TABLE OF CONTENTS Issue 22, July 2014

FROM THE EDITOR Editorial, July 2014 John Joseph Adams

FICTION The Black Window Lane Robins Talking in the Dark Dennis Etchison Death and Death Again Mari Ness The Misfit Child Grows Fat on Despair Tom Piccirilli

NOVEL EXCERPT Object Permanence John F.D. Taff NONFICTION The H Word: Misunderstood Monsters Janice Gable Bashman Artist Gallery Galen Dara Artist Spotlight: Galen Dara Wendy N. Wagner Interview: Del Howison of Dark Delicacies Bookstore Lisa Morton

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS Lane Robins Dennis Etchison Mari Ness Tom Piccirilli

MISCELLANY Coming Attractions Stay Connected Subscriptions & Ebooks About the Editor © 2014 Nightmare Magazine Cover Art by Galen Dara www.nightmare-magazine.com FROM THE EDITOR EDITORIAL, JULY 2014 John Joseph Adams

Welcome to issue twenty-two of Nightmare! It seems like it’s been ages since I told you about a new anthology I had out. Er . . . well, I guess it was actually only about two months ago. But nevertheless! July marks the publication of HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!! and Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects! As you may recall, I Kickstarted this anthology in late 2013, inspired by the eponymous story by Keffy R.M. Kehrli, which was published in the October 2013 issue of Lightspeed. In case you missed it, HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!! is an anthology of science fiction/fantasy stories told in the form of fictional crowdfunding project pitches, using the components (and restrictions) of the format to tell the story. This includes but is not limited to: Project Goals, Rewards, User Comments, Project Updates, FAQs, and more. The idea is to replicate the feel of reading a crowdfunding pitch, so that even though the projects may be preposterous in the real world, they will feel like authentic crowdfunding projects as much as possible. The anthology is on sale now. To learn more, visit johnjosephadams.com/robot-army.

• • • • With our announcements out of the way, here’s what we’ve got on tap this month: We have original fiction from Lane Robins (“The Black Window”) and Mari Ness (“Death and Death Again”), along with reprints by Denis Etchison (“Talking in the Dark”) and Tom Piccirilli (“The Misfit Child Grows Fat on Despair”). 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 Del Howison of the legendary Dark Delicacies bookstore in Los Angeles. That’s about all I have for you this month. Thanks for reading!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publisher and editor-in-chief of Nightmare, is the series editor of Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is also the bestselling editor of many other anthologies, such as The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Armored, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, and The Living Dead. New projects coming out in 2014 and 2015 include: Help Fund My Robot Army!!! & Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects, Robot Uprisings, Dead Man’s Hand, Operation Arcana, Wastelands 2, and The Apocalypse Triptych: The End is Nigh, The End is Now, and The End Has Come. He has been nominated for eight Hugo Awards and five World Fantasy Awards, and he has been called “the reigning king of the anthology world” by Barnes & Noble. John is also the editor and publisher of Lightspeed Magazine, and is a producer for Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams. FICTION THE BLACK WINDOW Lane Robins

The house looked like a sand castle after the tide had come in. Except sand suggested a crumbling grayness, and the tall, narrow house was a fresh white. A front porch was large enough for a swinging bench if I could bear that level of domesticity. Blue shutters marched from the ground floor to the third, and above that— “. . . a finished attic,” the Realtor told me. The house was . . . nice. Nothing I’d ever wanted. I loved my job, loved that my years were split between sublet apartments and archaeological digs around the world. But things had changed. New job, new town, new responsibilities. “There are four bedrooms, two bathrooms,” he said, and ushered me in. The house was simply laid out—a hallway, a room on either side, stairs at the end of the hall. The kitchen was to my left, and it might have been updated since the thirties, but nothing else seemed to have been. The floor was scarred hardwood, and the doors had actual keyholes. The dining room was dark. Windowless. “That’s unusual,” I said, roused to comment. The Realtor sighed. “The house was bigger once. There was even an attached stable. But time takes things away.” That was the first utterly true thing he’d said. Six weeks ago, I’d been a daughter. Now, I was a parent to my fourteen- year-old siblings, Maddy and Aiden. Now, I was an orphan. Six weeks ago, I’d been a footloose archaeologist. Now, I was trying not to let my grief sink me, starting a job as a community college teacher in Missouri, and taking on a mortgage. The twins needed stability. I wished I could have kept them in their Chicago home, but our parents had double- mortgaged and I couldn’t afford the payments. “There’s even a garden,” the Realtor said. “You like to dig, right?” You like to dig. That was one terrible way to sum up my now-dead career as a field archaeologist. It wasn’t worth correcting him. Controlling my grief had ground me down to the essentials. I had to be strong for the kids. I had to make it work. The second floor echoed the first: a regular bedroom on one side, a windowless bedroom on the other, stairs and bath at the end of the hall. “Isn’t there a law about windows in bedrooms?” “Grandfathered in,” the Realtor told me. It was good enough. A week later, we moved in.

• • • •

“Holly,” Maddy yelled from the floor above, “I’m claiming this room!” It was the first thing she’d said to me since I’d told them about the new house. A miscalculation on my part. I’d accepted the necessity of moving; I’d expected them to have done the same. But Maddy had shrieked, thrown her purse at me, and stormed into her room, where she posted her displeasure on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, tagging me so I’d know I was ruining her life. Even Aiden had complained, just once, but bitterly—you’re getting rid of Mom and Dad’s house? I’d been furious and hurt. Didn’t they understand what I’d given up? Didn’t they think I missed our parents, too? Didn’t they know I was doing my best? So now, with Maddy laying noisy claim to a room, I took it as a good sign. Maybe she’d forgiven me. Aiden stood beside me, contemplating his sneakers. When I nudged him, asked, “Don’t you want to pick a room?” he looked at me blankly. His new normal. He used to be an expressive kid. There were pictures boxed somewhere in storage to prove it. Another shout from above. “Holly, I can’t get a signal! I need the internet!” “I’m working on it,” I shouted back. The local cable company had made soothing noises about super-fast cable, made less soothing noises about how soon it could be connected. “Can you wait a week?” A wordless shriek was my answer. Aiden didn’t weigh in one way or another. Then again, his laptop had broken and he wouldn’t let me get him another. Not even a tablet. Aiden had been in the car when the truck plowed through the intersection. Dad had died behind the wheel, and Mom . . . Aiden had been playing with his laptop when the truck hit. His laptop had torn through the car like a missile, breaking Mom’s neck. “C’mon,” I said. “Let’s go pick a room.” He pulled away when I touched his shoulder. Maddy had picked the second-floor bedroom with the wide window, alongside the larger of the two bathrooms. It was a nice day and sunlight radiated brightly enough to penetrate through the hall and into the dark bedroom. I put my head in. Not as grim as I remembered. Still, I wanted Aiden to have real light if possible. I urged him upstairs. Maddy said, “Why can’t he be down here with me?” “Don’t you want your own bathroom?” “I’ll have to share with you,” Maddy said. Her grimace made it clear what she thought of that. I shook my head. I wanted to be on the same floor as Aiden. He needed looking after. “You can have it all to your lonesome.” That didn’t make her happy either. She scowled and trudged up the stairs after Aiden. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong now, and gave up trying to figure it out. Aiden ignored both third floor rooms, and peered up the narrow stairs. “There’s an attic? I always wanted to live in an attic,” he murmured, as if he’d nearly forgotten that desire. As if he’d nearly forgotten how to want things. We went on up. The attic was spacious, shadowy beneath the slanted eaves, but dry and clean. The floorboards had been painted white, and unlike the lower floors, the west side of the attic had a window. In keeping with the blind walls below, the window had been painted black. A small window on the north wall spilled light across the floor, raising dust motes. Aiden wandered the room, testing how far he could go before the slanting roof made it impossible to walk upright. “Can I have this room?” “There’s no bathroom up here. No outlets; it’ll be dark,” I pointed out. But this was the first thing Aiden had asked for since the accident. I wanted to give it to him. I had kept all my gear, had battery operated lanterns from my digs. We could make it work. “I think it’s painted on the outside,” Maddy said. She picked at the glass with her thumbnail, but the black wasn’t coming off. It was an odd window. The north window was the usual type of attic window, a wood-paned hexagon that didn’t open. The black window looked like a regular window, two large panes, one above the other. Maddy shoved at the sill, grunting with frustration, and my heart skipped. “Don’t!” I imagined her falling through, another abrupt tragedy. My hands shook. She huffed. “Jeez, calm down.” Aiden ran his fingers along the join of frame and glass. “Maybe they caulked it shut.” “You’ll roast during the summer,” Maddy predicted. “The whole attic’s gonna stink like sweaty boy.” “I don’t care.” “You’ll be two floors away!” Maddy said, an edge in her voice. Her inevitable anger. Aiden said, “You can text me.” “You’re a dick,” she said. “Hey,” I intervened. Maddy stomped downstairs, and I tried to remember that she was grieving, not just a pain in the ass. I found a smile for Aiden. “You sure you want the attic?” He nodded, studying the window. “Maybe I can get the paint off.” The air was cooler in the deep slant of the wall, and the black glass was blacker, the color deeper, dense. I ran my fingers over the glass, testing. It was cold even on the warm day. The glass didn’t have any of the streaks or bubbles I expected from paint. Stained glass, maybe. I unclipped the penlight from my belt loop. The light bounced back, didn’t seem to penetrate. I breathed against the glass, laid my palm against it. The window . . . twitched. I jerked back, falling over my feet, dropping the light. It hit the floor, bounced, and disappeared into a gap between the wall and eaves. “You okay?” Aiden said. Not quite concern, not quite disinterest. At least he’d noticed. “Bird must have hit the house,” I said. “Startled me.”

