scarred nightmare of a face, the bolts in its neck and the black black clothes. In a moment the thing is on top of her, and it snatches the mummy bag by the neck and drags Bloody Mary across the open patch of orchard. She’s thrashing now, but there’s no way to gain enough leverage to escape, and the thing swings her to the side for even trying. The ground is like cement, and a breath blasts out of her as she hits it. She’s on her back, and the monster straddles her, staring down, the moon riding low behind one squared-off shoulder. Bloody Mary squints into the cold brightness, trying to focus. They’re beneath a gnarled fruit tree. The branches are like some terrible web, and from the web dangles a chain, and on the end of the chain is a meat-hook. It seems the creature is grinning now . . . a crosshatched mess of a grin. It snatches up the mummy bag. Bloody Mary kicks, but there’s no way out. And before she draws another breath the meat-hook is right there, inches from her face. Just as she’s ready to taste it, the monster threads the spike through a canvas loop on the neck of the bag and lets the woman hang. The branch creaks. The monster’s face comes nearer —sunken eyes piercing . . . burning. It speaks. “Lesson One,” it says. “Never trust anyone . . . except me.” Bloody Mary blinks. She recognizes this voice . . . knows it as she knows her own. And then it comes again. “You asked me my name once,” he says from behind the mask. “I didn’t have one that mattered before, but now I do. I’ll tell it to you.” “No,” she says, staring at the stitched-horror mask, the green skin, the black clothes that aren’t a costume. “Everyone knows your name . . . everyone.” “I think you’re right,” he says. “The same way they know yours. The same way they’ll know both our names . . . together.” His black-gloved hands reach out and slip the mask from Bloody Mary’s face. One finger traces the scar on her cheek, then five comb through her hair. He peels the glove off his other hand, brushing her lips with a finger. She pulls off his mask. He pulls her closer. "Happy Halloween," he says.

© 2013 by Norman Partridge.

[JUMP TO THE AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT]

Publishers Weekly called Norman Partridge’s Dark Harvest “contemporary American writing at its finest” and chose the novel as one of the 100 Best Books of 2006. His fiction includes horror, suspense, crime, and the fantastic —“sometimes all in one story” says his friend, writer Joe R. Lansdale. Author of five short story collections, Partridge’s novels include the Jack Baddalach mysteries Saguaro Riptide and The Ten-Ounce Siesta, plus The Crow: Wicked Prayer, which was adapted for film. Partridge’s compact, thrill-a- minute style has been praised by Stephen King and Peter Straub, and his work has received multiple Bram Stoker awards. All You Can Do is Breathe Kaaron Warren

Stuart lay trapped underground for five days before the tall man appeared and stared into his eyes. He thought he sensed movement. Flicked on his caplamp. “Barry? Did you make it through the wall?” but there was no one. There was something though, in his face so close he pulled back and banged his head on the rock behind. He shouted, mouth open, squeezed his eyes shut. He’d never felt such terror, not even when his daughter had fallen into the pool and they didn’t notice for god knows how long. This was a man. Something like a man. Tall, elongated, the thing looked deep into his eyes. It reached out and almost took his chin with its bony fingers, keeping his head still, paralysing him even though it wasn’t actually touching him. Stuart could smell sour cherries, something like that. It made him hungry, and that hunger somehow beat out the terror. He pulled his head backwards. The man nodded, stepped back, and was gone. Within a minute or two, Stuart was sure he’d imagined it. Though he had words in his ear: “See you soon, Stuart.” He was sure he’d heard those words. It felt like the walls were getting closer, but he kept testing by stretching his arms and the distance was the same. The part of the mine he was working had collapsed so quickly, it seemed like time stopped and froze and when it started up again, he was surrounded on all sides by rock. Barry, his workmate, was on the other side, but he’d heard nothing from him for twelve hours now. Thank god for the luminous hand on his watch. The kid gave it to him for father’s day years ago and even at the time he’d been thrilled. You don’t always get that with father’s day presents. It wasn’t what you’d call a worker’s watch. It was full of gadgets, like the watches of the office men who drove to work each day, passing him as he stood, cold in the dark, at the bus stop with the other miners. Their cars blinked with gadgets. This watch kept perfect time, and followed the date, and the hand provided a warm green glow in the pitch black. At home he had to keep it in his bedside drawer at night because the light kept his wife awake. But he could still see the thin green line across the top of the drawer where the light escaped. Since the walls came down, he’d slept sporadically, waking a couple of times thinking he was home in bed, because of the glow. He’d covered it up with his lunchbox and only a small line escaped. He had his caplamp but he really didn’t want to use that. There’d been mine rescues lasting two weeks and he wanted to know he could have bright light if he needed to. He knew they wouldn’t give up. They never left a body underground, mostly because they didn’t want it found much later. He had his GPS so they knew where he was. He could see Barry’s blip, too, but that didn’t mean he was still going. Just his GPS. Stuart stretched his legs and arms out and in, counting to a hundred. His wife was always on at him to do more exercise, so she’d be pleased to see him do this. His water and food had run out on the third day. He knew there was no sense keeping the food. It’d just go off and make him sick. Some gritty water dripped down the wall. Licking it made his tongue ache it was so cold and there wasn’t enough of it. He pissed into his water bottle and knew that drinking it wouldn’t kill him. He pretended it was lime cordial, the sour stuff, not the sweet. Foodwise he knew he could last without for a while, but it didn’t help the hunger pains. Lucky his wife packed him heaps and there was Barry’s lunch as well, on Stuart’s side of the wall where Barry couldn’t get to it. He’d tried moving the rocks but it just caused more of a tumble no matter where he took the rocks from. He wanted to keep trying but his instincts told him just to leave it. Bugs skittered about and he could eat them. The strap of his lunch box was leather and he chewed on that, making jokes that it was about as good as his sister-in- law’s roast dinner. If he got out, he’d make that joke and people would write it up and his sister-in-law would be famous for her bad cooking. Stuart tried to sleep when he figured it was night time outside, to keep a routine going. It was hard without a change of light and with an empty stomach, and he hadn’t done anything to wear himself out. Usually he’d drop into bed after a shift and a feed exhausted. On a Saturday, if he hadn’t been in the mine, he and his wife might have sex, but it wasn’t something he thought about much. He thought about it now. He spent a lot of the time with his eyes closed but he tried not to think about the dark. Instead, he went through football matches he remembered. * * * *

It was seven days before they found him. Nowhere near the record, but enough to have a media frenzy going on. As they were getting close they’d managed to get a tube through to him, and sent him notes from his wife and daughter and bags of glucose. They dropped some biscuits down, too. “I was hoping for a meat pie,” he called up the tube. He could talk with his mouth close to the tube, tell them shit he wanted his family to know. Tell them all the jokes he’d thought up while he was down there. Nothing worse than a joke without an audience. They called questions down, like, “Are you scared?” “Naah, I’m not scared. I’m fearless! Nothing scares me!” He asked them about Barry and they said they were working on it. Ever since the long man had visited him, Stuart had had a bad feeling about Barry. He thought perhaps that was Barry’s ghost and he felt bad about screaming. He wished he’d said, “G’day, mate,” whatever. It was overcast when they pulled him out, but still far warmer than inside the mine. It meant he didn’t have to squint because of the sun. His wife Cheryl was there, and his daughter Sarah, and for a long time he couldn’t talk, just held them and cried. He’d never actually cried before, not since he was a little kid, anyway, but this he couldn’t help. He thought he’d never see them again and he loved them, loved them hard. Sarah looked so beautiful, so grown up for her thirteen years. Underground he’d imagined her future. In his darkest times, like the hours after the long man disappeared and he felt like giving up, he imagined her future. Who she’d be, what she’d do, who she’d marry. What her kids would look like. He dreamed it all in case he didn’t get to see it, and now, there she was. His rescuers were there, too. None of them keen to go home. Dirty-faced, exhausted, he couldn’t believe how happy they were to see him. He knew he’d have to live well, every day of his life, to justify what they’d done. “Where’s Barry? Did you get him out yet?” he asked once he’d had a warm drink. They loaded him into an ambulance although he said he felt fine. “They haven’t got Barry yet,” Cheryl said, but her eyes were downcast and he knew she was fibbing. She didn’t do it very often and he thought only to protect him. Like the time half the mine was shut down and the wives knew about it first. And the time Sarah had broken her arm because of the kid next door. Cheryl didn’t want to tell him that because she knew how angry he’d be, but he didn’t do anything about it. The kid was never allowed in their front door again, but that was it. “I’d rather know than not know,” he said. There were news cameras, people with microphones and others with notepads. “Why do you think you survived?” they shouted at him. “Why you and not Barry?” The tears took again at that and Cheryl squeezed his hand hard. The ambulance crew shut the door and then it was a week in hospital before he had to face the questions again. They told him about Barry once they thought he was all good. Barry’d been trapped, his leg under the rocks. Stuart could imagine how bad that must have felt. So Barry tried to cut his way through, Jesus, cut his way through his own leg. They said he bled to death. “He wrote you something while he was down there,” Cheryl said. “He was always scribbling, that Barry. He’d write a letter to the Pope if he could get the address,” Stuart said. It was an old joke which made him tear up, thinking that Barry would have laughed at this one. “He was hallucinating, they reckon. But still. You should read it.”

I thought you’d got through the wall, Stu. I didn’t hear you but heard a rock shift so thought you must be to my left. You wouldn’t answer me so I cracked the shits. I couldn’t turn my body but turned my face as far as I could, twisted my caplamp around to catch you. I figured you wanted to kill and eat me, that’s how stupid I was. Wasn’t you. My light went right through this thing. I could see it, though. Looked almost like a man, but stretched out like a piece of bubble gum or something. Or when you press blu-tak onto newspaper and get some print and stretch it out. Like that. He had long fingers, twice as long as mine. Dunno if you heard me scream but this thing freaked me out. It came at me and I would have pissed myself if I wasn’t already sitting in my own wet pants. It leaned forward and put its eyes real close to mine. Stared into me. I screamed my head off, no reason, just scared shitless. It came at me, touched my nose with its long finger, then it shook its head and drifted back. I though, shit, it’s going to Stu, and I screamed louder. I wanted to warn you. But what do you do? I didn’t know what to tell you. I don’t know if I’ll last until they find me. Tell my mates they did me proud and if you can find my mother tell her I’m sorry.

“Do you know anything about this long man, Stuart? Did you hear anything, see anything?” his wife asked him. Stuart nodded. He spoke quietly. “I saw a man like that. I thought I must have imagined it. But maybe it was a ghost. Maybe someone died in there and he was looking at us, going, you’re not going to make it. No way. You’re going to die. Because he made me feel so bad I almost wanted to die.” “That’s awful, Stuart. We’re so lucky to have you back.” He kissed her, as he did any chance he got. “Maybe keep it just between us for now. About this long man. Other people won’t understand it. Don’t tell the media types. Okay?” “You think I’m crazy.” “No, I don’t. But I know you and they don’t. Just keep it to the simple stuff, hey? Shouldn’t be hard for you!”

* * * * He discovered he was good at talking. Cheryl thought it was funny. “You’re a gabber now, Stuart. Couldn’t get ten words a day out of you beforehand!” She fixed his hair, getting him ready for the next press conference. “Yeah, well, they’re always asking me for answers,” he said. He didn’t mind. It was always the same thing, so he didn’t have to think too hard. This one, the room was packed. They knew he was fully recovered and had some others to talk, too. The mine owner, who Stuart had never met. One of his rescuers. And some doctor, a psychologist. They had a good go at the mine owner for a while about responsibilities and compensation, then they turned to Stuart. “Did you always think you’d be found?” “I always expected to be found. I’m a bit like that. I expect I’m gonna get good luck. Just that kind of person. All credit to the rescuers, though. I can’t believe those guys, still can’t believe what they did. We’ll be friends for life because of it.” The rescuer next to him clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Was there any time you wanted to give up?” He thought of the long gray man and the feelings of despair he’d left behind. They wouldn’t believe him if he talked about that, think he was mad. “Nah. I just thought of my wife’s pot roast and that got me through.” “What is it you’ve got? Why did you survive and not Barry?” “I can’t answer that.” The psychologist stepped in. “There are many reasons why people survive. For Stuart, he had thoughts of his family to sustain him. Barry didn’t have that, and studies have shown it makes a difference. Also, Stuart was less dramatic in his actions. Maybe he thought ahead a bit more, and maybe Barry thought he could get out of it.” “You’re saying it’s Barry’s fault he was trapped? His own fault he died?” “No. Not at all. But the fact is that Stuart thought it through and trusted the rescuers.” “Do you think yourself lucky, Stuart?” “Couldn’t be luckier,” Stuart said. “Luckiest man left alive.” “I’m sure your rescuers will be happy to hear that. Do you feel any sense of obligation to them? Do you owe them anything?” “Yeah, look they’re all spread out around the place, but they can come to my place for a feed any time they like. And you know what I really owe them? I owe them a good life.” He and the rescuer shook hands, and the cheering of the audience went on for two minutes. “What do you say to the idea that some people don’t survive because they may have died helping others?” “Yeah, well, if I coulda helped Barry survive I would have.” “What about his food? Is it true you ate his food?” “Yeah, I ate his food. He couldn’t get to it and it was only going off. That’s not what killed him.” The psychologist said, “It is true that often it is the survivors don’t help others. Especially in times of famine. Survivors are the ones who will take food from a child’s mouth.” Stuart felt stunned. He wasn’t sure how the conversation had turned against him and what a hero he was, but it seemed it had. “All I did was survive,” he said. “No one had to die for me to survive. I did it because I love my family, I love my life, and I wanted to get here on TV for the free beer I’ve heard about.” With that, he had the audience back. Afterwards, there was plenty of beer drunk. The crew took him out to the local pub and he was there long after they left. People had watched the interview and they all wanted to talk to him about it. “If only we could bottle what you’ve got, there’d be no little kiddies dying of cancer,” people said to him more often than he wanted to hear. “If only we could bottle it, you’d be a rich man.” “If only we could bottle it, we’d save the world.” They thought he had some magic power, that it wasn’t a willingness to drink your own piss and a great desire to have proper sex with your wife again, it was something else. Something they couldn’t have. He took drink well but even he was feeling a bit woozy by around midnight. By three am, the pub was almost empty. He could no longer remember who he’d spoken to, so when a sad-faced man said hello, he nodded and went back to his beer. “Hello, Stuart,” the man said again. His voice was soft. It had an amused tone, as if he knew more than other people, found something amusing. Stuart no longer wondered how people knew his name. Plenty of them did. He rather liked the celebrity. He’d always enjoyed making connections with people all over. Stuart looked at him this time. “Do I know you?” he asked. His teeth were bright, white and even. Clearly false. His hair, pale blonde, sat flat on his head. He smelt strongly of aftershave, the kind Stuart used to smell wafting out of the cars while he waited for the bus. His mouth drooped. Sad man, Stuart thought. “How are you holding up?” “I’m okay. Bit tired.” The man moved so that he looked directly into Stuart’s eyes. Stuart froze. This was how the apparition in the cave had looked at him. With this intensity. He was used to people staring at him greedily, but this was different. The sad face, the long arms. Long, long fingers. It was the apparition from the mine. The man’s hand went out and grabbed Stuart by the wrist with a powerful grip. “Hold still, Stuart. This won’t take long.” Stuart shivered, feeling as cold as he had underground. Chilled to the bone and dreaming of snow. “Leggo, mate, wouldya?” he said. He tried to pull back but he felt deep lethargy, as if he’d been injected with golden syrup and his limbs couldn’t move. The man raised his other arm and brought it up to pinch the bridge of Stuart’s nose. Stuart was paralysed. He wanted one of the other drinkers to intervene, to hit the man, knock him away, but no one did. It was so quiet Stuart felt as if he was back in the mine and the idea of it made him choke. No. It wasn’t that. He had a nose bleed, blood pouring backwards down his throat because the man held his sinuses so tight. He let go and Stuart slumped forward, spitting blood. He felt movement return. Turned his head away from the man. The man bent and helped him up. “Nose bleed, nose bleed, make a bit of room, I’ll take him and clean him up. Nose bleed, he’ll be fine.” Stuart tried to pull his arm away. His mouth was full of blood. “Come on, Stuart, it’ll be all right.” He led Stuart into the men’s toilets. Propped him against the wall. Stuart heard a skittering sound, like cockroaches across the kitchen bench at midnight. He thought he caught a whiff of them, that slightly plasticy smell. A smell of sour cherries. “It won’t hurt,” the man said. Stuart felt the creatures and, by straining his eyes, could watch them walking up his arm. The scream in his head deafened him. Up his forearm, his biceps, over his shoulders and onto his neck, where he could feel them latching on. “It’s not your blood they’re taking,” the man said. His voice was soft and almost too broad to listen to. “It’s something else. You won’t miss it. It’ll be like it was never there. You won’t know.” He clicked his tongue and Stuart thought the sucking stopped. He felt light-headed and nauseous. The man plucked a beetle off Stuart’s shoulder and ate it. Crunched it like it was a nut and took the next. Two more and he was smacking his lips. Stuart couldn’t move. He felt so cold he felt like he’d been buried in snow. Or was back in the cave. But it was light in here. Very bright. “Look at me.” The man’s cheeks were pink, his eyes bright. He looked younger. Happy. “Thank you, Stuart. Have a good life.” He tapped Stuart on the head and Stuart slept. He awoke on the filthy toilet floor. Someone had dropped a wad of shitty toilet paper and he could smell that. He felt little compunction to rise, to lift himself. It was like this was the only moment and there was nothing beyond. Another man came in and helped him up. “Home time for you, mate? Wait here while I take a piss and I’ll get you to a taxi.” “Do I know you?” Stuart said. Things seemed blurred and he couldn’t remember much. “Nah, but you’ll always help someone in trouble, right? Specially a survivor like you.” I am a survivor Stuart thought as the stranger helped him to a taxi. That’s what I did. But he felt as if he could never do it again.

* * * *

He woke up on his lounge room floor, his shirt stiff with dried blood. “Big night was it?” Cheryl said, poking him with her toe. Sarah stood over him, ready for school, her shoes all shined, her white socks folded neatly. He shivered, feeling cold. “The long man pinched my nose.” His face felt swollen and he knew he must look awful. “Get off the floor,” Sarah said. “You’re shivering.” “I will soon.” He felt a deep sense of pure lethargy. Cheryl helped him up onto the couch and brought him a cup of tea. “You’re too old to drink like that anymore.” “Wasn’t the drink. Well, I did give it a bit of a hiding, but it was this guy. This long gray guy who gave me a bloody nose and then did something to me. I’m tired. I’m so tired. And cold.” She brought him a fluffy pink blanket and covered his knees with it. “The TV producers sent over a copy of your interview. Sarah and I have already watched it twice! Want to have a look? You come across really well.” She didn’t wait for his answer but played the DVD anyway. He watched the interview over and over that day, wondering at the person talking. “Jeez, I’m a smart-arse, aren’t I?” he said, smiling at his Cheryl. She kissed his forehead. “You always were.” The lightness of her tone warmed him slightly. She had suffered postnatal depression and he was terrified every day it would come on again. He saw it behind her eyes sometimes, in the droop of her mouth. A wash of sadness. Those were the times he tried harder lift her up. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw a bug climbing the wall and he curled up, pulling his blanket up over his eyes. “We need to get the rentakill guys in here. Get rid of the cockroaches,” he said. She nodded. “Ants, too. All over the kitchen, rotten little things.” She sat beside him, laying her head on his shoulder. “I still can’t believe you’re back,” she said. His little bird, his sparrow, but a tower of strength at the same time. Usually sitting beside her he felt something. Irritation, often, when she went on about small domestic details, none of which interested him. Boredom, talking about her family. Affection, when they sat together watching TV. Love, when they laughed together at a joke he’d made, when her eyes crinkled up and little tears formed. He loved those little tears. She held his hand. He let it lay loose. “Are you okay?” she said. “I just can’t really feel anything. It’s all gone numb.” She stared at him. “We have to tell the doctor. Something’s wrong. You shouldn’t feel like that.” “I don’t feel anything, love. That’s the thing. Nothing at all. Just cold. Like I’ve got an iceblock inside my stomach.” He didn’t tell her he meant emotionally as well, that looking at her left him cold. To cover it up, he kissed her. Usually they’d do this stuff at night, with the door closed, but he kissed her with passion and moved his hands around her body, touching all his favourite bits.

* * * *

The weeks passed. He ate meals he had no real desire to eat, had conversations and many, many interviews. Sponsorships brought money in. Newspaper reports listed everything he’d eaten underground and those people approached him. It was Vegemite, Tip Top bread, Milo chocolate bars, apples (the local fruit shop took on that one), and the local butcher had a go, too. The watch company put him on TV, talking about how he’d never need another watch, that one was so good. So at least he didn’t have to work. People kept asking him if he was going back underground and he’d bluff at them, give them the real man answer, the hero stuff, but he wasn’t going back. He spent a lot of time reading the paper. He started cutting out stories of other survivors, especially the ones who talked about the cold, about the deep bone chill they felt after a few days. “Dad, let me hook you up with an online forum. You can meet other survivors. Talk to them. Most of them are probably feeling what you’re feeling,” Sarah said. He sat at the computer for a while but it only made sense when she talked him through it and he didn’t want her to know it all. She asked him about the long man. “The one you said pinched your nose. We should try to track him down and make sure he doesn’t do it again. People can’t go round pinching my dad’s nose like that.” “Willy nilly,” he said. It was an old joke. “I don’t know if we’ll find him. I don’t think he’s at the pub much, or if he’s got a job. I saw him when I was buried, you know. He sent his ghost in to find me.” Others had talked about seeing visions. Buried in the snow, or caught in a car for two days on a country road. They said, more than one of them, that a long man had visited them. “It’s not just me,” he told Sarah. “No one knows why he doesn’t help. He just looks.” “Did he pinch their noses? This is the stuff we can find online, Dad.” “Yeah, maybe. Maybe. What about stuff about cockroaches? How to get rid of them? I saw a huge one in the bathroom. They say they’ll survive nuclear war. That’s what they reckon.” He shivered. “I hate them.” He felt like a fraud. Life exhausted him, all the people wanting what he had. And Cheryl and Sarah got nothing but harassment. Lucky your dad’s alive, your husband, people said to them. Imagine what life would have been like without him, how sad, how hard. Making them think about it. All those people wanting to talk to him, but they paid him at least and it kept them in beer and roast beef. Always the same questions. “What is it you think you were kept alive for?” they asked, putting the onus on him to make something of his life. As if he’d been given a second chance and he’d be a fool to waste it. “Dunno what I was kept alive for, but mostly I’m enjoying every extra minute with my daughter and my wife,” was his stock answer. But he no longer really cared. They asked him, “Are you scared of anything? Seems like you’re not.” It was a stupid question, he thought. Who wasn’t scared? “Cockroaches. I really hate cockroaches.” The interviewer sighed in agreement. Another question they always asked him was, “Put in the same situation, would or could you do it again?” “Well, I won’t mate, will I? Just not going to happen.” They always ended with, “If only you could bottle it.” His standard joke was to hold out his wrists. “Ya wanna take a litre or two? Go for it! I can spare it!” It was all an act and he was good at it.

* * * *

He was waiting in the queue to buy fish and chips (“Aren’t you that guy? That miner guy?”) when he smelt sour cherries. It took him straight back to the cave and the smell of the long man. He felt cold through his layers of clothing and did not want to turn around. He felt someone behind him, close, but people did that. They seemed to think if they got physically close to him they could absorb some of him, that they could be like him. He took his package of food and left the shop, eyes down. Climbed into the car some sponsor had given him, sat there to eat it. The long man opened the passenger door and climbed in. Stuart dropped the food on his lap where it sat, greasy and hot. He barely felt it. He scrabbled for the doorhandle but the long man took his wrist. Pressed hard and Stuart couldn’t move. Just like last time. “You seem to be enjoying that fish, Stuart. You know what that tells me? That I didn’t take it all. The fact that you want to eat tells me that.” Stuart tried to shake his head, to say, “I’m faking it, it’s all fake, I can’t feel a fucking thing,” but the cockroaches were out, skittering and sucking and if he thought he was cold before, that was nothing. His eyelids felt frozen open, his nostrils frozen shut, breathing was so painful he wanted to stop doing it. “That’s it now,” the long man said, picking cockroach feelers out of his teeth. “You’re done.” Stuart sat slumped in the seat for a while, then started the car. A tape was playing; one of his interviews. He liked listening to himself, hearing his own voice. “I’ll do anything to stay alive, anything to keep my family alive,” he heard himself say. “You know I got stuck in a pipe once when I was a kid. Fat kid, I was. I sang songs from TV shows to keep me occupied.” Listening from his car, chilled to the bone and tired, Stuart wondered if he’d seen the long man then. If the long man had waited, and waited, until he was good and strong. He pulled out of the carpark. It was only his sense of duty making him do it, long-instilled. He had to go to a school visit someone had organised for him. Some school where there was a survivor kid, a young girl recently rescued. It took him a while to get there; wrong turns, bad traffic. Angry traffic. He thought there was more road rage than usual but then wondered if it was his driving? If all that stuff about driving carefully did make sense, because he didn’t care now, didn’t care how he drove or what he hit.

* * * *

“We’d like to welcome Stuart Parker to the school. He’s taken time out of his busy day to talk to us and to talk to Claire, our own hero.” The children clapped quietly. Stuart guessed they were tired of hearing about Claire. She’d been trapped in the basement of a building. A game of hide and seek gone wrong; no one knew she was playing. No one knew where she was. It took six days for them to find her. “Tell us how you coped, Claire,” the teacher said. “I pretended I was at school doing boring work and that’s why it was so boring. Sometimes I thought about this nice man from the mine. He said he kept thinking of nice things and that’s what I did, too.” The children shuffled, started to talk, bored. Claire looked at them wide-eyed. “I ate bugs. Lots of bugs. Like he did. And I had some chips I took from the cupboard but I didn’t want to tell Mum and Dad cos I didn’t want to get in trouble.” She had their attention, but not completely. “And then there was the creepy guy.” “You were alone in the basement, Claire, weren’t you?” the teacher said, passive-aggressive. “No one there.” “Who did you see?” Stuart said. He hadn’t had a chance to speak before then. “What did he look like?” The audience were rapt. They didn’t often get to see adults this way, all het up and loud. “I was all by myself but then this creepy long guy was there. I never seen him before but I thought he might help me to get out. But he didn’t, he just stared at me. I told him he should go away but the only thing I think he said was, ‘See you soon, Claire.’ That’s why I’m scared. I really don’t want to see him again.” Stuart wanted to care. He wanted to save her but there was nothing left in him. Only the memory of the man who would have killed to save that girl. Would have ripped the arms off any man who tried to hurt her. Just a memory though. “Stuart, we haven’t heard from you. What can you tell the children?” “That there is no purpose in life. We all die and rot and none of it is worth anything. You’re only taking up space. And that the long man is real. You need to keep her safe from him because he’ll destroy her.” The principal, stunned and speechless, took a moment to answer. The children were silent and he wondered if he’d laid seeds of sadness and emptiness in them all. He didn’t mean to. But he was too tired and cold to lie anymore. “But . . . but Mr. Parker, you’re a role model. We asked you here to lift the children. Inspire them.” “I’m nothing. Nothing at all,” he said.

* * * *

Claire. Claire was in the news and so was he, with his awful statements, his cruelty to the children. He had the media at his door again but they hated him now for turning on the children, you don’t do that to the kiddies, do you? He watched Claire; she didn’t look chilled to the bone, so he thought perhaps the long man hadn’t come to her yet. His house was full of his sponsors’ food and friends came over to eat it because he wouldn’t. Some of the rescuers too, looking at him as if they’d wasted their time. Sitting there in front of the television, warm rug, warm slippers, all skinny and pale. He couldn’t even fake a smile anymore. His famous watch had slipped off his wrist and sat in the dust under the couch. “We shoulda bottled it. We could give him a taste of his own self,” one of the rescuers said. He knew they were disappointed in him, that he wasn’t doing what they wanted him to do. “Three days of my life, I gave to save him,” he heard one say in the kitchen. “Now look at him.” They left him alone. And he didn’t care.

© 2011 by Kaaron Warren. Originally published in Blood and Other Cravings, edited by Ellen Datlow. Reprinted by permission of the author.

[JUMP TO THE AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT]

Kaaron Warren has lived in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, and Fiji. She’s sold many short stories, three novels (the multi-award-winning Slights, Walking the Tree, and Mistification) and four short story collections. Two of her collections have won the ACT Publishers’ and Writers’ Award for fiction, and her most recent collection, Through Splintered Walls, won a Canberra Critic’s Circle Award for Fiction. Her stories have appeared in Australia, the US, the UK, and elsewhere in Europe, and have been selected for both Ellen Datlow’s and Paula Guran’s Year’s Best Anthologies. She was shortlisted for a Bram Stoker Award for “All You Can Do is Breathe,” and is Special Guest at the Australian National Science Fiction Convention in Canberra 2013. You can find her at kaaronwarren.wordpress.com and her Tweets @KaaronWarren. The Crowgirl Megan Arkenberg

I.

The crowgirl decided they would set up camp on a low hill at the eastern edge of a cornfield. There was a dark copse of trees to the south and a slow muddy stream, its shore sharp and crunching with crayfish corpses. To the north was the roofless barn, pale brown beneath the red and purple clouds; the stench of rotting horses was so strong that even the crows avoided the place as they darted between the dry cornstalks, looking for mice. From the camp on the hill they could see everything, the river and the barn with its silos of molding grain, the hunting crows, and far to the west, in the square white farmhouse with its padlocked cellar door, the congregation of the Dead. (One for sorrow, two for joy.) “It’s a big nest,” said Josh, a big dark boy who rode shotgun in the crowgirl’s station wagon, watching out the windshield through his grandfather’s army-issue binoculars. “Thirty of them, maybe. They’re just sitting in the front room, no space to move.” “Wonder how that feels,” muttered the crowgirl’s sister, who shared the back seat with a couple dozen gallons of gasoline and a trio of ancient, milky-eyed crows. (Three for a woman, four for a boy.) “Why aren’t they hunting?” the crowgirl asked. Josh shrugged. “Nothing to hunt for.” “There’s us,” Crystal said. She sat in the middle seat, in front of the crowgirl’s sister, and kept craning her neck to stare out the back window. “Yeah, well.” Josh looked pointedly up at the black wings circling ahead of them, fragmenting the sun. “We’re not too easy to get.”

II.

“Someday,” the crowgirl told her sister, “you’re going to realize that you like me.” They were walking across the rustling cornfield, the no-man’s land between their camp and the house of the Dead. Each footfall kicked up little clouds of white dust, glittering in the sunlight like powdered bone. The tiny shadows of high-flying birds made a patchwork of blue- black on the dead earth around them. (Five for silver, six for gold.) “Not that you love me,” the crowgirl continued in her low, beautiful voice. She was fifteen and skinny, deceptively fragile, but her voice flowed like honey. “You probably know that already. But someday—in a year or two, when I’m dead—you’ll be walking across a field and you’ll pause suddenly because you’ll remember a joke I used to make, or the way I used to braid your hair for you.” The crowgirl’s sister kept her eyes on the pinwheeling earth-bound shadows and said nothing. (Seven for a secret never to be told.) “So now I’m telling you that I know. I know that you like me, deep down, so you don’t need to feel bad when I’m dead that you never told me yourself.” “None of that’s ever going to happen,” said the crowgirl’s sister between gritted teeth. She steadfastly refused to look at the horizon.

III.