• • • •

I took a bedroom on the third floor, the better to keep an eye on Aiden. I chose the dark one in case Aiden changed his mind about the attic. I never knew what the teens were thinking, and half the time I figured they didn’t either— changing their minds as the wind blew. It was nearly three am, after a brutally tough series of days —packing, moving out, the drive, moving in—and I couldn’t sleep because Aiden was doing . . . something . . . in the attic. Scrabbling and scratching and thumping. I struggled up the stairs, leaden with exhaustion. “Aiden?” He crashed about and swore, a flurry of noise, but no boy. I finally located him, a dark shadow beneath the dark eaves, glimmering light edging his face. “My penlight . . .” “I can’t reach it,” he said. “And I can’t sleep with it shining.” He sounded as tired as I felt, near tears. The penlight had caught somewhere beneath the black window—even more eerie at night, velvety matte and as deep as a starless night. I tore my eyes away and tested the gap between the wall. Two inches. Wide enough to swallow the penlight, too narrow to get a hand down there. I sat back, tried to think. My penlight had a carabiner at the end of it, making it easy to hook to things. “Get me a wire hanger.” Aiden did, and I pressed my shoulder against the window, trying to get the angle right. Metal grated, wire catching. I pulled. In my ear, the window sobbed. Something like a dying foghorn over distant waters. I nearly lost my grip. Just the wind, sighing through the eaves outside. Nothing more. I yanked the hanger up; caught on the end was a small book with a metal clasp. “What’s that?” Aiden asked, peering over my shoulder. “Old,” I said, my fingers sandy with dust. “Guess we’re not the first one to lose stuff here.” I passed him the journal and went back for the flashlight. Once I had it snagged, I switched it off and left us in the dark. “Can you sleep now?” “I’ll try,” he said. “You want me to stay until you do?” “No.” Quick, heartfelt. Hurtful. A clear rejection. “Sleep well,” I told him, and sought the hall below. The strange wind, that breathless sob of air, seemed to follow me. I shuddered. It took me far too long to realize it wasn’t the wind. I opened Maddy’s door, and her sobs hitched, broke. “Get out!” Her face was blotched and swollen with tears. When I hesitated, she threw her pillow at me and said, “I hate you! Get out!” I got. Mom would have known what to say; she would have soothed Maddy’s tears. Dad would have jollied Maddy out of them, fed her ice cream and made her laugh so hard she nearly puked chocolate sauce. They’d done the same for me once upon a time. I lay in my bed, in the darkness as absolute as a tomb, and refused to cry. Above me, the window keened.

• • • •

The next night, Maddy got over her huff enough to boot me out of the kitchen when she declared my pizza making skills “pathetic.” I climbed the stairs into Aiden’s attic. He jerked away from the window and I felt that familiar swoop of anxiety. The window was still sealed. No four-story drop for him. I wondered if I’d ever get free of that sick sense of terror, that at any moment I was going to lose Aiden or Maddy. “Hey,” I said. “Pizza in ten or twenty or whenever Maddy gets bored of playing chef.” Aiden pointed at the black window, greased with his earprint, and said, “Do you hear that?” He gestured me over to the window. Reluctantly, I put my ear to the glass—so strangely cold on a warm night—and I heard the whistle and suck of a vast wind, stronger and louder than it had been last night. Not just a wind, but a gale. I retreated, went to the other window, and peered out. Late spring evening, the sun still high, and the trees . . . motionless. “It’s not windy outside.” “Not here,” Aiden said. “The window goes someplace else.” “That’s not possible.” I put my hand back on the black glass, leaned closer, rested my forehead against it, trying to look through. The window shivered; vibrations moved through my skull. I pictured black storm clouds in a black sky, a whole range of inky colors, rising and falling. It wasn’t wind, I thought. It was like whale song, the cries of some enormous beasts some enormous distance away. I shivered. I’d had this same cold feeling once on a dig in the Yucatan, right before I saw a jaguar stalking our camp. The hind-brain recognized threats before the conscious mind could. “I think you should move downstairs,” I said slowly. “What? No.” “Please.” I looked at the attic room, at Aiden. He seemed small and lost in this space, dwarfed beside the window. We’d rigged lights but all they did was cast shadows. Aiden crossed his arms over his narrow chest. “No. I like this room. I like the window.” “I don’t think it’s safe.” “Driving down the street’s not safe,” Aiden said. He sounded tired and bitter. Maddy poked her head into the room. “I’ve been calling and calling . . . what’s going on?” Suspicion crawled across her features, shifting quickly to anger. “What are you two talking about?” “Nothing,” I said, just as Aiden said, “The window.” Maddy glared at me and stomped over beside her brother. “What about it?” “It’s weird,” he said. “Weird how?” she snapped. “I think it goes someplace else,” Aiden told her. Maddy wrinkled her nose. “Like where?” “It’s got to be a trick of architecture,” I said, trying for rationality. “No wind outside, but maybe beneath the eaves?” Aiden didn’t even look at me. “Just someplace else.” “What’s that?” Maddy asked. She pounced on Aiden’s bed, dragged a book out of the tangle of sheets. I recognized it when she brought it up, and forgot about the window for a moment. “Oh, the book?” I held out my hand, but Aiden snatched it from Maddy. “It’s about the house,” he said. “About that window.” The window loured behind us, black and cold. I thought about that bluster of wind, about the sounds that traveled thinly through the glass. “The book’s about the window?” “I just started reading,” Aiden said. I licked my lips. I itched to have the journal in my own hands, but Aiden cradled it close. Maddy shifted to stand at his shoulder. A united force. “You tell me what you find out,” I said. “And don’t mess with the window.”

• • • •

Aiden delved into the journal with all the fervor of a born- again into the Bible. At first, I was glad to see it—I wanted to know about the window just as much as he did. Was it paint or some special glass that made it so dark? What made the winds—an accident of architecture, or design? I imagined the three of us talking about it, bonding. But though Aiden spent all his time with the journal, he shared nothing with me. When I asked him direct questions, his answers were unsatisfying, and full of covert glances at Maddy. He was talking to her, but not me. After six meals spent in attempted interrogation, while Aiden ignored me and Maddy rolled her eyes and bitched about the food, I gave up. At least, I gave up asking Aiden. All he’d coughed up was that the window had been in the stables and was moved to the main house after the stable came down. I decided I’d have to read the journal myself. Easier said than done. Aiden guarded the book zealously. I was determined. I couldn’t let it go. Now that I’d heard the winds behind the black window, I couldn’t stop hearing them. At night, in my room, the sound crept through my walls, moaning like the spirits of the forsaken. When I wasn’t listening to the window, I was listening to Aiden cry out in his sleep, to Maddy sobbing in the dark. I was equipped to solve old mysteries. To be a parent? I was ill-equipped, digging without a plan. When Aiden was out of the attic, I was in it, poking at the window. The glass stayed cold, but when I breathed on it, the glass refused to let my breath touch it. The sounds outside were louder, it seemed, or maybe I was just . . . Scared. The window scared me. The black window felt like a threat, a looming storm over our heads. The next time Aiden headed for a shower, I braved the black window’s judgmental eye and tossed his room ruthlessly. I found the journal with my fingertips first—the cracked leather binding, the thick paper, crumbling at the edges—and pulled it out from his pillowcase. I locked myself into my bedroom, journal in hand. Aiden shouted through the door, but I ignored him. Did him good to get upset about something other than our parents for once. Besides, he’d lied to me when he said he hadn’t read far into the journal. Aiden had bookmarked dozens of pages—the journal bristled with curling scraps of paper. He’d read it through more than once. Maddy joined Aiden, drawn up the stairs by his unexpected fury, and she added her protests to his. “It’s not funny, Holly!” she shouted. “Give it back. It’s not for you!” “When I’m done!” As I read, my outrage at Aiden’s lies turned to a brittle anxiety. Aiden had bookmarked it like a textbook, studied it. And the material was . . . disturbing. Each scrap of paper marked another horrifying entry about the window. The window had been in the stable. But no one knew who had put it in. The stable hand said it just appeared one night. It had been a mystery, but a benign one. Until the stable hand disappeared.

The horses shrieked and Annabel fled the supper table, gathering the boys as she went. I followed, quick as my bad leg would allow. I feared fire, but what we found was something peculiar. The horses frothed with terror, and Annabel and the boys hastened to get them to the paddock. I lingered, and when I saw . . . when I understood, I fell back against the doors, numb and bewildered. Our stables are small, as befit our small family. Eight stalls, eight horses. Yet, the eighth stall had vanished as if it had never been. Four stalls along one side; three along the other, a smooth expanse of sanded wood where there should be another space, and Edward and Pretty, the spotted mare, vanished along with that eighth stall. My breath failed as I saw the unaccountable window had not disappeared with Pretty, but moved, closer to the house, settled into the first stall.

I read on; apparently the horses never recovered their nerves and Annabel had the stables torn down, the land given over to a much needed vegetable patch. I checked the date— 1942—the midst of World War II, and the homeowner’s bad leg probably a result of World War I. The pounding on my door stopped. I flipped to the next bookmark, though my fingers were numb from clutching the book so tightly. The paper fluttered free and I lost the spot. I browsed roughly, the pages tearing beneath my fingers, scanning the tiny text. The page that I stopped on was a faded sketch of a house plan. I recognized the tower at the end— where we lived now—but most of the page was taken up by the main house. The western wall of the house was marked with a black X. The note alongside it was laconic, a simple —the window is returned here. I flipped the page, read more crabbed text.

The boys are fascinated by the black window, though Annabel tries to keep them from it, mindful of Edward’s incomprehensible fate. We have sealed off the parlor, much to the relief of the daily girl whose job it was to clean beneath that window’s gaze. Though we have barred the door, the boys prove most enterprising at finding the key. How many mornings must I drag them out of there? They wait to see how daylight fails to seep through the darkness, and wonder at the shadows untouched by the sun’s rays. Annabel is distressed, nearly to hysterics. She has locked the room once more, and thrown the key away. Perhaps that will be the end of it, and we will, like one of Poe’s tales, have this room bricked in.

The next page dropped a photograph into my lap, showed me the family. Mother, father, two boys about Aiden’s age. They looked nice, I thought and cringed. There was disaster looming on every page of the journal—the main house gone, the black window moved to the attic. I opened to the next marked page, close to the end. The handwriting, tidy through all previous pages, was pen scratchings and damaged paper here.

The boys went through the window. I woke this morning certain that something was wrong. Houses become a part of you. Our breath lingers in the halls, our hearts beat in the empty spaces, our nerves search out the measure of our walls like they are our skins. I knew, even as I woke, that the house had changed. It was too empty, too small, too . . . terrible. A silence had crept inside where there should have been boyish voices. The dining room was vanished. Only a smooth expanse of faded wallpaper remained. The boys . . . I knew they were gone. That they had managed to coax the window open. Annabel came upon me there and screamed. She tore through the house haranguing the servants to “look for the window! The black window!” By the cook’s shrieks, we found it, a black gloss in the pantry, shelves missing where the window had come to rest. Annabel is determined to retrieve them, and may the good Lord forgive me, but I can not encourage her. The boys are lost to us; I know that. Nothing lives behind that false glass. I have heard the eerie cries, seen the darkness massed behind the window. It is the land of the dead waiting there, and nothing living can abide in it. But she will not be swayed. I will use the servants’ exodus as cover for our own. I will plunder the house of our possessions; I will send Annabel to the church to pray and prepare for her rescue attempt. While she is out, I will fire the house and see if fire will do what tearing down could not.

The next pages proved that he had followed through, that he had burned down their home, and that Annabel had not forgiven him. She left him in the ashy rubble and returned to her family. He moved into the ramshackle tower—the only remnant of his home.

I had cause to store all my goods in the attics while the rebuilding occurred—a rebuilding I had no desire for, but the community pitied me and in a paroxysm of civic duty subjected me to a welter of dust and noise, the chatter of strangers who commiserated with me over the loss of my family, and would not see that I had become that most useless of citizens: An old man who wants to be left alone. An old man with a secret. The black window, you see, returns; it always returns. I have barricaded it behind furniture and hope that left alone, it will sleep. That it will remain unopened.

I closed the journal. I didn’t want to read more; I didn’t need to. So much of Aiden’s obsessiveness made terrible sense. The land of the dead? Aiden was still young enough to believe what was written. And Maddy—she hated me, sided with Aiden no matter what. Panic broke through me, a lazy roll deep in my guts. The house was silent. Aiden had stopped yelling at me. Maddy had stopped trying the door handle. When? Aiden hadn’t wanted me to read the journal. Why? Because I would stop him. Would stop them. But now they knew I knew. I was on my feet, fumbling with the door latch, the slippery key, the old knob fighting me. I clung to hope. Aiden might be grief-stricken, guilt-mad, despairing, but Maddy . . . she was so angry. She wouldn’t let him go; she’d already lost so much, our parents, her friends, her school, her home . . . I had climbed rock-strewn hills alongside goats, navigated tight underground caverns with ease, but I made a series of pratfalls as I raced out of the room, toward the attic. Toward the faint sounds that told me I wasn’t too late, wasn’t too late — Glass cracked like a gunshot. Like a broken window. • • • •

When I burst into the attic, Aiden was just dropping my wood ax to the floor. Beside him, Maddy held a lumpy woven coil that I recognized—the rope ladder from my field gear. A silvery crack raced across the pristine blackness of the window, like a zipper pulling apart. The space beyond moaned, hungry. “Don’t,” I whispered, breathless. “Please, don’t.” The window tore. Darkness spilled into the attic, icy and thick as fog banks. Maddy spun and hurled the rope ladder into the darkness. Aiden slipped over the side, vanishing like he’d been swallowed whole. “We just want Mom,” Maddy said, her voice as broken as the glass. “We want Dad. It’s okay, Holly. You tried.” She slung a leg over the sill. I forded the room, blackness spreading like ink over my legs, sneakers, ankles, jeans, coiling hungrily around my hips. I caught Maddy’s arm, but she slid from my grasp, sucked out into the eclipsing darkness. My nails left rake marks on her flesh, and her blood spotted the floor between us. Then they were both gone.