On the day they set up camp, the crowgirl’s sister was four months, two weeks, and five days pregnant. (One for death, two for birth.) This is how it happened: They were almost out of gasoline. Gael and the crowgirl’s sister wanted to ditch the station wagon, load up on food, and head farther west on foot, where fewer towns meant fewer congregations of Dead. After all, the crowgirl’s sister reasoned, ninety percent of their scuffles and close encounters could be avoided if they didn’t enter populated areas for gas. But everyone else, including the crowgirl, thought the occasional attack at the gas station was worth the added speed and storage capacity of the vehicle. So it was agreed that the five of them, the crowgirl and Kenasia and Josh and Crystal and Ryan, would take the station wagon into Courville to fill the tank and gas cans and to grab as many soup packets, lighters, and bags of potato chips as they could carry. The crowgirl’s sister also wanted cigarettes, but Kenasia, who had perforce quit cold turkey, refused to let them in the car. “You want that shit so bad, you come into town with us and get it,” she said, parodying the crowgirl’s sister’s slurred, truncated sentences. “I’m not even looking at it. Unless you can find a pharmacy that’s still got nicotine patches?” “Jesus Christ, don’t be such a bitch,” said the crowgirl’s sister. “It’s not like you quit for your health.” (Three for mourning, four for mirth.) “You know what’s good for my health? Not running unprepared into every goddamn gas station we pass because I need a smoke.” “How’s that any different from needing gasoline?” “You can blow up zombies with gasoline and a match,” Gael interjected smugly. “Only thing you can do with a match and Newport Kings is give yourself lung cancer.” Tall, skinny, and near-sighted, Gael was a total ass. So while the others drove into town and Gael poked around the side of the road, stirring up anthills and bursting mushrooms with a stick, the crowgirl’s sister found a gravel path that led off into the woods, which were so thick and dark that even the high noon sun left the mossy trail unlit. Nothing stirred in the treetops. The swallows and robins and blue-jays were gone, dead or flown south, and all the crows and ravens were following the crowgirl, hungering after the Dead. A chipmunk darted unafraid along the path in front of the crowgirl’s sister, its white tail rusty with blood. The trail wound past an old battlefield, where someone in the early days of the plague had stuck the severed heads of the Dead onto old fence posts. Even that didn’t silence them; a woman’s eyeless skull snapped its flesh-clotted teeth at the crowgirl’s sister as she walked past. Eat the flesh, scatter the bones; that was the only sure way to stop them. But at least it couldn’t follow her. The gory fence ran parallel to the gravel path for a little over a mile, before the trail turned sharply east and began to crawl up a hill. The crowgirl’s sister had to crouch down beneath the low clutching branches of pine and yew, pulling herself up the sharp scree on hands and knees. A low steel-sided house stood at the top of the hill, plywood over its windows. On the deep front porch, there was a floral-cushioned swing with a boy sitting on it. (Five for heaven, six for hell.) He looked about Josh’s age, twenty or twenty-one, with a ginger shadow along his firm jaw and a head of thick red hair. His skin was pale, except where a trail of freckles ran over his cheekbones and across the bridge of his nose. A hunting bow lay across his blue-jeaned knees, and a coffee can held a sheaf of arrows like a scrawny porcupine at his feet. He was sipping a Diet Coke and reading a three-year-old issue of Forbes. “Hey,” said the crowgirl’s sister, dusting pine needles from her knees. “You got any regular Coke, or just diet?” She half-expected him to grab an arrow from the can and fit it to his bow before he looked up and saw that it was just her, a big seventeen-year-old with sap in her hair and a hunting knife in her belt, baby fat still softening her cheeks. She half-wanted to see him startle. But he looked first, bending down the corner of his page before closing his magazine. He had been reading an article about online investing. “No,” he said, “just diet. It’s pretty warm, but it’s still got fizz. Try it.” He held the pale silver can out to her. She took a sip, sucking the thin liquid from the rim of the can. The bubbles stung the roof of her mouth. “Why are you reading that?” she asked, nodding to the Forbes. “I like the advertisements,” he said. “Last week I finished the back issues of National Geographic. Next week I’m starting Vanity Fair. It keeps me busy.” “Do you live here?” He nodded, smiling. “Were you the one who piked all those Dead along the fence?” He nodded again. Her admiration seemed to affect him somehow, to give him a sudden burst of energy. He kicked the rotting boards of the porch floor, carrying his swing back and forth. (Seven for a secret none can tell.) “You want to come inside?” he asked. She did.

* * * *

He fell asleep afterward, on the floral-sheeted mattress he’d dragged into what used to be the living room. A dead television set still stood against one wall, and the tiny fake-marble fireplace had a blanket of ash on the floor. The crowgirl’s sister looked around as she tugged on her khakis and buttoned her sweater, committing everything to memory: the dust on the television screen, the grape-vine pattern on the wallpaper, the way a bar of sunlight snuck through the plywood and gilded one side of her lover’s sleeping face. Her right bicep throbbed a little from when he had dragged her up on top; she had been hesitant to straddle him, her wide soft thighs seemed so much stronger than his boney hips. In an hour or two she would have a truly impressive bruise. For now, she crouched clumsily beside his head and kissed the tip of his freckled nose. She knew she wouldn’t see him again. (One for sunshine, two for rain.) Outside, the sun had begun to set, and a chill breeze was blowing out of the north. She drew her hunting knife and ran all the way back to the road, where Gael was practically hyperventilating in the back seat of the full- tanked station wagon, where Kenasia wasn’t even trying to hide the cigarette stubs in the wet grass at her feet, where Josh was peering worriedly into the blackening woods—where the crowgirl was sitting calmly on the roof, a raven on each shoulder, a knowing smile on her face.

IV.

The crowgirl became the crowgirl when she was seven years old. Her sister was nine. They were playing outside the chicken house on their aunt’s farm, tossing handfuls of sand at the big white hen and then darting away, giggling, as it lunged at their ankles with its vicious red beak. The crowgirl was leaning against the coop wall, panting to catch her breath, when a huge green-black bird dropped out of the sky, clamping its talons over something in the dust at her sandaled feet. The hens screamed, puffing their feathers, and the crowgirl’s sister took up a stick, thinking the massive crow was after the chickens. But the crowgirl had started screaming too, pointing to the thing in the crow’s claws. It was a thick yellow snake, its head still stretched toward the damp hole it had burrowed beneath the floor of the chicken house. From that day on, the crows followed her everywhere. They flocked on the sidewalk in front of the housing unit, pecking at worms and unsettling passers-by. They perched on the window ledge outside the crowgirl’s second-grade classroom, interrupting the math lessons with their hard, metallic voices. When the bigger girls cornered her on top of the jungle gym, the crows would swoop down and grab wispy clawfuls of hair. (Three for pleasure, four for pain.) One day, when the crowgirl was eleven and her sister was thirteen, they went into the woods between the middle school and high school to meet a boy the crowgirl’s sister liked. He was fifteen years old, a sophomore, and he smoked cigarettes and other things that made his sweatshirts smell strange. That day, he was using a pocket knife to pick apart the corpse of a gray squirrel. The crowgirl’s sister wasn’t sure if he had killed it or found it dead. He looked angry when he saw that the crowgirl had come along. “What’d you bring the freak for?” he asked, tossing ultramarine hair out of his eyes. He had gorgeous eyes, bright blue with long golden lashes, and had dyed his hair to match. “I wanted to see you alone, fat girl, just you and me.” (Five for flowers, six for snow.) “You make her scared,” the crowgirl said. Her sister punched her in the arm and the boy laughed. He closed his knife and tucked it into the pocket of his tight black jeans. “That true, fat girl? Do I make you scared?” He scuttled toward her, still low to the ground, like a spider. The crowgirl’s sister yelped. A raven darted out of the treetops, shouting like an angry mother, and scratched three deep, bloody trenches in the hand that was reaching for his knife. The boy swore, licking blood from his fingers. He stood up, spat bloody saliva at the girls’ shoes, and stamped back toward the high school. The raven cawed in self-satisfaction and began eating the dead squirrel.

V.

The crowgirl’s sister’s name is Gabrielle. The crowgirl has a name, too, but no one uses it anymore, not even her crows. At night, in the tent she shares with Kenasia on top of the hill, the crowgirl’s sister whispers a name into her pillow. (Seven for a secret none can know.) Sometimes, the crowgirl’s sister thinks of herself in the third person.

VI.

When the crowgirl’s sister was four months, two weeks, and six days pregnant, she went down to the muddy river in the copse of trees to wash the morning sickness out of her t-shirt. She went alone. This was against the rule that they’d all agreed on after Gael wandered off to pee and got jumped by a pair of Dead. The crows came down, but too late; Gael’s spine had been snapped. The crowgirl’s sister knelt on the riverbank and pulled her shirt over her head. Her belly, always soft and round, had begun to feel firmer over the last month, sturdier, as if a secret team of engineers had fortified her insides. Three or four times, she’d thought she felt the baby kick, but then she thought it might have been too early. Her brown skin had taken on a deep purple tinge in places, like another bruise left by her lover’s urgency. (One for the wicked, two for the just.) As she scrubbed her shirt in the river, a hot tickle of sweat ran down from the base of her neck, pooling at the ridge that her bra strap dug into her back. Pausing only a moment, as she thought of Josh and his binoculars, the crowgirl’s sister unhooked her bra and set it on the sandy bank. She took off her sandals, sweatpants, and panties with the word “sexy” printed across the seat, and slid into the water. It was not particularly deep, and it was warmer than she’d expected. She took a handful of dry leaves from the shore and scrubbed the sweat and dust from her limbs. Closing her eyes, she ducked her head beneath the surface and let the slow current loosen her tangled braid. When her head broke the surface, she heard the raven’s warning caw. The crowgirl’s sister grabbed her knife from the pile of clothes on the bank. The raven was darting low overhead, from one dead black branch to another, a hunter in pursuit of—something. Something moving toward her. She strained her ears in the windless silence. All around her, the fallen leaves lay undisturbed, broken branches dangled still as church columns. “Who’s there?” she called, raising the knife. (Three for water, four for dust.) The raven dove suddenly behind the tangled roots of an oak. There was a thrashing, the sound of something tearing, and a woman’s voice shouted: “Don’t let it hurt me! I just want to talk.” The crowgirl’s sister hesitated. The raven screamed again, briefly, its voice cut off by a heavy thump. The Dead woman had thrown a rock. She emerged from behind the tree roots, shuffling broken legs, her black, thick-nailed hands thrown up to shield her face from the departing bird. “It will come back,” she said as the oily wings dwindled in the distance. “I have to talk quickly, and you must listen. I have an offer to make.”

VII.

The crowgirl’s sister was prettier than the crowgirl. Part of this was because she was two years older; her breasts and hips were fuller, her eyes heavy-lidded and just a little sunken, so that she looked permanently ready to come to bed. Before the plague, back when she could do her make-up every morning, she lined her sleepy eyes in bright blue and painted her lips with icy pink gloss that smelled like strawberry or watermelon. It had been over a year since she wore lip gloss, but she remembered its taste, thick and sweet, like kissing, like sex. The crowgirl’s sister had slept with Josh and Ryan, and once with Kenasia. Josh was sweet and Ryan liked it when she pushed him down and whispered in his ear, but Kenasia was by far the best, those soft kissable lips, the way she knew exactly what to do with her tobacco-sour tongue. (Five for mountains, six for the deep.) The crowgirl had huge pores, a flat chest, and chewed-down fingernails. Her eyes were tiny and her hair looked constantly in need of shampoo. As far as the crowgirl’s sister knew, the crowgirl hadn’t slept with anyone, ever. But she was skinny. She had a low, musical voice. She had the crows. And everyone loved her.

VIII.

When the crowgirl’s sister was dressed again, her wet hair knotted back in a sloppy braid, the Dead woman sat in the hollow of an oak’s roots and spoke. “Is it true that carrion birds obey your sister?” There was a strange reverence in the way she said carrion birds. The crowgirl’s sister wondered if that phrase meant something different, something more, among the Dead. “Crows and ravens, yeah. Sometimes vultures, but only if they’re weak or starving.” “How does she do it?” The crowgirl’s sister shrugged, shifting her weight from foot to foot. “Dunno. Never asked.” “Never?” “Never. Maybe I just don’t want to know.” She opened her knife, pushed the blade back into the handle with the pad of her thumb. Click-clack. She was keeping an eye to the east, toward the farmhouse and the rest of the congregation. Dead always hunted in packs. “This conversation got a point?” The Dead woman’s chipped brown teeth closed over the place where her lower lip had been months of decomposition before. The crowgirl’s sister wondered if all the Dead kept their mannerisms like that, or if this woman was just new. She suspected the latter. She’d never known the Dead to talk before. “We want a truce,” the Dead woman said. “An exchange.” “Okay.” “Your sister for your lives.” The crowgirl’s sister said nothing. (Seven for a secret the dead will keep.) “Look,” said the Dead woman, bending close. She smelled of stagnant water. The black strips of flesh that still clung above her nose and eyes were wrinkled, like furrows in mud. “We’re afraid of your sister. We admit it. Our only predators obey her, follow in her wake. But how safe can she really keep you—forever? How safe did she keep Gael?” “How do you know his name?” “We feasted.” The crowgirl’s sister didn’t know if that was the answer to her question or if the Dead woman was following some thoughtful track of her own. “Someday you will also be consumed. You’ll wander too far, or in a place too low and close for the crows to reach.” “I won’t—” “Even now.” The Dead woman raised her voice, a painful-sounding process, like strumming on a wire stretched to its limit. “What’s protecting you now? Where are the birds?” “I have a knife.” She was thinking of her baby’s father, of the line of Dead skulls impaled on the fence posts. “I can fight you.” “Will your child be able to fight us when it’s born?” (One for weakness, two for might.) “Give us your sister,” the Dead woman said, dropping her voice again. “Give us your sister and we will place a mark on you, you and your companions and anyone else you choose. Forever. None of us will harm you again.” “But what would you do to my sister?” A raven cawed nearby, invisible among the leaves. The Dead woman looked away. “They wouldn’t let me,” the crowgirl’s sister said. “Josh and Kenasia and the rest. They like her too much. I just couldn’t.” But she could hear her own uncertainty. The Dead woman was animated, almost smiling; she seemed to be listening for some approaching thing. “Perhaps your sister thinks differently,” she said. The crowgirl’s sister followed the Dead woman’s gaze. There was the crowgirl, the injured raven on her shoulder, walking slowly back toward the camp. “Damn,” the crowgirl’s sister said. She leapt up and took off running after her. The Dead woman’s eyes followed her up the hill.

IX.

It was a brief meeting back at the camp, the crowgirl speaking calmly from the top of the station wagon, the crowgirl’s sister pacing until her sandals chafed. Josh stood up as soon as the crowgirl finished telling the terms of the Dead woman’s offer. He pulled up a sprig of woody grass with colorless, spidery roots and began to chew on it, looking west toward the farmhouse. “No,” he said. “It’s out of the question.” Crystal mumbled something that sounded like agreement, tracing patterns in the mud with a dirty fingernail. Kenasia was gone, huffing on a cigarette at the base of the hill. Ryan, perched on an overturned coffee can, looked profoundly uncomfortable. “They’ve got a point about Gael.” (Three for day, four for night.) “So what?” Josh’s deep voice cracked around the second word. “Gael made a mistake and he paid for it. The rest of us have lived this long, and it’s only because of her.” “What about when she’s gone?” the crowgirl’s sister said. Josh and Ryan stared at her. Crystal was still tracing patterns in the mud, chewing the inside of her cheek. The crowgirl, stroking the feathers of the raven on her knee, looked as impassive as stone. “She isn’t going to live forever,” the crowgirl’s sister said. “Zombies or heart attack or a fucking brain tumor, something’s going to happen. The birds’ll be gone. And we might not be around, but our children will.” Josh spat out a gob of grass. Ryan glanced at the crowgirl, but she wasn’t looking at anyone, just the oily rainbow of her raven’s feathers. (Five for heaven, six for hell.) “I’m going to do it,” the crowgirl said. “I’m sorry, Josh, but Gabrielle is right. If you let them have me, you can demand protection for everyone. All of you, all of your children and grandchildren until the end of the world. That’s worth my life.” “Let’s vote on it,” Josh said desperately. He was trying not to cry. “No,” said the crowgirl. She looked up from her raven. Her eyes were wet and pink. “I’m going to do it.”