• • • •

I went after them though my legs shook and tears slicked my face. I crossed the sill, and slung myself down the first rungs. Maddy and Aiden were so young. They believed blindly. If some delusional writer said it, it must be true. It could be built on. The land of the dead? A fact; therefore, our parents would be waiting for them. The ladder’s rope steps curved and swayed beneath me as I climbed down into . . . I wanted to think ‘void’ but void suggested emptiness and this place was anything but empty. It was black and cold and so full of dark, broken things that the air vibrated with their passings and collisions. So crowded that I felt my lungs constrict. My bird’s eye view was dark, dark, dark, but there were shapes moving around me, above me, below. And threaded beneath all of that movement, other dark lines. Buildings? Roads? Nothing I understood. Something bellowed in the darkness, a foghorn burst of loss and hunger, a cry that weakened my bones. Maddy’s pale hair was an unmoving beacon. My hands and feet were slow to move me down one rung to the next. Maddy clung, shaking, to the ladder. When I reached her, she launched herself at me, holding hard enough to bruise. “Go up!” I told her. Tried to tell her. The words were torn from my lips and shredded. Nothing human was welcome here. I shoved Maddy upward. We both looked up, and there was nothing to see, no sign of the window to our world. Her face contorted, terror and fury and betrayal—this wasn’t what she’d wanted. I had to believe we could escape; I shoved harder. “Go!” Her lips moved, Aiden, and I nodded. She climbed slowly, so terribly slowly, and I felt all of that black within the black swooping around us, noticing us . . . I forced myself downward. Aiden had been just a moment before us on the ladder. He couldn’t be too far . . . Unless he’d fallen. My throat and eyes burned. This place felt like it was eating away at my bones from the inside. Some sizzle in the air made my lungs ache. I leaned into the ladder, coughing. I rubbed my face on my wrist and left it smudged black. I went down. Hand under hand, foot below foot, I went, swaying through the caustic air, buffeted by cold, fume-laden winds. I nearly stepped on Aiden’s head, his pale hair coated with black streaks. He clung to the end of the ladder, a flutter of cauterized nylon dangling below us, into an abyss. He stared down, hypnotized, one foot free. Ready to step off. Wanting to believe. His wrist felt like it was in rigor, ice cold and stiff. I recoiled, then seized hold again. He turned his head, slowly registering my presence. His eyes were black holes in a black- smeared face. His lips moved. I thought I saw the word why, the word find. Below, the darkness shifted, revealing a landscape so inhospitable, the last of my breath went. Aiden leaned forward, the ladder swaying, shifting with his weight, leaning over the darkness like a lure above black waters. I had one hand locked on his wrist, the other on the ladder. I tried to pull us up even one rung, but he resisted. It was the final shock, piled on all the others. I couldn’t save him. No matter how desperately I wanted to. I couldn’t drag him up the ladder if he wouldn’t go. I rested my face against his cold cheek and sobbed, the cries scoured out of my throat. “Please, please, please. They aren’t here. They’re gone. All we’ve got is each other.” He couldn’t hear me. But he could feel my tears on his skin. A cold touch on my hair, not a creature passing too closely by, not a gust of that foul, cold wind, but Aiden’s tentative fingers. An awkward pat. Offering comfort. Aiden’s eyes glittered with tears, damp black streaks on his skin. The first connection I’d made with him since the funeral, and it was over the grief I’d been refusing to let him see. I had been an idiot. I pulled at the rung above, staring at his tear-stained face, and after a long, painful moment, Aiden did likewise. We scaled the ladder, the fabric of it thinning, wearing beneath the constant winds. We climbed and we climbed, stiff, cold marionettes. We climbed, sobbing and scared. We climbed. Just when I decided the window had vanished and left us stranded, clinging to the ladder, Maddy reached out her hand. I pushed Aiden through the window, followed after. The attic was creaking and dead around us, the boards gone silver and cracking beneath the dark fogs. “Hurry, hurry!” Maddy croaked. We staggered from the attic, down the stairs, and out into the afternoon light. The kids looked like hell, skin grayish, lips and eyes stained black. Twin streaks of blackish blood ran from their noses, their lips. I didn’t feel much better. My nail beds were black and my breathing bubbled. We huddled against each other, watching the house, watching the attic disappear.

• • • •

We ended up in the hospital for three nights, coughing up blood and bile and something that tasted like machine oil. The doctors were horrified as well as bewildered, though they assured us we were recovering. Maddy and Aiden refused to leave my side so they found us a room to share. Aiden whispered on our second night, “Do you think Mom and Dad were there?” “No,” I said. “But it was dead there. It was the land of the dead,” Maddy said. She sounded like a two-pack-a-day smoker. “The book said so.” “The book was wrong,” I managed. “I’ve seen humanity in every stage of ruin. There was nothing human over there.” I took a needed breath. “If it was the land of the dead, it wasn’t our dead.” I had been dreaming of what I’d seen, waking shuddering and anxious. Maddy shivered, fell silent. She should have been the healthiest of the three of us, but the long minutes alone in the attic had done their own sort of damage. We’d all come out with damage, but I reminded myself of the key part. We’d all come out.

• • • •

Three months later, Maddy and Aiden came home from a field trip and said they’d driven past our old house. They said it was being sold as a one story cottage, and that the front window was black.

© 2014 by Lane Robins.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Lane Robins was born in Miami, Florida, the daughter of two scientists, and grew up as the first human member of their menagerie. She attended the Odyssey workshop, the Center for the Study of Science Fiction novel and short story workshops, and has a BA in Creative Writing from Beloit College. She writes urban fantasy novels under the name Lyn Benedict, and fantasy novels under her own name. She currently lives in Lawrence, Kansas.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight. TALKING IN THE DARK Dennis Etchison

In the damp bedroom Victor Ripon sat hunched over his desk, making last-minute corrections on the ninth or tenth draft, he couldn’t remember which, of a letter to the one person in the world who might be able to help. Outside, puppies with the voices of children struggled against their leashes for a chance to be let in from the cold. He ignored them and bore down. Their efforts at sympathy were wasted on him; he had nothing more to give. After thirty-three years he had finally stepped out of the melodrama. He clicked the pen against his teeth. Since the letter was to a man he had never met, he had to be certain that his words would not seem naive or foolish. Dear Sir, he reread, squinting down at the latest version’s cramped, meticulously cursive backhand. He lifted the three- hole notebook paper by the edges so as not to risk smearing the ballpoint ink. Dear Sir . . .

First let me say that I sincerely hope this letter reaches you. I do not have your home address so I have taken the liberty of writing in care of your publisher. If they forward it to you please let me know. I am not in the habit of writing to authors. This is the first time. So please bear with me if my letter is not perfect in spelling, etc. I have been reading your Works for approximately six yrs., in other words since shortly after I was married but more about that later. Mr. Christian, Rex if I may call you that and I feel I can, you are my favorite author and greatest fan. Some people say you are too morbid and depressing but I disagree. You do not write for children or women with weak hearts (I am guessing) but in your books people always get what they deserve. No other author I have read teaches this so well. I can see why you are one of the most popular authors in the world. I have all six of your books, I hope there are only six, I wouldn’t like to think I missed any! (If so could you send me a list of the titles and where I might obtain them? A S.A.S.E. is enclosed for your convenience. Thank you.) My favorite is THE SILVERING, I found that to be a very excellent plot, to tell the truth it scared the shit out of me if you know what I mean and I think you do, right? (Wink wink.) MOON OVER THE NEST is right up there, too. My wife introduced me to your novels, my ex-wife I should say and I guess I should thank her for that much. She left me two and a half years ago, took the kids to San Diego first and then to Salt Lake City I found out later. I don’t know why, she didn’t say. I have tried to track her down but no luck. Twice with my late parents’ help I found out where she was staying but too late. So that is the way she wants it, I guess. I miss the kids though, my little boy especially. In your next book, THE EDGE, I noticed you made one small mistake, I hope you don’t mind my pointing it out. In that one you have Moreham killing his old girlfriend by electrocution (before he does other things to her!) while she is setting up their word processor link. Excuse me but this is wrong. I know this because I was employed in the Computer Field after dropping out of Pre-Med to support my family. The current utilized by a Mark IIIA terminal is not enough to produce a lethal shock, even if the interface circuits were wired in sequence as you describe (which is impossible anyway, sorry, just thought you might like to know). Also the .066 nanosecond figure should be corrected . . .

And so on in a similar vein. Victor worked his way through three more densely-packed pages of commentary and helpful advice regarding Rex Christian’s other bestsellers, including Jesus Had a Son, The Masked Moon and the collection of short stories, Nightmare Territory, before returning to more personal matters.

If you ever find yourself in my neck of the woods please feel free to drop by. We could have a few beers and sit up talking about the many things we have in common. Like our love of old movies. I can tell you feel the same way about such “classics” (?) as ROBOT INVADERS, MARS VS. EARTH and HOUSE OF BLOOD from the way you wrote about them in your series of articles for TV GUIDE. I subscribed so I wouldn’t miss a single installment. There are others we could talk about, even watch if we’re lucky. I get Channel 56 here in Gezira, you may have heard about it, they show old chestnuts of that persuasion all night long!! If you have not guessed by now, I too try my hand at writing occasionally myself. I have been working for the past one and a half years on a story entitled PLEASE, PLEASE, SORRY, THANK YOU. It will be a very important story, I believe. Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to read it. (You are probably too busy, anyway.) Besides, I read WRITER’S DIGEST so I know where to send it if and when I succeed in bringing it to a satisfactory stage of completion. But you are my inspiration. Without you I would not have the courage to go on with it at all.

He hesitated before the conclusion, as he had when first drafting it four nights ago. On the other side of the window pane the sky was already smoking over with a fine mist, turning rapidly from the color of arterial blood to a dead slate gray. The sea rushed and drubbed at the coastline a mile to the west, shaking and steadily eroding the bedrock upon which his town was built; the vibrations which reached the glass membrane next to him were like the rhythms of a buried human heart.