X.

She asked her sister to walk with her across the field. It was late afternoon, still warm and sunny, and crows and ravens looped through the dusty air. Their cries echoed in the distant hills, sharp sounds of mourning. “It’s okay,” the crowgirl said, reaching for her sister’s hand. “I wouldn’t want to live like this forever. And I don’t want your daughter to grow up like this.” (Seven for a secret none can tell.) “She won’t,” the crowgirl’s sister said tightly. “I’ll make sure.” She watched the shadows of the birds, her hand resting on her belly.

XI.

The Dead streamed out of the farmhouse to meet them. Brown and blue, yellow and black, their dirty hair hanging in tangled mats and their eyes filmy and weeping. The crows swooped down to tear at them, but the crowgirl muttered something and waved her hands, and the birds dispersed. She stopped a hundred feet from the sagging farmhouse porch and drew her sister up beside her. “Mark her first,” she said. A Dead woman came forward, the one who had made the offer by the river. Her eyes were bloody but startlingly blue. She went to the crowgirl’s sister and pressed three bony fingertips to her forehead. She was humming a low, mournful melody that seemed to come from a deeper place than her decaying lungs. When the Dead woman lifted her hand again, the crowgirl’s sister felt a sharp bone-deep pain running down from her forehead. (One for sickness, two for health.) “Remember this,” the Dead woman said. The crowgirl’s sister nodded; she didn’t think she would ever forget the melody, the touch of those dead fingertips. “You can pass the mark to whomever you wish. We will treat you like one of our own.” She turned to the crowgirl. “Are you ready?” (Three for famine, four for wealth.) “Yes,” the crowgirl said. “Look away, Gabrielle.” But I did not look away.

XII.

When it was over, the crows descended. Hundreds of them, thousands, beaks shining red and golden in the sunset. They scattered their sharp feathers like shadows over the field. They fell upon the Dead, feasting as the Dead had feasted on the crowgirl. (Five for a coward, six for the brave.) When they finished eating, they dispersed. And the crowgirl’s sister stood alone in the field of bones and shadows and death.

XIII. Every day, I walk through fields. I smell the rotting corn or the rain or the wild- blooming flowers. I feel the grass whipping soundlessly against my legs or the mud sucking at my heels. Sometimes my daughter walks with me, stopping at every round pebble or curious shining feather she comes across. The wind runs its fingers through her red-tinged hair, and I see the mark like three burned fingerprints on her little forehead. Some days, the crows are flying. I watch their shadows on the earth and wonder if this will be the day I like my sister. (Seven for a secret I’ll take to the grave.)

© 2013 by Megan Arkenberg.

[JUMP TO THE AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT]

Megan Arkenberg is a student in Wisconsin. In the name of story research, she racks up late fees at the college library, gets dizzyingly lost along the shores of Lake Michigan, consumes a steady diet of M.R. James, and lusts quietly after the architecture and costume of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Her work has appeared in Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, and dozens of other places. She procrastinates by editing the fantasy e-zine Mirror Dance and the historical fiction e-zine Lacuna. The Score Alaya Dawn Johnson

Don’t matter what we sing Every window we open, they jam another door They gladhand, pander, lie for the king It’s our song, but their score

—Jake Pray, “What We Sing” (first documented performance: February 15, 2003 at the pre-invasion anti-Iraq War marches in New York City)

* * * *

Gmail—Inbox—Chat [email protected] me: violet, i’m so sorry. if you need someone to come over . . . Sent at 3:16 PM on Sunday

Violet: he never liked you, you know Sent at 4:43 PM on Sunday Violet’s new status message—Two bleeding hearts drank ginger beer/and mocked and stung their gingered fears/to know the future, and still die here. Rahimahullah, Jake.

* * * *

NEW YORK CITY MEDICAL EXAMINER

NAME: Jacob Nasser SEX: Male RACE: White (Arab) DOB: 2/1/81 DATE OF DEATH: 3/17/07-3/18/07

AUTOPSY-NO: 43-6679 DATE OF AUTOPSY: 3/21/2007 TIME OF AUTOPSY: 3:36 p.m. DATE OF REPORT: 4/1/2007

FINAL PATHOLOGICAL DIAGNOSES:

I. 25 MICRON TEAR IN CORONARY ARTERY, POSSIBLE INDICATION OF SPONTANEOUS CORONARY ARTERY DISSECTION II. MINIMAL DRUG INTOXICATION

A. Probable non-contributory drugs present:

1. Acetaminophen (2 mg/L)

2. Cannabis (30.0 ng/mL)

OPINION:

Jacob Nasser was a 26-year-old male of Arab descent who died of undetermined causes. The presence of a 25 micron tear in his coronary artery might indicate SCAD (Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection), however it was deemed too small to lead to a definitive finding. The presence of cannabis was small and non-contributing.

The manner of death is determined to be: COULD NOT BE DETERMINED.

M. Andy Pilitokis M.D., LL.B, M.Sc. Chief Medical Examiner

Andrea Varens, MD Associate Medical Examiner * * * *

Jake Pray (Jacob Nasser) prelim autopsy notes [Recovered] Last saved with AutoRecover 4:33 AM Thursday, March 22, 2007

Andrea Varens 3/21/07

The subject was first discovered dead in his holding cell the morning of March 18th in the “Tombs” Manhattan Detention Center. The subject was discovered with a rope in his hand, and so police at first surmised it had contributed in some manner to his death, but there are no consistent contusions on the neck or, indeed, anywhere else on the body. A preliminary physical examination reveals what looks to be a normal, healthy twenty-six year old man with no signs of ill-health or infirmity (beyond the obvious). Drug interactions? Probably SCAD, poor fucker. I saw him. I went to the hallway to get a coke from the machine and I saw him. Leaning against the wall looking out the window. Oh fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. I’ve been staring at his sorry face for the last two days, I oughta know. Maybe he has a long lost twin brother? Mom was right, I should have gone into

* * * *

The New York Post Anti-War Songster “Scored” Dope, Autopsy Says April 2nd, 2007

Bad news for the anti-Bush peaceniks who’ve turned Jake Pray into a martyr: turns out he was stoned on dope (the equivalent of “one joint of strong chronic,” according to a well-placed source) when police took him into custody. And he died of a “spontaneous” heart attack. Not police abuse. Of course, you didn’t hear any of that damning data at the packed memorial service in the ultra-liberal Riverside Church this Sunday. In fact, Pray’s memorial service sounded more like an anti-war rally. Violet Omura, a Columbia grad student who spoke at the memorial, had nothing but contempt for the city’s Medical Examiner. “It’s ridiculous,” she said. “It’s like if you shot me in the head and the autopsy said I had died due to ‘spontaneous brain leakage.’” Pray’s fellow protesters were convinced police abuse was responsible. “[The police] really picked on him at the rally,” said Billy Davis, a close friend who had been present at the protest. “Guess they saw his skin and hair, you know, and drew their conclusions,” Davis said, referring to Pray’s Palestinian heritage. “They called him a terrorist. Said ragheads like him were responsible for bringing down the Twin Towers.” Davis also accused the officers of using tasers on the unruly protestors. Conspiracy theories abounded at the memorial of how the non-lethal crowd-control devices could have contributed to his death. In a statement issued today, the Police Commissioner denied all accusations of wrongdoing by the officers on the scene, and restated the findings of yesterday’s autopsy report. “Should any new evidence surface regarding this case, rest assured that we will pursue it with all due diligence.”

* * * *

Rock & Rap Confidential “What We Still Sing” Issue 4, Volume 78; May, 2007 Jake Pray may never have had a hit song, but to the latest crop of anti-war protestors, “What We Sing” has the same iconic resonance that “Bring the Boys Home” or “Masters of War” had for their parents. And over three hundred youngbloods turned out for the memorial of this iconoclastic musician, held this past March in Riverside Church. Jake Pray was born as Jacob Nasser to Palestinian immigrants who settled in suburban New Jersey when he was just three years old. His father was a professor of Linguistics and Cultural Anthropology at a university in the Gaza strip who was forced to emigrate after he received death threats for his political positions. Not surprisingly, Pray became a lightning rod for activists across the world when his life ended in Manhattan’s “Tombs” detention facility. He was arrested after an incident with police during the anti-war protests this March. The autopsy report declared its findings inconclusive. The police commissioner, in a written statement, called Pray’s death a “tragic incident.” The arresting officer taunted the twenty-six year old man with racial slurs like “raghead.” He shot 50,000 excruciating volts of electricity into his body, and then detained him in unspeakable conditions for endless hours. A tragic incident? The mind would boggle, if it wasn’t so painfully predictable. The larger meaning of Jake’s life was best captured by Violet Omura, a twenty-five-year-old graduate student in the Physics department at Columbia.

“Perhaps the experiences of his parents in the occupied territories influenced his decision to turn to political activism and the thankless efforts of those who argue from right, not expedience. But I think, perhaps, that he mostly just wanted to tell, he just wanted to sing, he just wanted others to know they had a voice. Our parents were optimists. They gave us “Imagine,” and “Blowin’ in the Wind.” We’re not pessimists. God knows Jake wasn’t a pessimist. But he wasn’t so sure that singing could change anything. Some people complain that “What We Sing” is bleak. I disagree. It’s furious, it’s strident, and it’s real. Jake wanted to change the world, but he couldn’t hide from the fact that it might never change.”

* * * *

Billboard Pop 100 Top Ten Issue Date: 2007-5-19 #1: Beyonce & Shakira: Beautiful Liar #2: Gwen Stefani featuring Akon: The Sweet Escape #3: Fergie featuring Ludacris: Glamorous #4: Avril Lavigne: Girlfriend #5: Diddy featuring Keyshia Cole: Last Night #6: Tim McGraw: Last Dollar #7: Mims: This Is Why I’m Hot #8: Jake Pray: What We Sing #9: Gym Class Heroes: Cupid’s Chokehold #10: Fall Out Boy: This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race

* * * *

MSNBC TRANSCRIPT TUCKER with Tucker Carlson Original Air Date: 5/20/07

TUCKER CARLSON: Jake Pray has been in the news a lot lately. After all, the blame-America- firster’s mysterious death in police custody, his illicit marijuana use, and his surprise hit song, “What We Sing,” have made him the perfect martyr for self- defeating liberal elitists. But now, one of Pray’s own radicals has come out against him. In a damning exposé published in the online fringe-left newsletter Counterpunch, James Sullivan has laid bare the despicable anti-Semitic and vitriolic anti-American hate that underlies the rabid far-left. Welcome to the show, Mr. Sullivan.

JAMES SULLIVAN: Thank you very much for having me.

TC: We know you were detained with Jake Pray at the Chelsea Piers before he was taken to the Manhattan Detention Facility. How well did you know him?

JS: Well, when you’re as heavily involved in the peace movement as I was, you kind of get to know everyone. Jake was, you know, dedicated. A bit too dedicated. He was a musician, but you could tell it wasn’t really about the music for him. It was about the fame. People loved him. I did too, for a while.

TC: But eventually you realized—

JS: Yeah, you know, he was just full of—sorry, yeah, full of it. A bit of a megalomaniac.

TC: I understand that you’re also a musician? Did he ever support you, or . . .

JS: Never. Jake really resented the presence of another musician in the, well, what he would have called the “inner circle.”

TC: Now, I’m going to read a passage from your Counterpunch article. It’s pretty damning, detailing what happened the afternoon you were both detained by the police. You write: “Pray was furious after the arrest. On the ride down to the pier he just sat in the police truck shaking and clenching his fists. His girlfriend, Violet Omura, tried to calm him down, but he just lashed out at her, called her an ‘ignorant bitch’ and a few other expressions I’ll choose not to print here. He was always like that, in fact, willing—and sometimes eager—to take out his own personal frustrations and failings on others. Billy Davis and Violet and his other cronies are trying to claim that the police officers called him a ‘raghead’ that day. If they did I never heard it.” And then, further on, you write: “Around the police, Pray was like a rabid dog. At Pier 57 it was like something had popped. He wasn’t quiet anymore. We all heard him: Violet and Billy and the rest who are trying to pretend that it didn’t happen.” You go on to list some of the epithets Pray hurled at our men in blue, some of which are not, um, fit for television. Could you share some of the milder ones?

JS: [Laughter] Yeah. They’re—sure. “Filthy murdering bigots,” that was one. He said they were all “closet fags,” and accused them of ah—“practicing on Abner Louima.” He just wouldn’t stop. Finally, one of the officers tried to get him to calm down. He had dark curly hair, a big nose —you know, obviously Jewish, and Jake nearly tackled him. Said “his kind” was supporting genocide and maybe “they deserved what they got.”

TC: “Deserved what they got.” What do you think he meant by that?

JS: I think it’s obvious. He was saying the Jewish people deserved the Holocaust.

TC: Wow. Now, I hear you’re starting to distance yourself from all this and the so-called “peace” movement.

JS: Yeah. Actually, I’m [Laughter] yeah, I’m halfway through Atlas Shrugged. TC: [Laughter] How do you like it so far?

JS: Really good. It’s giving me a new perspective.

* * * *

JakePrayTruth.org Action Statement

Jake Pray, the radical anti-war protestor and singer, died as a result of police abuse on the night of March 17th, 2007. This fact, supported by activists present during his arrest and reports from within the holding facility itself, has been systematically covered up by the New York City Police Department and coroner’s office. This is just a part of an overall, covert strategy to undermine the vocal anti-war movement with acts of state-sponsored terror. Jake Pray, whose anti-war songs had energized a new generation of protestors, was first on their list because of his growing influence. COINTELPRO had thousands and thousands of pages about John Lennon in their files, because he posed a similar threat. In this age of increasing government control and ongoing illegal wars (one million dead and counting!), Jake Pray’s powerful voice and even more powerful message posed an unacceptable threat. But guess what? So do we. And we resolve to uncover the TRUTH about Jake Pray’s murder and bring his message to the world.

Billy Davis Founder, JakePrayTruth.org December 15, 2007

[UPDATE 1/3/08: For our official statement on the allegations made by James Sullivan, please visit our FAQ.]

* * * *

Just Another (Libertarian) Weblog: Ron Paul 2008! Rockin’ For the Fatherland Posted January 4, 2008 5:45 pm by BigFish

Well, Billy Davis over at JakePrayTruth has finally responded to the accusations James Sullivan made such a big splash with a few months ago. Short version: ‘Ole Jimmy is an opportunistic lying asshole. Still, we have to thank him. “Practicing on Abner Louima” is an expression now enshrined in my soul. Hey Jake, wherever you are, I never look at a toilet plunger without thinking of you. (Unfortunately none of the inexplicably frequent ghost-sightings of Pray these last few months have involved home plumbing equipment. Though I hear he was spotted outside The Pink PussyCat last Thursday). In other news, the redoubtable Jimmy Sullivan has made himself a webpage! Check out the “latest music” section. And here I had thought right-wing volks-rock had gone out of fashion in the Third Reich. Oh. Never mind. Sieg Heil!

* * * *

To: Professor Violet Omura New York University Department of Applied Physics

From: Zacharias Tibbs 15 East Rock Way Topeka, Kansas

March 16, 2015

Dear PROFESSOR Omura: I hope you are prepared & have sat down to read this letter for I have here enclosed the most ASTONISHING and SECRET mathematical formula whereby all events heretofore UNEXPLAINED by the greatest scientists of the world are rendered clear by a simple proof. If you do not believe this, don’t trust me, but read on for yourself!

I see from reading your very fascinating articles and biography that you once had the privilege of knowing the great Jake Pray, whose every album I own. Would you believe me if I said that this GREAT MATHEMATICAL PROOF would even make clear the mystery of the rumors of his ghostly resurrection and spectral warnings of future wars & conflicts? Have I intrigued you? Yes, of course, for you have a keen intellect and open heart and would surely not want to deny your colleagues the benefit of the knowledge I have so HUMBLY stumbled upon.

Merely scroll down to see the world’s greatest secret revealed . . .

p(R) = (As * (t(d)/Gw)) * B/V

Thus, the probability of any INDIVIDUAL, upon their DEATH & DEPARTURE from this world, becoming a REVENANT is revealed . . . Where As = Astrological Sign, with the following values assigned:

Aries = .2 Taurus = .5 Gemini = 1 Cancer = 5 Leo = 1 Virgo = 3 Libra = .7 Scorpio = -1 Sagittarius = 2 Capricorn = 0 Aquarius = 1 Pisces = 2

As determined through intensive STUDY of GOD’S HOLY WORD & observations & deductions of a PERSONAL nature. t(d) = the time spent in the process of dying

Gw = the number of GOOD WORKS performed in their lives, with the average being 500 for a CHRISTIAN and less than 100 for ALL OTHERS (& in particular those of the apostate MORMON faith) B = that which belongs to BEELZEBUB, otherwise known as SATAN or the DEVIL. The values are assigned thusly:

If the subject is a Mormon, B = 1000, for all MORMONS shall surely walk the EARTH for ETERNITY

For ATHEISTS, B = 500

For CHRISTIANS of pure and godly EVANGELICAL faith, B = 0.1

For ALL OTHERS, B = 1

V = the number of verses in our HOLY BIBLE the departed knew & memorized in life

But perhaps you, in your SECULAR University and GODLESS education, do not understand the true significance of explaining the REVENANTS among us. For do not mistake me, the revenants are responsible for all manner of WEIRD & UNEXPLAINED events. Not merely ghosts (like that of your (sadly GODLESS) REVENANT & FRIEND Jake Pray), but also such sundry as possession by DEMONS, ALIEN ABDUCTIONS, and sightings of UFO’S! Even the INEXPLICABLE behavior of SUBATOMIC particles through the EXTRA DIMENSIONS is caused by these revenants & of course not to mention the riddle of GRAVITY.

I am sure you can see the potential of this astonishing EQUATION and I will be happy to travel to the GODLESS city of New York to discuss it with you further. Though you are only an Assistant Professor, I feel you are the perfect VESSEL of this KNOWLEDGE.

Yours in RESPECT & ANTICIPATION,

Zacharias Tibbs

* * * *

From: Violet Omura [[email protected]] To: [email protected] Date: March 18, 2015, 4:13 am, EST

Dear Zacharias: you can bet that I have no aspirations to be the perfect VESSEL for your KNOWLEDGE, or even the person who has to open your crackpotty emails (what, you didn’t think I got the first three?) but I’m drunk and bored and this is definitely the worst day of my year, so I’ll bite. taking it as a given that you wouldn’t know a quantum theory of gravity from a hemorrhoid, why don’t all these horrible sinners and atheists and (!) mormons just go to, you know, hell? seems easier than having billions of revenants wandering the earth like thetans or something. you’re not a scientologist, are you?

I don’t know what you might have read or whatever about jake and me but you honestly can’t believe that a godless intellectual like yours truly believes the woowoo crackpots who say he still shows up at their rallies? god i wish he did.

(I mean ‘god’ in a purely rhetorical, godless way, of course). violet, future revenant

* * * * From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Date: March 18, 2015, 6:21 pm, CMT

PROFESSOR Omura:

Disregarding your DRUNKEN (and, indeed, Godless) aspersions on my theory & character, you have indeed hit upon the crux of the matter.

For through other EQUATIONS & RESEARCH, I have hit upon the fundamental truth: these revenants do not go to HELL, for we are ALREADY LIVING THERE.

Yes, I say. The present EARTH merged with BEELZEBUB’S kingdom on the night of MARCH 20, 2003.

I trust you recognize the date? Yes, for your friend Jake Pray was present at every RALLY and PEACE MARCH in protest of this war, which I of course included in his calculation for GOOD WORKS.

Contemplate our SINFUL world and tell me that you do not agree? We have been DENIZENS of hell for the last twelve years! And as a side note, I am of course entirely OPPOSED to all false gods, including the ABSURD teachings of SCIENTOLOGISTS. I must thank you for reminding me of them, for both they AND Mormons should receive a Beelzebub score of 1000 . . .

When would you like to meet?

Zacharias Tibbs

* * * *

Warp & Weft: An Inclusive Community for Alternative Paradigms and Progressive Politics Virtual Town Meeting (Excerpt) Transcript and Audio archived on the community bulletin board Original event April 1, 2017

[Rose_Granny] Thank you all for inviting me here today. I’m Rose, and as my husband used to say, I don’t look much like my avatar. [Laughter] I’ve never really believed in ghosts. Oh, I’ve heard stories and some were eerie enough to make me shiver, but I’ve lived a long time and I had never seen anything to make me believe that any part of us could survive after death. When my husband died last year, after a long and painful fight with liver cancer, I was devastated. I decided that it was my duty to make Harold’s life count as much as it could, by taking his ideals and courage and using that to further work he would have approved of. So I became, at age 75, a political activist. I attended rallies. I spoke up at virtual town meetings like this one for our local congress members. I made signs, I wrote letters, I organized petitions . . . and I discovered Jake Pray. I’d heard “What We Sing” on the radio years ago, of course, but at the time I hadn’t paid any attention to the man or the story behind the song. When I learned of how he died, I was shocked. How could such a young man, with such promise of the future, die so suddenly? He had no serious drugs in his body. There were no signs of violence, self- inflicted or otherwise. He was found dead on the floor of his holding cell, with a bit of rope in his hand. And then I saw him. Perhaps it will not surprise most of you to learn that I mean this literally. I saw Jake Pray, sitting beside me in the dark early-morning during a sit-in protest in front of the White House. A rope was wrapped around his left hand. He looked very young—the exact image of the twenty-five year old I’d seen in all the pictures. Still, I tried to rationalize it as an uncanny coincidence, a kid who happened to look just like him. “Aren’t you cold?” I asked, when I saw his short- sleeved t-shirt. He smiled and shook his head. The cold obviously didn’t bother him. That’s when I knew he was a ghost: it was at least twenty degrees that morning. All these questions bubbled inside of me, but I was so nervous I didn’t know if I could get them out. “Do you think we’ll be able to stop this escalation with China?” I finally asked. He looked very sad. Just then, a friend tapped me on my shoulder. I glanced away for just a second, but when I turned back, he was gone. Would it surprise you to learn that I attended that sit- in on March 15? And yes, India sent the first cruise missiles into Nanjing two days later.

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Warp & Weft Message Boards Topic: Jake Pray was MURDERED and gov’t is COVERING it up! Username: FightAllPwr4 Date: April 2, 2017 - 3:34 EST

Rose_Granny is a government dupe. She says “there were no signs of violence,” but how can we trust the coroners report when it was commissioned by the same government that first marked Pray for assassination?! That’s like trusting the tobacco industry to give an accurate autopsy to the Marlboro man! Billy Davis, who was THERE, said the arresting officer called him a ‘fucking raghead’ and ‘commie’ and that he was a ‘mass murderer’ who ‘flew the planes into the Twin Towers.’ This jerk couldn’t wait to get his hands on Jake. Just consider a few things: Why is the coroner report dated APRIL 1ST?! A subtle hint, maybe, that all is not what it seems? APRIL 1, 2007 was a SUNDAY. Who publishes a coroner report on a SUNDAY? This is a fucking ten-year-old April Fools’ joke, people! He had a ‘spontaneous cardiac artery dissection’ but he only had a 25 micron tear? How was that enough to kill him? Do you know how big 25 microns is? Half the width of a STRAND OF HAIR! Where did this famous rope come from? Violet Omura, a respected physicist, was his lover at the time. She visited him a few hours before he was discovered dead. She says he seemed distressed by the racist cop’s treatment, but showed no signs of chest pain or anything that could lead to his “spontaneous” death! Significantly, she saw no rope anywhere in the cell! Where did it come from? The forgotten remains of a top-secret government “alternative interrogation” technique, imported from our gulags in Guantanamo, Stare Kjekuty and Iraq? Jake Pray was tortured to death by our own government. Maybe the reason he’s haunting us, Rose_Granny, is because he wants the truth to come out!

JakePrayTruth.org

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Warp & Weft Message Boards Topic: Re: Jake Pray was MURDERED and gov’t is COVERING it up! Username: SweetGreenOnions Date: April 2, 2017—3:45 EST omura did it. evidence from “not a factor,” the last song he ever wrote:

The invisible hand blasts the cradle Spreading peace by throwing bombs We feast beneath the master’s table Sating growls with salvaged crumbs Save the world? It’s just a song she told jake to provoke a fight with those officers. the NSA paid her to be the yoko ono of the antiwar left.

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Excerpt from Real Ghosts: The Warp & Weft Guide to Specters and Revenants of the 21st Century by Dede Star Flower HarperPenguin, New York, 2018

The accuracy of his revenant predictions is quite remarkable. Two days after the New York Medical Examiner saw Pray’s ghost in her office building, the Iranians kidnapped fifteen UK soldiers. In 2009, a cocktail waitress sighted Pray in an alley, and that very night the US dropped the first round of tactical nuclear weapons on Iran. In 2011, Amina Okrafour was marking the anniversary of John Lennon’s death in Central Park when she saw Pray’s ghost. The next day the Chinese government shipped 1000 support troops to the Iranian front. The list goes on: thirteen activists see Pray at an anti-globalization rally in Sweden; the next day India tests a nuclear bomb and the cease-fire ends in Kashmir. When San Francisco representative Linda Xiaobo reported seeing Pray during a ceremony in the Mojave desert, we all knew that the talks to bring India into NATO were a certainty. Sure enough, a few days later, the US honored its obligations under the treaty and declared itself officially at war with China and Pakistan. As a revenant, Jake cannot stop these horrors from occurring, but he can stand witness to them. He can accuse us, like Hamlet’s father, of not doing enough.

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Written Communication from Zacharias Tibbs; Topeka, Kansas

To: Violet Omura, NYU, Department of Applied Physics Date: November 18, 2020—10:44 pm, EST

[Sender: Verified]

Professor Omura:

Perhaps you have wondered why I have not yet responded to your Communication which you sent to me this past April. In fact it is because I have UNDERTAKEN to follow your kind & SAGE ADVICE and read those very ERUDITE & SCHOLARLY works by the great Einstein, Feynman & Chatterjee. I found the latter’s work on M- THEORY and the QUANTUM GRAVITY SYNTHESIS most Fascinating, though I must confess that I found a great deal of it Difficult, and indeed, sometimes quite IMPOSSIBLE to understand. GOD, it is clear, has GIFTED her with a great mind. As did HE to YOU.

It’s strange, I thought upon my completion of these works, how very CLEAR my errors in the past are to me now. Though I maintain my belief in REVENANTS & the HOLY SPIRIT, it is clear that my EQUATIONS & THEORIES, which I had thought could explain the WORLD, were not worth a Greasy Rag. I see the DEPTH of THOUGHT of those PHYSICISTS exploring the universe, and I feel a small INCHWORM in comparison. I must thank you for your most UNUSUAL & FAITHFUL correspondence over the years. Without it I fear I would never have understood my Gross Errors.

I have also Considered your Strange words to me regarding your SAD & PAINFUL feelings of guilt & regret over some mysterious Life Event. I say to you that your grief GRIEVES ME, for I know that you, too, could find solace in the LORD, if only you would open your heart to HIM. You say you Cannot, because “a scientist does not work from faith, but evidence.” This is a Worthy Philosophy, but I say that because I KNOW GOD EXISTS, the EVIDENCE for him will someday be FOUND. Cannot you SEE His HAND in Chatterjee’s Equations?

Can you not SEE that the reason your friend Jake still WALKS AMONG US is because he is a Revenant on Earth?

I await your Response with great Eagerness & Anticipation.

Zach Tibbs

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Excerpt from “Changing the Score: My Life with Jake Pray” Vanity Fair, May 2025 by Violet Omura

Before I say anything else, before I tell my story, or what little I’m privileged to know of Jake’s, let me make this perfectly clear: I loved Jake Pray. For a certain period of time he, and the anti-war movement, were my entire life. When he died, that life fell apart so completely that for the first and only time I considered suicide. In some ways, on some nights, that pain has never left me. I could never have harmed Jake. Those who suggest otherwise reveal a lack of understanding about our relationship so profound I can only pity them. To those whose critical faculties have not been addled by baseless conspiracy-mongering, I offer my story. . . . I first saw him at The West End, in December of 2003. I was a senior at Columbia, a physics major so obsessed with quantum mechanical particle interactions and Feynman diagrams that I had only dimly registered our country’s illegal invasion of a sovereign state. (Such ignorance was possible, then; over a certain income level, foreign wars didn’t touch your daily life.) I gleaned my news from articles my sister sent me, or my suitemates’ overheard conversations. I felt the appropriate outrage, and promptly forgot about it. What, after all, does outrage look like at the Planck scale? Later, while drunk, I would amend that rhetorical question: what does it sound like? The bar was packed that night. Some were the typical Friday-night crowd of loud freshmen and bored frat brothers, but others had heard Jake at the big rally in February and were excited to see him again. He didn’t even perform “What We Sing,” the song that was already turning into an anthem. It didn’t matter. Jake had a voice that stuck you to your chair and forced you to listen. Almost gentle, with an ironic bite. “Like fresh ginger,” a simile-inclined local reviewer once called it (and Jake and I laughed until we had to stop to breathe. We ate in Chinatown that night; he bought me ginger beer). His falsetto was eerie; his bass rough. Sometimes his vibrato wavered so wildly you thought he might lose the note, but he never did. His lyrics were passionate and only sometimes political. He had thick, wavy brown hair; a high forehead; wide eyes with camel’s lashes; and a chin that dimpled when he smiled. He was young, talented, and beautiful. I was twenty-two, and I felt as though I’d just crawled from Plato’s cave. I introduced myself after the set. He bought me a drink. We talked, I don’t remember about what. For all I know I babbled about brane-theory and quantum gravity all night. I had never been very good at talking to people. But he didn’t seem to mind me. He told me a little about himself. He had graduated from NYU that year as a film major, but he didn’t want to make movies. And the usual: he was appalled by the Iraq war, President Bush, our foreign policies. He quoted Chomsky, which was familiar, and Said, which surprised me. He said he had met Edward Said as a child, when his parents had first moved to the States from Palestine. I asked him if he was Muslim; he said he was a “closet atheist.” He asked me if I was religious; I said I was a physicist. He took me back to my dorm that night; my philosophy of alcohol consumption at the time did not include moderation. He kissed me as he pressed the call button for the elevator, as though I might not notice if he were doing something else. “Do I get your number?” he asked. What odd syntax, I thought, many years later. Like it was a game show and my number was the all-expense- paid trip to the Bahamas. . . . My good friend Billy Davis, who died last year, spent his life advocating for a full inquiry into Jake’s death. I find it ironic that even now, in the midst of our global war with China and Iran, the relatively insignificant Iraq War has so much cultural relevance. Perhaps because it is the first moment when our generation, collectively, began to realize that something had gone terribly wrong in our political and social system. Jake’s death symbolized too much of that moment for us to ever let it go. . . . They took us to Pier 57, that detention center turned toxic waste dump where they liked to herd activists during overcrowded demonstrations. Jake was furious that day, on a manic high. He was no stranger to racism —was any Arab living in New York City after 9-11?— but the arresting officer that day reveled in a particularly nasty brand of invective. “Raghead” was the least of it (and if Jimmy Sullivan can even tell the difference between his mouth and his lower orifice, I’ve yet to see the evidence). After they arrested us, Jake could hardly sit still. The floor was covered in an unidentifiable sludge that slid beneath our shoes and smelled like decomposing tires. We were all chilly and desperate to get out. Jake went to ask the officers when they would release us. I never heard what they said to him, and I never got to ask. Jake started yelling and shouting. His hands trembled as he gesticulated, like a junkie coming off a high, though I knew that he hadn’t had any more than half a joint. I remember being terrified, afraid that they would shoot him. When they set off the taser, he dropped to the floor like a marionette loosed of its strings. He groaned, but he couldn’t even seem to speak. The police officers laughed, I remember. What did he yell? “Pigs,” certainly. But Jake hated few things more than he hated the ongoing Palestinian/Israeli conflict, and he would have never used the despicable anti-Semitic tripe certain opportunistic faux-rock musicians attribute to him. We had been unlawfully detained and verbally abused. Did Jake’s behavior represent a failure to turn the other cheek? Of course. But he never meant to be a martyr. . . . I went to the Tombs late that night, after they released us from the Pier and arrested him. His lawyer said the police insisted on detaining him for questioning and were charging him with “disorderly conduct.” Jake was happy to see me. The police had confiscated his guitar and one of the officers conducting the interrogation was a real (to put it more genteelly than Jake) ignorant racist. I asked Jake if he was okay. He said he was, but he couldn’t wait to get out of there. There was no rope in the cell that I can recall. He was acting a little more restless than normal. Tapping his fingers against the bars and rocking back on his heels like a smoker with the DTs. It didn’t seem remarkable at the time, and it might be that I am merely creating false positives, searching for a clue where none exists. He held my hand before I left and kissed my palm. He liked romantic gestures. “There’s something happening here,” he sang softly. Buffalo Springfield. I kissed him. “I’ll get Neil Young and the gang down here tomorrow.” “I’ll see you, Angel.” It was the last thing he ever said to me. But he had never called me ‘Angel’ before.