There is one more thing. I have a very important question to ask you, I hope you don’t mind. It is a simple thing (to you) and I’m sure you could answer it. You might say I should ask someone else but the truth is I don’t know anyone else who could help. What I know isn’t enough. I thought it would be but it isn’t. It seems to me that the things we learned up until now, the really important things, and I can tell we’ve had many of the same experiences (the Sixties, etc.), when it came time to live them, the system balked. And we’re dying. But don’t worry, I’m a fighter. I learned a long time ago: never give up. I live in my parents’ old house now, so we could have plenty of privacy. In my opinion we could help each other very much. My number is 474-2841. If I’m not here I’ll be at the Blue & White (corner of Rosetta and Damietta), that is where I work, anybody can tell you where to find it. I hope to hear from you at your earliest convenience. Meanwhile, I’m waiting with bated breath for your book of essays, OTHER CEDENTS, they mentioned it on “Wake Up, America” and I can hardly wait! If you care to let me read the manuscript prior to publication I promise to return it by Express Mail in perfect condition. (Just asking, hint hint.) In any event please come by for a visit on your next trip to the West Coast. I hope you will take me up on it sometime (soon!), I really need the answer. We Horror Fans have to stick together. As you said in your Introduction to NIGHTMARE TERRITORY, “It may be a long time till morning, but there’s no law against talking in the dark.” Faithfully Yours,

VICTOR RIPON

He sat back. He breathed in, out. It was the first breath he had been aware of taking for several minutes. The view from the window was no longer clear. A blanket of fog had descended to shroud all evidence of life outside his room. The puppies next door had quieted, resigned to their fate. Still a hopeful smile played at the corners of his mouth. He stacked and folded the pages to fit the already-stamped envelope. There. Now there wasn’t anything to do but wait. He stretched expansively, hearing his joints pop like dry bones, and his fingernails touched the window. So early, and yet the glass was chillingly brittle, ready to shatter under the slightest provocation. With any luck he wouldn’t have long to wait at all.

• • • •

The days shrank as the season contracted, drawing inward against the approaching winter. Trees bared stiffening limbs, scraped the sky and etched patterns of stars as sharp and cold as diamond dust above the horizon. Victor got out his old Army jacket. The main house became dank and tomblike, magnifying the creaking of dryrotted timbers. He took to sleeping in the guest cabin, though the small portable heater kept him tight and shivering night after night. He pressed bravely ahead with his story, the outlines and preliminary versions of which by now filled two thick notebooks, reorganizing, redrafting, and obsessively repolishing lines and paragraphs with a jeweler’s precision. But it was not good enough. He wanted the pages to sing with ideas that had once seemed so important to him, all and everything he knew, and yet they did not, and no amount of diligence was able to bring them to life. The story came to be a burden and weighed more heavily in his hands each time he lifted it out of the drawer. After a few weeks he was reluctant to open the desk at all. He stayed in bed more and slept less, dragging himself up for work each day only at the last possible minute. Nothing except Rex Christian’s books held any interest for him now, and he had read them all so many times he believed he knew them by heart, almost as well as his own stillborn effort. Channel 56 exhausted its library of late-night movies and sold out to a fundamentalist religious sect peddling fire and brimstone. The nights lengthened and the long winter closed around him. Each day, he thought, I die a little. I must. I get out of bed, don’t I? Mornings he walked the two miles along the creek into town, reexamining the last few years like beads to be memorized in his pocketed fists before they slipped away forever. He walked faster, but his life only seemed to recede that much more swiftly across the dunes and back to the sea. He could neither hold onto nor completely forget how things had once been. Whether or not they had ever truly been the way he remembered them was not the point. The spell of the past, his past, real or imagined, had settled over him like the shadow of giant wings, and he could not escape. He submerged himself in his work at the shop, a space he rented for small appliance repair behind the Blue & White Diner, but that was not enough, either. For a time he tried to tell himself that nothing else mattered. But it was an evasion. You can run, he thought, but you can’t hide. Rex Christian had taught him that. Some days he would have traded anything he owned and all that he had ever earned to wake up one more time with the special smell of her on his pillow—just that, no matter whether he ever actually set eyes on her again. Other days his old revenge fantasies got the better of him. But all that was real for him now was the numbness of more and more hours at the shop, struggling to penetrate the inner workings of what others paid him to fix, the broken remnants of households which had fallen apart suddenly, without warning or explanation. When not busy at work, the smallest of rewards kept him going. The weekly changes of program at the local movie theater, diverting but instantly forgettable; the specialties of the house at the Blue & White, prepared for him by the new waitress, whose name turned out to be Jolene; and Jolene herself when business was slow and there was nowhere else to go. She catered to him without complaint, serving something, perhaps, behind his eyes that he thought he had put to rest long ago. He was grateful to her for being there. But he could not repay her in kind. He did not feel it, could not even if he had wanted to. By late December he had almost given up hope. The weekends were the worst. He had to get out, buttoned against the cold, though the coffee in town was never hot enough and the talk after the movies was mindless and did not nourish. But he could bear the big house no longer, and even the guest cabin had begun to enclose him like a vault. This Saturday night, the last week before Christmas, the going was painfully slow. Steam expanded from his mouth like ectoplasm. He turned up his collar against an icy offshore wind. There were sand devils in the road, a halo around the ghost of a moon which hung over his shoulder and paced him relentlessly. At his side, to the north, dark reeds rustled and scratched the old riverbank with a sound of rusted blades. He stuffed his hands deeper into his jacket and trudged on toward the impersonal glow of the business district. The neon above the Blue & White burned coolly in the darkness. The nightlife in Gezira, such as it was—Siamese silhouettes of couples cruising for burgers, clutches of frantic teenagers on their way to or from the mall—appeared undiscouraged by the cold. If anything the pedestrians scissoring by seemed less inhibited than ever, pumping reserves of adrenaline and huffing wraiths of steam as if their last-minute shopping mattered more than anything else in this world. The bubble machine atop a police car revolved like a deranged Christmas tree light. Children giggled obscenities and fled as a firecracker resounded between lampposts; it might have been a gunshot. The patrol car spun out, burning rubber, and screeched past in the wrong direction. He took a breath, opened the door to the diner and ducked inside. The interior was clean and bright as a hospital cafeteria. A solitary pensioner dawdled at the end of the counter, spilling coffee as he cradled a cup in both hands. Twin