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Written Communication from Violet Omura, NYU, Department of Applied Physics

To: Zacharias Tibbs; Topeka, Kansas Date: December 25, 2025—1:05 am, EST

[Sender: Verified]

I woke up twenty minutes ago and couldn’t fall asleep. Chaterjee has posted a new paper on the public archives. Did you see it?

It’s been a while. Hope you’re doing okay. Merry (godless) Christmas, Zach.

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Written Communication from Zacharias Tibbs; Topeka, Kansas

To: Violet Omura, General Communications Inbox, Columbia University Physics Department Date: March 18, 2027—6:01 pm, EST

[Hi! This message has been approved by your filters, but contains some questionable material. Would you like to proceed?]

[Okay! Message below.]

Professor Omura:

Though I know you have not heard from me these past two years, I hope you do remember our long correspondence and will still read my messages despite your new Tenured Position at the venerable Columbia University.

I have not Written due to increased Problems with my Health and also, perhaps more importantly, a crisis with my Faith. You might think that facing Death & the Great Beyond, as I am (a persistent Cancer, which no medicine can treat) would drive one in to the Bosom of their Lord, but I find myself instead Contemplating the letters you have sent me over the twelve years of our correspondence.

You have presented to me a mind steeped in rationality, who does not even let deep grief over personal loss sway her to the side of a comfort that she does not feel has a basis in reason. Is Faith a Good Thing, I ask myself? As a child, I loved mathematics. At the library, I read books about Pythagoras and Newton and Einstein. But in the end I preferred Money to Knowledge, as any Ignorant eighteen-year-old might. I passed over my chance at College. My Father got me a good job as an auto mechanic in his Cousin’s shop. Last year, I retired. I had worked there for Sixty-Five Years. I had kept my Faith and raised children. I had read the Bible and tried to use Math to Prove the Beauty of it.

I have wondered why I still Wrote to you, Professor, when you so Clearly held my Views in Disdain. I think now that I Respected the Knowledge you held. The Mathematics that I had loved in Childhood are your Life’s Work. I thought if I could Convince you of the Truth of my Faith then it would not be Faith any longer but Reason.

And now, I think I have failed. I face death without the solace of Christ and I think it is not as Hard as I imagined in my youth, but hard enough.

With My Thanks and Respect,

Zacharias Tibbs

* * * *

Written Communication from Violet Omura; Brooklyn, New York

To: Zacharias Tibbs; Topeka, Kansas Date: March 19, 2027—3:20 am, EST

Zach,

Call me Violet. Would you like to meet for lunch sometime soon? I know of a great fondue place on Flatbush Avenue (that’s in Brooklyn, where I live). Violet

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Audio-Visual Transcript of U.S. Internal Investigations files Originally archived on the diffuse-network, proprietary GlobalNet, intercepted and transcribed by Chinese Intelligence

Subject: Omura, Violet; U.S. Scientific Authority and Academic; Status: Dissident Date: September 12, 2027—2:22 am, EST

The subject’s apartment is dark. She walks to the window overlooking the street. She removes her shoes and stockings (a run in the back: 4.2 cm). The subject’s hair is styled in an elaborate bun. She removes several bobby pins and tosses them to the floor. The subject empties a small, gold purse onto her coffee table.

Contents:

One (1) funeral program. The cover reads: Zacharias Tibbs: He was Right with Our Lord One (1) small rolled marijuana cigarette.

The subject lights the cigarette with a match. Upon completing half the joint, she extinguishes it on the windowsill.

OMURA: [Soft laughter] OMURA: [Inaudible]

The subject turns from the window. She abruptly ceases almost all movement. Her breathing resumes after 2.4 seconds. It is at this point that the subject begins to behave very erratically. Her eyes are fixed at a point in the room, as though she is interacting with a person, though motion sensors and audio bots indicate she is alone. The subject has no known history of mental illness. [NOTE: However, our own psychiatrist has stated that her behavior here strongly indicates a psychotic break possibly triggered by the marijuana usage. Hearing voices is common in such incidences.]

OMURA: What . . . Jesus Christ. Jesus Fucking Christ, what’s going on?

The subject pauses. Her body relaxes and her head movements are consistent with someone listening to someone else in conversation.

OMURA: Jake? Holy fuck, what was in that pot?

The subject takes two steps forward. [NOTE: The consulting psychiatrist has determined that the person to whom she believes she is addressing herself is standing between the coffee table and her couch.]

OMURA: What do ghosts look like at the Planck scale . . .

20-second pause.

OMURA: Zach did this?

3-second pause. She shakes her head.

OMURA: Maybe. Yes. In a strange way. He could have changed the world. But he fixed other people’s cars.

The subject begins to cry. Her hands have a pronounced tremble.

OMURA: Jake, oh fuck. Fucking God, why are you . . . why now? I never believed, not once, and fuck do you know how much I wanted to? I could kill you! Christ Jake, 30 nanograms of pot and not a fucking drop of lithium!

12-second pause. A siren is heard in the background.

OMURA: I knew that. You think it makes me feel better? I should have known! The DTs, I said. Like you were manic. I saw it all then. I’ve known it all for years. 30 nanograms of pot, 2 milligrams of Tylenol. 0 nanograms of your fucking life.

The subject steps closer.

OMURA: Then why did you? Oh, you came back from the grave for me? God, my maudlin subconscious.

11-second pause.

OMURA: Like Hamlet’s father? Did the ghost love?

2-second pause.

OMURA: Like me. Jake . . . if you’re real and not my own degenerating brain . . . I’m sorry I asked you taunt— no, listen, I should have known what you were going through. I shouldn’t have put you in that position. Not with those trigger-happy assholes. Engineer a conflict? Get it on the news? What a fucking cunt I was.

The subject is silent for nearly one minute and thirty (1:30) seconds. Halfway through this period, she closes her eyes and shudders. [NOTE: From the heat patterns in her body, it appears as though she is having a sexual reaction.]

OMURA: The last thing you said to me, what did it mean? Why did you call me Angel?

The subject opens her eyes and looks around. Apparently, the room now appears empty to her. She staggers backwards and sits on the couch. After a minute (1:00) she begins to cry with audible sobs.

OMURA: I don’t know either.

* * * *

Associated Press War Desk: For Immediate Release

September 14, 2027 (SEOUL): Accounts of Chinese warships equipped with long-range nuclear warheads heading into the Hawaiian archipelago have been confirmed, and evacuations of major targets on the United States West Coast will begin within the hour.

© 2009 by Alaya Dawn Johnson. Originally published in Interfictions 2, edited by Delia Sherman & Christopher Barzak. Reprinted by permission of the author.

[JUMP TO THE AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT]

Alaya Dawn Johnson’s most recent novel is The Summer Prince, which has received starred reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, and Publishers Weekly. It is a Junior Library Guild selection for Spring 2013 and has been longlisted for the 2013 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. Her short stories have appeared in the anthologies Zombies vs. Unicorns, Welcome to Bordertown, and Interfictions 2, among others. You can contact her at her website, www.alayadawnjohnson.com. The H Word: Reveling in the Literary F. Brett Cox

I normally tell my students beginning an essay with a dictionary definition is a cheap fix and they should try something else first. Nonetheless, I note the following definitions of “literature” from the Free Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary: “writings in prose or verse, especially: writings having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest . . . an example of such writings . . . the body of writings on a particular subject . . . printed matter.” It’s a vexing, problematic word, both floor wax and dessert topping, to borrow from the early days of Saturday Night Live. It’s a qualitative judgment used both by narrow-minded elitists as a stick with which to beat the kind of writing that has been so central to my personal and professional life, and by equally narrow- minded folk as the brand name of the enemy. At the same time, it’s a term that can apply to, literally, any writing at all. (The example given for the “printed matter” definition above is “campaign literature.”) To complicate matters further, anyone who’s spent ten minutes in a university English department over the past twenty years knows how much energy the profession has devoted to interrogating, critiquing, deconstructing, and generally turning inside-out any and all preconceived notions of what “literature” is. Three colleagues at my own university, English professors all, are currently writing books on examples of writing—personal correspondence, medical manuals—that no professor of my undergraduate days would have deemed even remotely “literary.” Yet there they sit, “literature,” “literary,” shortcuts to all our preconceptions. What to do? In particular, what to do with the terms as they may be linked to kinds of writing some condemn, and others celebrate, as “nonliterary”: science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, and, for our present purposes, horror? Well, I refuse to set up literary = good (or bad) and nonliterary = bad (or good). As a corollary, neither will you ever catch me using the odious phrase “transcends genre,” a favorite of those who can’t resist the preposterous notion that, once a work of genre fiction achieves a certain level of artistic excellence, it’s no longer a work of genre fiction. (By that same logic, once the United States abandoned slavery and gave women the vote, it was no longer the United States.) What I will do is say a couple of things about form as it relates to content, and identify what I believe to be a key strategy that may mark some works of horror as more “literary” than others. (For those who believe form and content to be the same, that “language is narrative,” as Michael Moorcock so succinctly put it . . . Well, perhaps, but pulling things apart to try to understand how they work never prevents them from falling right back into place.) In his introduction to the original horror anthology Phantom, Paul Tremblay suggests that form affects content, that what you say is at least in part how you say it: “The literary horror story aims to do more than shock, titillate, scare, or affect the reader . . . In using the elements of literary fiction—style, theme, setting, character—the literary horror story goes beyond the scare, beyond the revealing of some terrible truth . . . and asks the truly terrifying questions.” I might substitute “how it uses” for “using,” given that even the most artless work of fiction has a style, a theme, a setting, and something passing for character, but the point remains: using the formal elements of fiction in a certain way in writing horror fiction can yield results beyond the bump in the night or the splat on the wall. (This is, of course, the point at which too often the clerisy nod to Henry James or Shirley Jackson or Peter Straub or Kelly Link and start annoying me with talk of “transcending genre,” but never mind that for now.) Defining a certain kind of writing solely with reference to formal strategies remains a slippery business and leads, perhaps inevitably, back to questions of hierarchy, the conviction that some things are just, well, better than other things. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. When the renowned literary theorist Gayatri Spivak declared that she didn’t believe in trying to prove the superiority of anything, I saw stretched before me the heat death of the universe and a place I didn’t really want to go. Still, one would like to find something within the events of the narrative, the stories themselves, that might signal a focus on (to go back to the dictionary) not only excellence of form, but interesting ideas. To help in the search, I turn to John Clute’s The Darkening Garden: A Lexicon of Horror (2006), a brief, fascinating, frustrating, and useful text. Clute’s preliminary take on horror—a trial run of a promised much longer work—hasn’t gotten a lot of love from the horror community, mostly on the grounds that he overly privileges supernatural horror, and that his exemplary texts are narrow and eccentric. But, as John Langan argues in his superb analysis of Clute’s discussion (which can be found at depauw.edu/sfs/birs/bir103.htm), Clute’s basic framework has much to offer. Briefly, Clute suggests that horror stories work through a four-stage process: Sighting, an initial vision of the horrific events; Thickening, in which the horrific events develop and start signaling what’s to come; Revel, when the horror arrives and does its work; and Aftermath, where any survivors survey the wreckage and realize that it will never be reassembled. Or, even more briefly: 1. Something’s wrong. 2. Here it comes. 3. Omigod! 4. We’re screwed. Now, this doesn’t universally apply to all horror stories any more than any other structural schema universally applies to all of anything. But it works a lot of the time, with a lot of stories, and I would argue that how an author represents the Revel may be an indicator of the degree of his or her “literary” intent. Specifically, that in one type of horror, the Revel is all, or almost all; the weight of the story, and of the reader’s experience of the story, is given over to the physical materials of the catastrophe: the bump in the night, the splat on the wall, the slaughter of the innocents, the razing of the town. In another type, the Revel is deemphasized, perhaps even implied, maybe absent altogether. Or, to use Clute’s terms, the story Thickens into the Aftermath without an intervening Revel, and the beating bloody heart of the story is the Vastation, “the defining expression of the malice in the world.” This is not to say that a work of the second kind—oh, I’ll say it, a work of “literary horror”—might not contain extremes of violence, as any number of writers from Clive Barker to Joyce Carol Oates have demonstrated. Even as Tremblay justifiably denounced the low-rent gorefests promoted “by websites with names like StabbyStabStab.com,” three years earlier, mainstream author Chris Adrian published in the mainstream magazine Zoetrope: All Story an extraordinary horror story, as “literary” as they wanna be, titled, simply and eloquently, “Stab.” But the stories I’ve read over the past several years, “literary” and otherwise, have convinced me how an author handles the Revel is as key an indicator to “literary” intent as how he or she handles character, style, or theme. As an example, I offer, with apologies to Professor Spivak, one of the very best horror stories I’ve read in the past decade: George Saunders’ “The Red Bow,” originally published in Esquire in 2003 and included in the author’s 2006 collection In Persuasion Nation. The story is narrated by the father of a little girl who has been killed by a dog that is itself victim of an infection that has caused the town’s animals to become violent. No explosions, no splatter, no real Revel—just the pitch- perfect voice of an average person barely able to articulate his own grief as he witnesses, and accepts with gratitude, the steps his town takes to deal with the situation, each step more extreme than the last. The story shows not only what a frightened group is capable of, not only what grief will lead individuals to accept, but also how inadequate language itself is to convey either the fear or the grief. And if that seems too heavy, too calculated, too final- exam for you, trust me: “The Red Bow” is one of the creepiest stories I’ve ever read. The issue, like all issues related to reading and writing, is unlikely to be resolved. “Literature” and “literary” aren’t going anywhere, much as I might like them to. So be it. If these observations are of any use to anyone interested in these issues, I’m more than gratified. But even if you agree with novelist Lauren Goff (The Monsters of Templeton, 2008), whom I recently heard say on a panel at a writing conference, “Why do we have to make these rigid distinctions between ‘genre’ and ‘literary’? Why can’t we all just try to write good stories?”—take heart. There are plenty of good stories to be had. Try any of the writers I’ve mentioned above. Better yet, take a look at the work of brilliant young writers such as Nadia Bulkin or Tamsyn Muir, who sometimes Revel and sometimes don’t, but always use to maximum effect all the devices of fiction—which are, after all, there to be used—to ask the truly terrifying questions, to go beyond the scare, to confront the malice of the world.