milkshake glasses, both empty, balanced near the edge. As Victor entered, jangling the bell, the waitress glanced up. She saw him and beamed. “Hi!” “Hi, yourself.” “I’ll be a few more minutes. Do you mind? The night girl just called. She’s gonna be late.” Jolene watched him as she cleaned off the tables, trying to read his face as if it were the first page of a test. Her eyes flicked nervously between his. “Take your time,” he said. He drew off his gloves and shuffled up to the counter. “No hurry.” “The movie—?” “We won’t miss anything.” She blinked at him. “But I thought the last show—” “It starts,” he said, “when we get there.” “Oh.” She finished the tables, clearing away the remains of what other people could not finish. “I see,” she said. “Are— are you all right?” “Yes.” “Well, you don’t sound like it.” She looked at him as if she wanted to smooth his hair, take his temperature, enfold him in her big arms and stroke his head. Instead she wiped her hands and tilted her face quizzically, keeping her distance. “How about something to eat?” “Just coffee,” he said. “My stomach’s . . .” He sought the precise word; it eluded him. He gave up. “It’s not right.” “Again?” “Again.” He tried a smile. It came out wrong. “Sorry. Maybe next time.” She considered the plate which she had been keeping warm on the grill. It contained a huge portion of fried shrimp, his favorite. She sighed. The door jingled and a tall man came in. He was dressed like a logger or survivalist from up north, with plaid shirt, hiking boots, full beard and long hair. Victor decided he had never seen him before, though something about the man was vaguely familiar. Jolene dealt out another set-up of flatware. He didn’t need a menu. He knew what he wanted. Victor considered the man, remembering the sixties. That could be me, he thought; I could have gone that way, too, if I had had the courage. And look at him. He’s better off. He doesn’t have any attachments to shake. He opted out a long time ago, and now there’s nothing to pull him down. Jolene set the man’s order to cooking and returned to Victor. “It won’t be long,” she said. “I promise.” She gestured at the old Zenith portable next to the cash register. “You want the TV on?” She needed to do something for him, Victor realized. She needed to. “Sure,” he said agreeably. “Why not?” She flicked a knob. The nightly episode of a new religious game show, You Think That’s Heavy? was in progress. In each segment a downtrodden soul from the audience was brought onstage and led up a ramp through a series of possible solutions, including a mock employment bureau, a bank loan office, a dating service, a psychiatric clinic and, finally, when all else had failed, a preacher with shiny cheeks and an unnatural preoccupation with hair. Invariably this last station of the journey was the one that took. Just now a poor woman with three children and a husband who could not support them was sobbing her way to the top of the hill. I hope to God she finds what she needs, Victor thought absently. She looks like she deserves it. Of course you can’t tell. They’re awfully good at getting sympathy . . . But someone will come down and set things right for her, sooner or later. She’ll get what she deserves, and it will be right as rain. I believe that. But what about the kids? They’re the ones I’m worried about . . . At that moment the door to the diner rang open and several small children charged in, fresh from a spree on the mall, clutching a few cheap toys and a bag of McDonald’s french fries. They spotted the big man in the red plaid shirt and ran to him, all stumbles and hugs. The man winked at Jolene, shrugged and relocated to a corner booth. “Whadaya gonna do?” he said helplessly. “I reckon I gotta feed ’em, right?” “I’ll get the children’s menus,” said Jolene. “You got any chili dogs?” said the man. “We came a long way. Don’t have a whole lot left to spend. Is that okay?” “Give them the shrimp,” suggested Victor. “I can’t handle it.” Jolene winked back. “I think we can come up with something,” she said. The pensioner observed the children warily. Who could say what they might have brought in with them? He obviously did not want to find out. His hands shook, spilling more coffee. It ran between his fingers as if his palms had begun to bleed. Well, thought Victor, maybe I was wrong. Look at the big guy now. He can’t run away from it, either. But it could be he doesn’t want to. He’s got them, and they’ll stick by him no matter what. Lucky, I guess. What’s his secret? Out on the sidewalk passersby hurried on their way, a look of expectation and dread glazing their eyes. Victor picked up his coffee. It was almost hot enough to taste. There was another burst of ringing. He braced himself, not knowing what to expect. He scanned the doorway. But this time it was not a customer. It was the telephone. Jolene reached across the counter, pushing dirty dishes out of the way. One of the milkshake glasses teetered and smashed to the floor. At the end of the counter, the pensioner jumped as though the Spirit of Christmas Past had just lain its withered fingers on the back of his neck. “What?” Jolene balanced the receiver. “I’m sorry, there’s so much—yes. I said yes. Hold on.” She passed the phone to Victor. “It’s for you,” she said. “It is?” “Sure is,” she said. “I can’t tell if it’s a—” “Yes?” “Victor?” “Yeah?” “Vic!” said the reedy voice on the line. “Great to get ahold of you, finally! This is Rex. Rex Christian!” “Really?” said Victor, stunned. “Yup. Look, I’ll be passing through your town in about, oh, say an hour. I was just wondering. Are you free tonight, by any chance?” “Uh, sure, Re . . .” “Don’t say my name!” “Okay,” said Victor. “I’m on my way from a meeting in San Francisco. Traveling incognito, you might say. You don’t know how people can be if the word gets out. So I’d appreciate it if, you know, you don’t let on who you’re talking to. Understand?” “I understand.” It must be hard, he thought, being a celebrity. “I knew you would.” Victor cupped his hand around the mouthpiece. The old man from the end of the counter fumbled money from his coin purse and staggered out. Victor tried to say the right things. He wasn’t ready. However, he remembered how to get to his own house. He gave directions from Highway 1, speaking as clearly and calmly as he could. “Who was that?” asked Jolene when he had hung up. “Nobody,” said Victor. “What?” “A friend, I mean. He . . .” “He what?” “I’ve got to . . . meet him. I forgot.” Her expression, held together until now by nervous anticipation, wilted before his eyes. The tension left her; her posture sagged. Suddenly she looked older, overweight, lumpen. He did not know what to say. He grabbed his gloves and made ready to leave. She smoothed her apron, head down, hiding a tic, and then made a great effort to face him. The smile was right but the lines were deeper than ever before. “Call me?” she said. “If you want to. It’s up to you. I don’t care.” “Jolene . . .” “No, really! I couldn’t take the cold tonight, anyway. I—I hope you have a nice meeting. I can tell it’s important.” “Business,” he said. “You know.” “I know.” “I’m sorry.” She forced a laugh. “What on Earth for? Don’t you worry.” He nodded, embarrassed. “Take care of yourself,” she said. You deserve better, he thought, than me, Jolene. “You, too,” he said. “I didn’t plan it this way. Please believe . . .” “I believe you. Now get going or you’ll be late.” He felt relieved. He felt awful. He felt woefully unprepared. But at least he felt something. All the way home the hidden river ran at his side, muffled by the reeds but no longer distant. This time he noticed that there were secret voices in the waters, talking to themselves and to each other, to the night with the tongues of wild children on their way back to the sea. Now he considered the possibility that they might be talking to him.

• • • •

Victor unlocked the old house and fired up the heater. He had little chance to clean. By the time he heard the car he was covered with a cold sweat, and his stomach, which he had neglected to feed, constricted in a hopeless panic. He parted the bathroom curtains. The car below was long and sleek. A limousine? No, but it was a late-model sedan, a full-size Detroit tank with foglights. A man climbed out, lugging a briefcase, and made for the front of the house. Victor ran downstairs and flung open the door. He saw a child approaching in the moonlight. It was the same person he had seen leave the shadow of the car. From the upstairs window the figure had appeared deceptively foreshortened. The boy came into the circle of the porchlight, sticking his chin out and grinning rows of pearly teeth. “Vic?” Victor was confused. Then he saw. It was not a child, after all. “I’m Rex Christian,” said the dwarf, extending a stubby hand. “Glad to meet you!” The hand felt cold and compressed as a rubber ball in Victor’s grip. He released it with an involuntary shudder. He cleared his throat. “Come on in. I . . . I’ve been expecting you.” The visitor wobbled to an overstuffed chair and bounced up onto the cushion. His round-toed shoes jutted out in front of him. “So! This is where one of my biggest fans lives!” “I guess so,” said Victor. “This is it.” “Great! It’s perfect!” On the stained wall, a grandfather clock sliced at the thick air. “Can I get you something?” Victor’s own voice sounded hollow in his ears. “Like something to drink?” “I’d settle for a beer. Just one, though. I want to keep a clear head.” Beer, thought Victor. Let me see . . . He couldn’t think. He looked away. The small face, the monkey mouth were too much for him. He wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. “You owe me, remember?” “What?” “The beer. In your letter you said—” “Oh. Oh, yeah. Just a minute.” Victor went to the kitchen. By the time he returned he had replayed his visitor’s words in his mind until he recognized the rhythm. Everything the dwarf—midget, whatever he was —had said so far fit the style. There was no doubt about it. For better or worse, the person in the other room was in fact Rex Christian. The enormity of the occasion finally hit him. Setting the bottles on the coffee table between them, he almost knocked one over. My time has come, he thought. My problems are about to be over. My prayers have been answered. “This must be pretty far out of the way for you,” Victor said. “Not at all! Thanks for the invitation.” “Yeah,” said Victor. “I mean, no. I mean . . .” And in that instant he saw himself, this house, his life as it really was for the first time. He was overwhelmed with self- consciousness and shame. “Did . . . did you have any trouble finding the place?” “Nope. Followed your directions. Perfect!” Victor studied the virgules in the carpet, trying to find his next words there. Rex Christian leaned forward in his chair. The effort nearly doubled him over. “Look, I know what it’s like for you.” “You do?” “Believe me, I do. That’s my business, isn’t it? I’ve seen it all before.” Rex sat back and took a long pull from the tall bottle. His Adam’s apple rolled like a ball bearing in his throat. “You must know a lot about people,” said Victor. “Never enough. That’s why I take a trip like this, at least once a year.” He chortled. “I rent a car, visit folks like you all over the country. It’s a way of paying them back. Plus it helps me with my research.” “I see.” There was an awkward pause. “You . . . you said you were in San Francisco. On business. Was that part of this year’s trip?” “Right. Nothing beats the old one-on-one, does it?” So he didn’t come all this way just to see me, thought Victor. There were others. “From your writing, well, I thought you’d be a very private person.” “I am! Somebody wants a book, they have to climb the mountain. But when it comes to my fans it’s a different story. They’re raw material. I go to the source, know what I mean?” “I used to be a people-person,” said Victor, loosening up a bit. He drained his bottle. He thought of going for two more. But the writer had hardly touched his. “Now, well, I don’t go out much. I guess you could say I’ve turned into more of a project-type person.” “Glad to hear it!” “You are?” “It just so happens I’ve got a project you might be interested in. A new book. It’s called A Long Time Till Morning.” “I like the title,” said Victor. “Excuse me.” He rose unsteadily and made a beeline for the stairs. The beer had gone through his system in record time. When he came out of the bathroom, he gazed down in wonderment from the top of the landing. Rex Christian was still sitting there, stiff and proper as a ventriloquist’s dummy. I can’t believe this is happening, he thought. Now everything’s changed. There he is, sitting in my living room! His heart pounded with exhilaration. Let me never forget this. Every minute, every second, every detail. I don’t want to miss a thing. This is important; this matters. The most important night of my life. He bounded down the stairs and snagged two more beers and an opener from the kitchen, then reseated himself on the sofa. Rex Christian greeted him with a sparkling grin. “Tell me about your new book,” said Victor breathlessly. “I want to hear everything. I guess I’ll be the first, won’t I?” “One of the first.” The author folded his tiny hands. “It’s about an epidemic that’s sweeping the country—I don’t have the details yet. I’m still roughing it out. All I gave my editor was a two-page outline.” “And he bought it?” Rex Christian grinned. “What kind of epidemic?” “That’s where you can help, Vic.” “If it’s research you want, well, just tell me what you need. I used to do a lot of that in school. I was in premed and . . .” “I want to make this as easy as possible for you.” “I know. I mean, I’m sure you do. But it’s no sweat. I’ll collect the data, Xerox articles, send you copies of everything that’s ever been written on the subject, as soon as you tell me . . .” Rex Christian frowned, his face wrinkling like a deflating balloon. “I’m afraid that would involve too many legalities. Copyrights, fees, that sort of thing. Sources that might be traced.” “We could get permission, couldn’t we? You wouldn’t have to pay me. It would be an honor to . . .” “I know.” Rex Christian’s miniature fingers flexed impatiently. “But that’s the long way around, my friend.” “However you want to do it. Say the word and I’ll get started, first thing in the morning. Monday morning. Tomorrow’s Sunday and . . .” “Monday’s too late. It starts now. In fact it’s already started. You didn’t know that, did you?” Rex’s face flushed eagerly, his cheeks red as a newborn infant’s. “I want to know your feelings on the subject. All of them.” He pumped his legs and crept forward on the cushion. “Open yourself up. It won’t hurt. I promise.” Victor’s eyes stung and his throat ached. It starts here, he thought, awe-struck. The last thirty-three years were the introduction to my life. Now it really starts. “You wouldn’t want to know my feelings,” he said. “They . . . I’ve been pretty mixed up. For a long time.” “I don’t care about what you felt before. I want to know what you feel tonight. It’s only you, Vic. You’re perfect. I can’t get that in any library. Do you know how valuable you are to me?” “But why? Your characters, they’re so much more real, more alive . . .” Rex waved his words aside. “An illusion. Art isn’t life, you know. If it were, the world would go up in flames. It’s artifice. By definition.” He slid closer, his toes finally dropping below the coffee table. “Though naturally I try to make it echo real life as closely as I can. That’s what turns my readers on. That’s part of my mission. Don’t you understand?” Victor’s eyes filled with tears. Other people, the people he saw and heard on the screen, on TV, in books and magazines, voices on the telephone, all had lives which were so much more vital than his own wretched existence. The closest he had ever come to peak experiences, the moments he found himself returning to again and again in his memory, added up to nothing more significant than chance meetings on the road, like the time he hitchhiked to San Francisco in the summer of ‘67, a party in college where no one knew his name, the face of a girl in the window of a passing bus that he had never been able to forget. And now? He lowered his head to his knees and wept. And in a blinding flash, as if the scales had been lifted from his eyes, he knew that nothing would ever be the same for him again. The time to hesitate was over. The time had come at last to make it real. He thought: I am entitled to a place on the planet, after all. He lifted his eyes to the light. The dwarf’s face was inches away. The diminutive features, the taut lips, the narrow brow, the close, lidded eyes, wise and all-forgiving. The sweet scent of an unknown after- shave lotion wafted from his skin. “The past doesn’t matter,” said the dwarf. He placed the short fingers of one hand on Victor’s head. “To hell with it all.” “Yes,” said Victor. For so long he had thought just the opposite. But now he saw a way out. “Oh, yes.” “Tell me what you feel from this moment on,” said the dwarf. “I need to know.” “I don’t know how,” said Victor. “Try.” Victor stared into the dark, polished eyes, shiny as a doll’s eyes. “I want to. I . . . I don’t know if I can.” “Of course you can. We’re alone now. You didn’t tell anyone I was coming, did you, Vic?” Victor shook his head. “How thoughtful,” said the dwarf. “How perfect. Like this house. A great setting. I could tell by your letter you were exactly what I need. Your kind always are. Those who live in out-of-the-way places, the quiet ones with no ties. That’s the way it has to be. Otherwise I couldn’t use you.” “Why do you care what I feel?” asked Victor. “I told you—research. It gives my work that extra edge. Won’t you tell me what’s happening inside you right now, Vic?” “I want to. I do.” “Then you can. You can if you really want it. Aren’t we all free to do whatever we want?” “I almost believed that, once,” said Victor. “Anything,” said the dwarf firmly. “You can have anything including what you want most. Especially that. And what is it you want, Vic?” “I . . . I want to write, I guess.” The dwarf’s face crinkled with amusement. “But I don’t know what to write about,” said Victor. “Then why do you want to do it?” “Because I have no one to talk to. No one who could understand.” “And what would you talk to them about, if you could?” “I don’t know.” “Yes, you do.” “I’m afraid.” “Tell me, Vic. I’ll understand. I’ll put it down exactly the way you say it. You want me to relieve your fear? Well, in another minute I’m going to do that little thing. You will have nothing more to fear, ever again.” This is it, Victor thought, your chance. Don’t blow it. It’s happening just the way you had it planned. Don’t lose your nerve. Ask the question—now. Do it. “But where does it come from?” asked Victor. “The things you write about. How do you know what to say? Where do you get it? I try, but the things I know aren’t . . .” “You want to know,” said the dwarf, his face splitting in an uproarious grin, “where I get my ideas? Is that your question?” “Well, as a matter of fact . . .” “From you, Vic! I get my material from people like you! I get them from this cesspool you call life itself. And you know what? I’ll never run out of material, not as long as I go directly to the source, because I’ll never, ever finish paying you all back!” Victor saw then the large pores of the dwarf’s face, the crooked bend to the nose, the sharpness of the teeth in the feral mouth, the steely glint deep within the black eyes. The hairs prickled on the back of his neck and he pulled away. Tried to pull away. But the dwarf’s hand stayed on his head. “Take my new novel, for instance. It’s about an epidemic that’s going to sweep the nation, leaving a bloody trail from one end of this country to the other, to wash away all of your sins. At first the police may call it murder. But the experts will recognize it as suicide, a form of hara-kiri, to be precise, which is what it is. I know, because I’ve made a careful study of the methods. Perfect!” The underdeveloped features, the cretinous grin filled Victor with sudden loathing, and a terrible fear he could not name touched his scalp. He sat back, pulling farther away from the little man. But the dwarf followed him back, stepping onto the table, one hand still pressing Victor in a grotesque benediction. The lamp glared behind his oversized head, his eyes sparkling maniacally. He rose up and up, unbending his legs, knocking over the bottles, standing taller until he blocked out everything else. Victor braced against the table and kicked away, but the dwarf leaped onto his shoulders and rode him down. Victor reached out, found the bottle opener and swung it wildly. “No,” he screamed, “my God, no! You’re wrong! It’s a lie! You’re . . . !” He felt the point of the churchkey hook into something thick and cold and begin to rip. But too late. A malformed hand dug into his hair and forced his head back, exposing his throat and chest. “How does this feel, Vic? I have to know! Tell my readers!” The other claw darted into the briefcase and dragged forth a blade as long as a bayonet, its edge crusted and sticky but still razor-sharp. “How about this?” cried the dwarf. “And this?” As Victor raised his hands to cover his throat, he felt the first thrust directly below the ribcage, an almost painless impact as though he had been struck by a fist in the chest, followed by the long, sawing cut through his vital organs and then the warm pumping of his life’s blood down the short sword between them. His fingers tingled and went numb as his hands were wrapped into position around the handle. The ceiling grew bright and the world spun, hurling him free. “Tell me!” demanded the dwarf. A great whispering chorus was released within Victor at last, rushing out and rising like a tide to flood the earth, crimson as the rays of a hellishly blazing sun. But his mouth was choked with his own blood and he could not speak, not a word of it. The vestiges of a final smile moved his glistening lips. “Tell me!” shrieked the dwarf, digging deeper, while the room turned red. “I must find the perfect method! Tell me!”