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We at Nightmare Magazine like discussions. Please use the comments feature on our website to give us your thoughts on whether the H brand is an albatross or worth holding on to.

F. Brett Cox’s fiction, poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous publications. His most recently published short story, “The Amnesia Helmet,” is available at Eclipse Online. A new story, “Maria Works at Ocean City Nails,” is forthcoming in New Haven Review. With Andy Duncan, he co-edited the 2004 Tor anthology Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Shirley Jackson Award. Brett is Associate Professor of English at Norwich University. A native of North Carolina, Brett lives in Vermont with his wife, playwright Jeanne Beckwith. Artist Gallery: Peter Mohrbacher

Artist Spotlight: Peter Mohrbacher Julia Sevin

Peter Mohrbacher, a concept artist and illustrator working in San Francisco, is best known for his work on Magic: The Gathering, and is the Art Lead for Dragons of Atlantis. He’s been honored with work in Spectrum annuals 18, 19, and 20. He also offers a mentorship program for artists seeking to hone and develop their skills through a gauntlet of evaluations and feedback. He can be found online at vandalhigh.com, deviantArt, Facebook, and Tumblr.

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What is your artistic background?

It wasn’t until high school that I developed a passion for art. After I started, there really wasn’t any other option. Everything in my life revolves around it. Having a job as an artist is simply necessary for me. There’s nothing else I can pay as much attention to. Which artists have inspired you and informed your style?

My earliest influence was anime. Evangelion in specific was my first big anime obsession and I still get excited about it. But as I got older, I began to look at contemporary fantasy artists like Brom (who I later found also came out of Japan). Any artwork that mixed the fantastic with a surreal has caught my eye. Seeing masters like Zdzisław Beksiński overwhelm people’s imaginations with the presence of their work has inspired me to try and explore more horrific imagery.

Naturally, in all your work for Wizards of the Coast, fantasy is an overriding theme. Is fantasy an interest of yours, or is this just a gig, so to speak?

I got the fantasy gigs because I was already doing fantasy. Surrealism and horror are genres I wish I could explore more professionally, but I haven’t found as many opportunities to make a living off of it.

Do you have any other career interests? I love games. Interactive art has always made me happy. When I was a little kid, kinetic sculptures always captured my imagination. The systems in games are very similar. I think that if I had the opportunity, I would like to make some indie games and explore some of my own design ideas in addition to working on the art.

You’ve obviously got an utter handle on digital illustration, but you also do some natural painting. How necessary do you believe practice in traditional media is to mastery of digital painting?

I’ve picked up natural painting materials painting rather recently. In the past couple years, I’ve poked at oils, acrylics, and watercolors. But it’s been hardly more than poking. I think that digging in on it harder would improve my grasp on the artistic technique. Anyone interested in learning more deeply about painting should absolutely not make the mistake that I did. They should start painting with physical materials early and often.

I’m curious about artist attitudes regarding the democratization of media and the arts. We’ve seen an entire generation raised to worship media and told to follow their dreams, and then handed Photoshop and the soapbox that is the internet, to boot. This has led to an explosion of digital artists of all sorts, largely autodidacts, and including many extraordinarily talented artists whose geographical or economic situation would have, in another era, precluded skill development, let alone fame. Is this abundance of new artists an overabundance? As an active deviantArt member, you are right in the thick of the phenomenon I refer to.

I can’t complain about it because I’m one of those autodidacts that was raised on the internet. Possibly part of the first wave of artists who started by learning digital painting in a democratic forum. It was deviantArt that kept me making art for myself when I was learning how to paint. The feedback loop of posting new work and seeing people’s reactions was like a super challenging game. The availability of artists has made new industries possible as a result. There is no way the modern game and film industries would be able to create as many visually impressive products without as many trained artists to work on them. You can see this happening on a global scale as visually stunning games and films are now coming from everywhere. There must be a balance between the number of jobs that the explosion of talent has created and the amount of competition it has spurred. But I don’t know what that balance is. I certainly don’t see skilled and motivated people going without work for very long. Personally, I’ve only seen more opportunities the older I’ve gotten. If a bunch of younger artists are threatening to edge me out of a job, I haven’t met them yet.

We’ve also seen the decline of the practice of apprenticeship in a variety of arts and trades, its role appropriated by colleges. You’ve recently started a one-on-one mentorship program (vandalhigh.com/mentorships)—that is, consultation plus a month-long schedule of critique sessions and a live demonstration. This harks back to ye olde days of apprenticeship, but with the digital touch offered by telecommuting.

I started doing the mentorship because I’ve been doing some form of it on and off for a long time now. I’ve been doing information sharing in the form of blogs, livestreams, community building, and podcasts for almost as long as I’ve been a professional. Now that I have less free time, I decided that I would try to focus that effort down to a paid program. What my mentorship program ends up being is more like art therapy than art class. Many people are held back by their own assumptions about what they should make or what they think people want to see. I encourage my mentees to explore their influences and resolve to hold themselves to a higher standard. Talking every week about the philosophy of the art, what’s working about a particular piece, and how to recognize your own intuition, can go a long way. The tools to facilitate this are common and free. Some people prefer Skype, while others like Google Hangouts. Anything that does screenshare and voice chat makes it easy to meet one-on-one. So far, I haven’t tried working with anyone farther away than Canada, but I suppose that it’s possible to do from anywhere with a strong internet connection.

Can you tell us about your Angelarium series?

I started this back in college. When I discovered that there were thousands of angels throughout mythology, I wanted to explore their appearance right away. The main creative choice I made was to take away their identities as people. Angels have no egos per se, so I wanted to reinforce that by taking away their faces. They are what they represent, whether it’s the sky, memory, or vengeance. There is an alternate definition for the word genius: “The prevailing spirit or distinctive character, as of a place, a person, or an era.” So Matariel isn’t an angel who makes rain. It is the genius of rain. He is like Rain, with a capital “R.” It’s been fertile creative ground and I’ve been working on expanding the scope of the project as soon as I get some more time.

Do you have a life philosophy?

Make lists. No one does more than what’s in front of them unless they write it down. Lists bring peace, happiness, and wealth.

What keeps you awake at night?

Fear that people hate me. Fear of illness and death. Fear of the dark and the images in my mind that fill those empty spaces. Sometimes I feel I’m afraid a lot. But sometimes, I think my productivity and my preparedness is the result of my fears and anxieties, so I don’t hate it.

What are you working on right now?

Besides Magic, I am working as a producer on an app to help educate breastfeeding mothers. No joke. I’m excited to almost see it finished. I’ve got a Kickstarter in the bag; I just need to launch that. It’s my first one, and it will be geared to towards Magic fans. I’m rebuilding my website to enable me to start doing e-commerce. I want to write a book about art education. And another book about angels. Lots of stuff all the time.

What’s your dream illustration job?

I want someone to just hire me to draw whatever I want. I think they will like what they get.

Originally hailing from Northern California, Julia Sevin is a transplant flourishing in the fecund delta silts of New Orleans. Together with husband RJ Sevin, she owns and edits Creeping Hemlock Press, specializing in limited special editions of genre literature and, most recently, zombie novels. She is an autodidact pixelpusher who spends her days as the art director for a print brokerage, designing branding and print pieces for assorted political bigwigs, which makes her feel like an accomplice in the calculated plunder of America. Under the cover of darkness (like Batman in more ways than she can enumerate), she redeems herself through pro bono design, sordid illustration, and baking the world’s best pies. She is available for contract design/illustration, including book layouts and websites. See more of her work at juliasevin.com or follow her at facebook.com/juliasevindesign. Interview: Margo Lanagan Lisa Morton

Writers rarely achieve international and multi-genre renown on the basis of just one short story, but that was exactly what happened with Margo Lanagan and “Singing My Sister Down,” which appeared in her collection Black Juice (published by Gollancz in 2004 and HarperCollins in 2005). “Singing My Sister Down” is written from the point of view of a boy watching the slow execution of his sister, and is a spectacular example of how Lanagan’s work provides “a glimpse into weird, wondrous, and sometimes terrifying worlds” (from the starred review for Black Juice in School Library Journal). In 2008, her novel Tender Morsels defied easy categorizations, melding European fairy tales with her own brand of dark fantasy, and once again achieved extraordinary cross-genre success. She has since published three more collections (including Cracklespace in 2012), and the novel The Brides of Rollrock Island, which expanded an earlier novella, Sea Hearts. She is a native of Australia.

* * * * In her introduction to your collection Cracklescape, Jane Yolen calls you “the essential Uncommon writer.” Would you agree?

Jane said a lot of things in that wonderful introduction! She preceded that remark with “. . . These aren’t common vernacular ghosts . . . That’s something Lanagan would never do—write commonly.” So I guess she means that I put my own twist on things, which is fair enough. I think I need to find a way into each story that fits with my particular obsessions. Probably every writer does—or should. I know that I find it hard to continue reading when I feel that the author’s not really involved, is just coasting along, repeating what they’ve done before, rather than carving pieces out of herself to get this story told right. I need to feel a story matters to its author, whether that author is me or another person.

For many of us outside of Australia, the short story “Singing My Sister Down” was our introduction to your work. The story (which was nominated for awards in the horror, science fiction, and fantasy genres for both adult and young adult readers) is remarkable for the world and the central crime it suggests without providing explicit details. When you create a fantasy world in a short story, do you know the entire world, or do you prefer to allow parts of it to remain mysterious to you? And are you ever tempted to return to these worlds?

I don’t know this entire real world, let alone each world I’ve constructed for a story—that’s nearly a hundred worlds! For a short story, I pull together the details I need; the setting only needs to feel solid for a very short time. I rely a lot on implication, for example mentioning a model of firearm having been used in the “Milk Wars” in my clown-killing story “Red Nose Day”—tiny things that suggest whole eras or social preoccupations or historical crises that shaped the reality the story deals in. I don’t often return to the worlds I create, although Sea Hearts/The Brides of Rollrock Island, my latest novel, is a reworking and a better-nailing-down of the world I created in the novella, “Sea-Hearts,” published in 2009 in X6 by Keith Stevenson at Coeur de Lion. I did attempt a novel in the “Singing My Sister Down” universe, but so far haven’t managed to pull it off . . .

Although much of your later work seems to rely more on western/European fairy tales for inspiration, “Singing My Sister Down”—with its mentions of tar pits and tribal chieftains with alliterative names— seemed to somehow be rooted more in Australian lore. Is it fair to call that one of your most Australian tales?

No, it’s not fair at all! It was inspired by a documentary about similar tar pits near a village in Africa. I didn’t want to pin it down to a particular culture, but the whiffs of specificity that are there are mostly African influenced. Cracklescape is a collection of four stories that are all set in Australia, in two beach-side towns, in Sydney and on the Nullarbor Plain in Western Australia. Possibly the Nullarbor one, “Significant Dust,” is my most Australian story. Only three or four others have identifiably Australian settings.

Tender Morsels wasn’t your first novel—you’d written a number of previous young adult novels which were originally published only in Australia—but there was a ten year gap between those books and Tender Morsels. What happened there?

I started off writing romance novels for teenage readers in the early 1990s, then wrote some fantasies for junior readers and two gritty-realist young adult novels in the mid-1990s. Then I tried to write an enormous fantasy novel for adult readers that got completely out of control, then a smaller one which went nowhere, then a junior fantasy quartet that didn’t work out, and so I escaped into fantasy, science fiction, and horror short stories. I had some success with my second collection of shorts, Black Juice, and then the pressure was really on to produce a novel. I took hold of an existing story, the Brothers Grimm’s “Snow White and Rose Red,” to give myself a scaffolding to work with, because I no longer believed that I was capable of dreaming up a novel-length story that would end up functional.

With your young adult work—like Tender Morsels, which includes rape without ever describing it in detail—you are forced to tread cautiously where sexuality is concerned, but with a short story like “Bajazzle,” sex is not just front and center thematically, but very explicit. Is a story like that liberating for you to write?

Not particularly. When it comes down to it, an explicit sex scene takes as much calculation and care as a restrained one. With either story, I’m thinking more of the demands of the story than those of the audience. It wasn’t so much the YA audience that made Tender Morsels take the form it did. If I’d made all the rape and incest explicit, it would have become a rape-and-incest book; those events would have overwhelmed the story that I wanted to tell, which was about Liga hiding from the world in her personal heaven, and the effect that had on herself and her daughters. Suggesting that she had been through hell was enough; I didn’t need to put the audience through hell with her, whatever age they were.

Your work sometimes breaks commonly held rules, like shifting the viewpoint abruptly from one character to another, or even leaping from past tense to present. Do you consciously enjoy breaking rules sometimes?

If it means bringing the story closer to what it seems to want to be, yes, everything is enjoyable! Seeing how far apart you can place the pieces that need to be combined in the reader’s mind before the story will make sense, before the whole narrative thread actually frays and disintegrates, is always an interesting exercise. And I enjoy reading the kind of story that doesn’t begin to cohere for a while, one that respects my intelligence and doesn’t explain so much that I can see from the first paragraph what’s going to happen.

Your short stories seem to veer between stylized language and description and more contemporary slang and urban locations. How soon in the writing process do you settle on the style for a piece?

The kind of language I use depends on whose voice I’m borrowing to tell the story, and whether the story’s in first or third person, and the tone I want the reader to pick up in the initial paragraphs. Sometimes I know from the first line what kind of story it’s going to be, what tone it’s going to take, who this person is who’s relating it; there’s never any doubt in my mind. Other stories take longer to find my way into, and I might have to start several times using different points of view, trying out voices to see if I can find some more engaging way of coming to grips with it all. Then again, sometimes I hit the right note halfway through, and then have to go back and make over the first half to match what I’ve just discovered about this character, or these events s/he’s witnessing.

Your last novel, The Brides of Rollrock Island, deals with selkies, shapeshifting sea creatures that transform from seals to humans. What was it about the mythology of selkies that made you place them at the center of your novel?

Any kind of shapeshifting appeals to me. I just want to watch animals turning into humans, or vice versa. But the selkie transformation, which changes the world they live in from sea to land, and keeps them in exile from that environment where they once had so much freedom and joy of movement and community, is a particularly poignant one. I wanted to look harder at it, and think about the moral and emotional ramifications of the entrapment those seal-women suffer—the ramifications for them and for their husbands and children.

You’ve expressed admiration for Margaret Atwood’s ability to write cross-genre works. Do you ever secretly chafe under the young adult label?

I think I’m more irritated by many adult readers’ ignorance and dismissal of the riches that are to be found in YA books, than I am by being labeled young adult myself. I feel a similar annoyance at people sneering about science fiction and fantasy. But I quite enjoy having a foot in several camps, publishing adult and YA stories in both genre and mainstream literary outlets. It makes for a much more varied career.

Your writing process depends in part on a rented room that you use as a writing office. Is it difficult for you to write at home?

It is if there’s anyone else in the house. Actually, that’s not true; at the crack of dawn, if everyone else is still asleep—or in the throes of insomnia, ditto—I have no problem writing at the kitchen table, knowing that I’m not going to be interrupted. The rented Writing Room was a strategy for claiming some territory for writing when I needed to get Tender Morsels written, an attempt to be professional about it. It’s a huge luxury, but a bigger luxury would be more time to go up there and use it— which I possibly could afford if I weren’t working the day job to pay the rent on the place, on top of everything else. But now we’ve got so much stuff stored in the room, our house would be impossibly cramped if we brought all that back home. Some rationalisation is in order.

This year you taught at the Clarion West writers workshop. Was it inspiring to work with young writers? What was the most important thing you tried to teach them?

Although all of the participants were younger than me this year, that’s not always the case with a Clarion West workshop (or a Clarion South, where I’ve also taught). Yes, it was inspiring—it’s a six-week workshop and I taught the fourth week, so by the time I came along they’d formed themselves into a pretty lean, mean critiquing machine; I learned a lot from listening to them and trying to work out what I might say that was useful, in response to each story. Probably the most important thing I tried to teach them was to work hard at word-level; earlier tutors had had a broader focus, but I wanted them to notice the work that each word was doing, and how choosing the wrong phrase or the wrong word can quite significantly diminish the effectiveness of a scene. Oh, and I taught them how to write a good sex scene —that’s important, too. Very easy to embarrass yourself, in those intimate moments of a story.

In some interviews and essays, you almost come across as being your own harshest critic. Do you know instantly when a story is good, or do you sometimes have to tell that inner critic to just shut up and go away?

I can feel when a story has a solid core as I’m writing it; I know when I’m heading in the right direction with it. And with time and practice, I’ve learned to tell when I’ve veered off the path and I’m wandering in the scrub, and I can tell earlier and earlier when this has happened, sometimes as soon as a half-sentence onward. I also know that the things that are missing from a story often aren’t evident until you let that first draft lie for a while and come back to it with fresh eyes. Telling the inner critic to bugger off is just a matter of course now; I try not to waste time self-flagellating. I can’t remember who it was who said, “You’re never as good as you think you are—but you’re never as bad as you think you are either.” But it’s a useful thing to remember, a stabilising thing. I’ve found that if I just try to make the writing as enjoyable as I possibly can, and just keep writing on, not pausing and anguishing over things, not wondering about what anyone will think of it, leaving all the editorial work for when my brain is in that frame of mind (which is quite a different from the drafting brain), I mostly end up with something usable. I’m a lot braver now about starting over, about throwing out chunks of story that aren’t working. At the moment I’m working on a couple of novels that I don’t have contracts for, and it’s kind of a relief to be just progressing at my own pace (well, most days not progressing at all, writing short stories instead!) and letting the stories take all the time that they need to sort themselves out.

Lisa Morton is a screenwriter, author of nonfiction books, award-winning prose writer, and Halloween expert whose work was described by the American Library Association’s Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror as “consistently dark, unsettling, and frightening.” Her short fiction has appeared in dozens of anthologies and magazines, including The Mammoth Book of Dracula, Dark Delicacies, The Museum of Horrors, and Cemetery Dance. In 2010, her first novel, The Castle of Los Angeles, received the Bram Stoker Award for First Novel. Recent books include the graphic novel Witch Hunts: A Graphic History of the Burning Times (co-written with Rocky Wood, illustrated by Greg Chapman), and Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween. Forthcoming in 2013 are the novellas Summer’s End and Smog, and the novel Malediction. A lifelong Californian, she lives in North Hollywood, and can be found online at www.lisamorton.com. Author Spotlight: Norman Partridge Lisa Nohealani Morton

Can you tell me a little bit about how “10/31: Bloody Mary” came to be?

I’ve always loved post-apocalyptic stories, and I had an idea for a world where (basically) the things that go bump in the night crossed over one Halloween and took over. For me the best way to give that premise a test-drive was to write a story, and “10/31: Bloody Mary” was the result.

“10/31” starts from what could be a goofy premise and turns it into a dark, post-apocalyptic tale. Was it difficult to strike the right balance between the Halloween elements and going over the top?

Filmmaker Ken Russell once said: “I don’t believe there’s any virtue in understatement.” Which means that sometimes you just have to go for it, and that was a big part of the game in this story. Of course, the other part is making an investment in the reality of what you’re creating, no matter how over-the-top it is. So it’s always about striking a balance, or taking a tightrope walk, or carving a path with a double-edged knife—grab the metaphor of your choice and run with it (like a pair of scissors). For me, that’s a big part of a writer’s job, and a constant when working with the supernatural.

Halloween seems to be something of a recurring theme in your work. Is it just a natural affinity for a horror writer, or do you have a personal fondness for Halloween?

Both. When I wrote Dark Harvest, I figured that novel was going to pretty much be 1) my love letter to Halloween and 2) my final word on the subject. But it turned out that Dark Harvest opened a door in my imagination, and I’ve found there are more stories waiting there.

What are you working on these days? Any upcoming publications readers should keep an eye out for?

I’m working on Oktober Shadows, a project for Cemetery Dance. Besides that there are a few new stories in the pipeline, including one called “The Mummy’s Heart.” That one’s both a small-town noir and a trick-or- treat Valentine. It’s in Paula Guran’s Halloween: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre.

Do you have any personal spooky Halloween experiences to share?

I don’t trust people wearing masks. On any night of the year. And my definition of “mask” isn’t necessarily limited to a hunk of plastic purchased at your local Spirit Halloween Store. Because the scariest masks are the ones made of flesh and blood and muscle and bone—but you probably already knew that.

Born and raised in Honolulu, Lisa Nohealani Morton lives in Washington, DC. By day she is a mild-mannered database wrangler, computer programmer, and all-around data geek, and by night she writes science fiction, fantasy, and combinations of the two. Her short fiction has appeared in publications such as Lightspeed, Daily Science Fiction, and the anthology Hellebore and Rue. She can be found on Twitter as @lnmorton. Author Spotlight: Kaaron Warren Lisa Nohealani Morton

In “All You Can Do is Breathe,” the long men seem to be siphoning off what makes Stuart a survivor, or maybe his will to live. What do they want it for?

The long man represents the way we react to a survivor. We treat survivors as heroes, and exalt them for a while. We all want that magic serum, the potion that make us stronger, healthier, live longer. We want it the easy way, if possible. I’ve seen it in action; Stuart Diver, who survived for days after a landslide at Thredbo, a ski resort in Australia, couldn’t travel anywhere for people wanting to touch him. They said, what have you got that I haven’t, and can I have some? It strikes me as being almost vampiric, and it elevates people to a position they may not be comfortable in. In the context of the story, the long man wants to live long like the rest of us, and what he takes from survivors helps him to do that.

What are you working on now? I’ve completed a novel called The Solace of Saint Theresa, about a place called the Grief Hole where teenagers go to die. I’m working on a story inspired by [a] picture because I love the title: “Site of a dangerous leap, now overgrown.” The echo of danger, of what once was.

Do you have more stories coming out soon that readers should watch for?

I have rather a busy year coming up: “The Human Moth” in The Grimscribe’s Puppets anthology, Miskatonic River Press; “Air, Water, and the Grove” in The Lowest Heaven, Pandemonium Press; “Born and Bread” in Paula Guran’s Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales, Prime Books; “Sleeping with the Bower Birds” in Shivers 7, Cemetery Dance; “Blood is Blood” in Twisted Histories, Snowbooks; and “The Book of the Climbing Lights” in The Starry Wisdom Library, PS Publishing.

What’s your favorite scary/spooky disaster story?

The Death of Grass by John Christopher and The Stand, by Stephen King. Movie: The Miracle Mile, starring Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham. The soundtrack in this movie is incredible, like a beating heart.

Born and raised in Honolulu, Lisa Nohealani Morton lives in Washington, DC. By day she is a mild-mannered database wrangler, computer programmer, and all-around data geek, and by night she writes science fiction, fantasy, and combinations of the two. Her short fiction has appeared in publications such as Lightspeed, Daily Science Fiction, and the anthology Hellebore and Rue. She can be found on Twitter as @lnmorton. Author Spotlight: Megan Arkenberg Erika Holt

After reviewing your bibliography and biography all I can say is . . . Wow! Numerous publication credits in top markets, awards, and inclusion in “Best of” collections; attending grad school, writing both poetry and short fiction, and editing two online publications: Mirror Dance and Lacuna; a penchant for naming pocket-watches (Nemesis and Juggernaut); and a love of critical theory. What’s your secret? How do balance all of this?

Most days, it’s not balancing so much as juggling! I have to be realistic about how many projects I can handle at one time—something I’m still struggling with, as anyone who has to live with me will tell you. It’s vital to assign priority to certain projects, especially the ones that pay the bills, and to know when to sacrifice time from the smaller tasks for the more necessary ones. To keep on schedule, I’m hyper-reliant on lists, charts, calendars, and organizing tools of all kinds. But I guess my most effective secret is the old one about breaking herculean tasks into tiny, easily achievable ones. If I can’t summon the energy to write a short story in one sitting, I can definitely tackle the outline, then the opening scene, then the second scene, then the third . . .

Would you say wearing more than one hat (poet, writer, editor) makes a person better at all three?

Absolutely—if you can manage all the time demands. I think reading through so many short fiction submissions each week has sharpened my sense for pacing and story structure. For example, I’ve learned that many speculative fiction writers need far less explicit exposition (info- dumping) than they assume they do, so managing the flow of information is something I pay attention to in my own writing. Also, as a writer who likes to play with established genre traditions, I love tracking the shifts of certain tropes, themes, and scenarios as they appear in the slush pile. If I read eight different approaches to the same fairy tale over the course of a week, there’s a strong chance it will inspire me to respond to the fairy tale in my own way.

The setting in “The Crowgirl” seems almost a character unto itself, lending a strong sense of atmosphere to the piece through rich and disturbing descriptions. Is this intentional? Do you think this is important, particularly in horror, or perhaps in every story?

The setting was always key in my conception of this story. Actually, as the opening paragraph might suggest, I began writing “The Crowgirl” by drawing a map of the farmhouse, fields, and forest at the top of my notebook page. I knew I needed enough space to keep the characters moving around, separated from each other, but I also wanted to keep the atmosphere constrained, almost claustrophobic. I think almost every story needs a well-defined setting to engage readers, unless it’s playing with form in such a way as to make that impractical (e.g. a story in the form of a scholarly article). I don’t know if the setting necessarily needs to play an active role in the plot (although in my work, it frequently does). I can say for sure that my favorite horror writers—Lovecraft, Jackson, and Kiernan, just to name three—all write heavily atmospheric fiction, and I, for one, adore a good haunting!

What is the significance of the recurrent lines of poetry throughout? The verses are variations, mostly my own, on an old poem about counting crows (sometimes magpies) to tell one’s fortune. I’ve always found the poem unsettling, and thought it worked well both to convey Gabrielle’s anxiety and uncertainty about the future and to maintain a sense of the supernatural around the birds themselves. While I enjoy science-fictional takes on the zombie apocalypse, I wanted this story to stay creepy, irrationalized, almost magical—in a sinister way. So I tried sprinkling in a bit of folklore. The poem has been adapted and inserted into work by a number of talented writers and musicians. One of my favorite adaptations is Seanan McGuire’s song “Counting Crows,” which makes the rhyme the background for a love story gone awry.

Why doesn’t Gabrielle like her sister?

The simple answer is that she’s jealous. Her sister has this bizarre ability that has suddenly made her enormously valuable to everyone around her. I don’t think the sisters would be close under any circumstances; their goals, desires, and values are too disparate. But the strange situation in which they find themselves exacerbates that natural tension.

Why is the crowgirl chosen by the crows? Does she really control them?

I don’t know why the crows chose her. World mythology is full of characters who have a special affinity with some species of animal, and this story is partly me trying to work through the implications of that kind of relationship, the circumstances in which it would be most powerful. I don’t think the crowgirl controls the crows, in the sense of being able to command them; the birds are simply drawn to her, and crows, well, they’ll eat whatever is in reach.

What does the year ahead look like for you?

My tale of an epically dysfunctional family, “The Sons of Zeruiah,” will appear in Dybbuk Press’s King David and the Spiders from Mars this December. I have poetry slated to appear in a number of fine magazines, and even a few international publications coming up. My non-writerly life is in a huge state of transition; as I type this, I’m boxing up the last of my notebooks for my move from southeastern Wisconsin to northern California for graduate school. By the time this interview is published, I’ll have been there long enough to love the weather, become addicted to Peet’s Coffee and In-N-Out Burger, and miss Lake Michigan a tiny bit less.

Erika Holt lives in the cold, white North (i.e. Calgary, Canada), where she writes and edits speculative fiction. Her stories appear in Shelter of Daylight issue six, Evolve Two: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead, Tesseracts Fifteen: A Case of Quite Curious Tales, and What Fates Impose. She has co- edited two anthologies: Rigor Amortis, about sexy, amorous zombies, and Broken Time Blues, featuring 1920s alien burlesque dancers and bootlegging chickens. Author Spotlight: Alaya Dawn Johnson E.C. Myers

“The Score” was originally published in Interfictions 2: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing, edited by Delia Sherman and Christopher Barzak. What’s your definition of “interstitial”?

I think of interstitial writing as writing that falls in between genres. This isn’t a new concept, but what I like about the approach of the Interstitial Arts Foundation, which supported the anthology, is that their definition of “genres” is pleasantly large. The genre valleys might run between mystery and science fiction, but they could also fall between dance and contemporary realism, or music and narrative nonfiction. In the case of “The Score,” I wanted to combine a whole bunch of genres—song lyrics, nonfiction articles, chat transcripts, letters—in a way that emphasized the reader’s involvement in piecing together the narrative of a story. What I like about the concept of interstitiality is that it forces us to grapple with the fact that everything is a genre, and every genre has its own conventions. How did you approach writing a story with such an experimental structure, with a diverse range of primary sources? Did any of them (emails, blog posts, police reports, transcripts, etc.) present a particular challenge?

I enjoyed the challenge of attempting verisimilitude in so many kinds of writing. I had the most fun with the libertarian blog posts, particularly since I was writing this at the time of Ron Paul’s first presidential run and there was plenty to read for inspiration. The autopsy report was very tricky, since I needed something that conveyed the relevant information without taking too long to get there (not to mention a reasonable medical cause of death). I ended up using Anna Nicole Smith’s autopsy report (on The Smoking Gun) as a model.

Music is an important element of this piece. Did you draw on certain music for inspiration? How did music shape the story?

At this point, I’d say that music has become a theme of my whole career. I love listening to, playing, and reading about music. At the time I was writing this piece, I was listening to a lot of singer/songwriters, and I have always been interested in the role music plays in protest movements. One of the big questions, in my mind, during the protests of the Bush years was the lack of any anthemic protest songs with an impact similar to ones by Buffalo Springfield or Bob Dylan or Marvin Gaye. So the basic impetus for me to write “The Score” was to essentially imagine what an iconic protest singer/songwriter would have looked like during the early Bush years.

The time frame of “The Score” primarily covers a twenty-year period from 2007–2027, and it was first published in 2009. What does this story still have to say about American politics and the world of today, in 2013?

Plenty has changed politically since I wrote “The Score”—the de-escalation of war in Iraq, the rise of drone warfare in many other parts of the world, ongoing issues of government surveillance—but I think the issues brought up in the piece are still relevant now. Particularly the issues of unlawful detention and government response to civil protest. But I always knew that the piece would date itself very quickly, and like other forms of near- future SF, needed to work both as commentary on current events and a snapshot of a time receding into the past.

What are you working on now? What other work do you have out now or have forthcoming?

I’m working on a few projects right now (as usual), but mostly on a series of interlinked novellas about New York in the summer before Pearl Harbor. My forthcoming project (late 2014) is a second YA novel, a contemporary thriller about a Washington, D.C. private school in the midst of a global flu pandemic.

E.C. Myers was assembled in the U.S. from Korean and German parts and raised by a single mother and a public library in Yonkers, New York. He has published short fiction in a variety of print and online magazines and anthologies, and his young adult novels, Fair Coin and Quantum Coin, are available now from Pyr Books. He currently lives with his wife, two doofy cats, and a mild-mannered dog in Philadelphia and shares way too much information about his personal life at ecmyers.net and on Twitter @ecmyers. In the Next Issue of

Coming up in November. . . We have original fiction from Brooke Bolander (“The Beasts of the Earth, the Madness of Men”) and Alison Littlewood (“Waiting for the Light”), along with reprints by Dale Bailey (“Hunger: A Confession”) and Melanie Tem (“Dhost”). We also have the latest installment of our column on horror, “The H Word,” plus author spotlights with our authors, a showcase on our cover artist, and a feature interview. It’s another great issue, so be sure to check it out. And while you’re at it, tell a friend about Nightmare. Thanks for reading! Subscriptions & Ebooks

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