© 1984 by Dennis Etchison. Originally published in Shadows 7, edited by Charles L. Grant. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dennis Etchison is a three-time winner of both the British Fantasy and World Fantasy Awards. His short story collections are The Dark Country, Red Dreams, The Blood Kiss, The Death Artist, Talking in the Dark, Fine Cuts, and Got To Kill Them All & Other Stories. He is also the author of the novels Darkside, Shadowman, California Gothic, Double Edge, The Fog, Halloween II, Halloween III, and Videodrome, and editor of the anthologies Cutting Edge, Masters of Darkness I-III, MetaHorror, The Museum of Horrors, and (with Ramsey Campbell and Jack Dann) Gathering the Bones. He has written extensively for film, television, and radio, including hundreds of scripts for The Twilight Zone Radio Dramas, Fangoria Magazine’s Dread Time Stories, and Christopher Lee’s Mystery Theater. He served as President of the Horror Writers Association (HWA) from 1992 to 1994. His next book is the collection It Only Comes Out at Night, a career retrospective edited by S.T. Joshi, from Centipede Press. To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight. DEATH AND DEATH AGAIN Mari Ness

That evening, she kills him again. This time, she works slowly, exquisitely slowly, taking frequent stops for food, for wine, for blood. Once or twice she even excuses herself to go to the bathroom, apologizing for leaving him alone. They both know she doesn’t mean it. “I don’t know why you’re even bothering,” he says as she moves her knife toward his tongue. “I sleep better at night,” she tells him, cutting into his tongue and catching the blood into her latex covered hands. They both know that she doesn’t mean that, either.

• • • •

“Do you know how many times it’s been?” she asks him the following night. His head is leaning over to the side. She notes that down on her tablet, as she notes down everything: how much he eats, how much he drinks, how much he urinates, how long it takes him to die, how long it takes him to come back. “Do you?” Slowly, he raises his head. “Twenty?” he asks. His voice is thick, hard to understand. She is going to have to avoid deaths that harm his mouth in the future. “Forty?” More notes. “No,” she tells him, placing a tender kiss on his forehead, before reaching for a rope. She is not unkind. Her notes include records of his favorite meals, which she cooks for him on a regular basis, feeding him by hand herself, bite by bite. She even tried to plant some citrus trees around her house after he complained about the taste of the oranges and grapefruits she gave him. The citrus trees have not grown enough to fruit yet, but someday, she assures him. Some day. She has attached a television screen to the ceiling, for when he is lying down, a second one to a wall for when she has him tilted upright. When she cannot be with him, she leaves something else: music, a film, an audio book, a voice, so he is never truly alone. She comes back from time to time to see him sleeping with a slight smile on his face, as if he is dreaming something pleasant. It gives her a warm feeling, she tells him, and she often lingers for several moments before reaching for the axe or the gun or cyanide, something quick, so that this death will not be prolonged. It’s why he so often pretends to be asleep. “When did you last sleep through the night?” he asks her once, after she revives him again, after his heart settles a little. “Does it matter?” “It might help.” “Don’t pretend you care.” He doesn’t. He hasn’t pretended anything in a long while, not since the first time she killed him. He should, she tells him. It might make it easier, if he pretended that they were lovers, enjoying a romantic evening together. Or spies, caught by the enemy government. Or knights seeking the Holy Grail. Or even that nothing has changed, that this is nothing but a nightmare, that he is home safe in his own bed. Whenever he tries, he remembers the taste of poison, the feel of the rope, the pain of having the skin pulled from his fingers. He never remembers death, or what happens later, but he always remembers dying. By now, he should have developed some sort of love for her, some sort of Stockholm Syndrome, but perhaps the regular deaths have prevented this. “Shall we dance, before you die?” she asks. “Fuck you,” he says. She nods. “It will have to be a slow one, this time. You’re taking longer and longer to return.” “Did we?” “Did we what?” “Ever fuck.” “Interesting,” she says, leaning forward. “I wonder if your memory is fading.” “I’m just trying to find—” The knife is moving into his gut, and he is not any better at handling it, he is not any better at facing the fear of death, of that darkness rushing at him, no matter how slowly she kills him, not any better at facing the pain. “Damn it—” She leans back in, to whisper in his ear. “It will be swift next time, I promise you. A gun, I think.” He is supposed to thank her. Instead he screams.

• • • •

He thinks he once had a life, though it’s becoming harder and harder to remember, harder and harder to care. What does matter is how he is going to die this time, how much pain she is going to put him through, and how many questions she will make him answer afterwards. Sometimes she lets him live for what seems like days. Without windows, it’s impossible to tell, but he thinks, based on the number of meals he eats, the number of movies she shows him (and sometimes watches with him), the number of songs he hears, that it might be as long as a week. Perhaps more. He has learned to dread those long periods. It means the next death is going to linger. Bad as the dying is, he sometimes thinks the revivals are the worst. Not just the horrible, painful pounding of his heart, or the pain left over from however she killed him this last time. But knowing that it is not over. That if she has her way, it will never be over. That he will never really die, no matter how many times she kills him. “If we fucked, and I screwed you over, I am sorry. I am genuinely, truly—fuck—” And then she is reviving him again. He doesn’t really think they fucked. He is pretty sure they did nothing, really, until she brought him here, to whatever this is. A house, she has told him, which it might be, although he thinks it also might be a former warehouse or industrial building that she converted to a house. But that’s a guess. He’s only been allowed to see four rooms and two flights of stairs, one leading up, one down. The rooms have no windows. This bothered him, several deaths ago. He’s over it now, although every once in awhile he tells her he would like to see sunlight again. “That would be a bad idea.” “This whole shit is a bad—” The gunshot ends his sentence. Maybe that would work, or at least help: keep her angry enough to use the gun. Of all of the various ways that she’s killed him, a shot to the heart at least has the advantage of being fast. And maybe, if he is lucky, she will shoot him in the head. He will still be brought back from that, but maybe he won’t be aware anymore. Probably why she aims for the heart. “What is it like?” “What?” “The other side.” “What?” “Death.” “The fucking gunshot? It hurt. That’s what it’s like.” Her eyes are calm as she prepares the next set of syringes. “No. What comes after.” “I don’t remember.” “You need to stop lying to me.” “I don’t remember.” “You need to stop lying.” “I don’t remember.” For once, death and the gunshot surprise him.

• • • •

Two gunshots in a row. He feels lucky, until he sees her bring out the pillow. He shuts his eyes. Smothering should be an easy death, he thinks, but it always panics him, always terrorizes him. He is not sure how much more of this he can take, how many more times she will be able to bring him back. But he is back, again, head pounding, a hellish pain against his head, as she stands in front of him with the pillow. Breathing is hard. “What is it like?” His head hurts too much. The planet is tilting, tilting and he can’t breathe. He can’t breathe. She isn’t even killing him and he can’t breathe. “Answer the question.” He can’t breathe. The planet is falling and they are all going to fall off it and go into space and he can’t breathe he needs air doesn’t she realize he needs air— The next awakening is a little less painful. “I’m changing your medication,” she tells him. “I had some problems stabilizing your blood pressure last time. Also, and I am very sorry about this, but I think we’re going to remove red meat from your diet for a bit.” “No we are not.” “We are. I promise, we’ll bring it back in a bit. A thick rare steak. But for now—” The needle slips under his skin. He is so used to dying that he is startled when he doesn’t, when in fact he starts feeling better. “Liquid nutrients,” she explains. She points to a large container by the wall, connected by a narrow tube to an IV bag connected by another narrow tube to his skin. “Enough to last years at this rate, although I don’t think we need to keep you on them that long.” “You don’t fucking need to keep me on them at all.” “You won’t tell me what it’s like.” “Fucking painful is what it’s like.” He is floating a bit now, and although the planet is tipping again this time it feels less terrifying, more like a gentle rocking to help him go to sleep. “Orange juice?” “Not that fucking stuff from concentrate.” “I have apple,” she says, turning from him. As she does, he moves his right hand over to his left. He feels very comfortable—almost like giggling, really—too comfortable to keep the needle in. It really should go out. He needs to tug. And then his right hand is being grabbed and put back into the cloth restraints. “We really are going to have to do something about this,” she tells him, putting the apple juice to his lips. “You could hurt yourself.” He finds himself laughing. “I’ll think of something,” she says. “In the meantime, though, you do need that IV. It’s not part of all this. It’s part of what you need.” He cannot stop laughing. He sips the juice, watches as she collects his urine and leaves. He wonders if, perhaps, she will try drowning next. That hasn’t happened for a while. It might be rather nice to slide under water and stop thinking. “A compromise,” she tells him, when she returns. She uses a foot pump to tilt the table he is on to an eighty-degree angle, so he is almost but not quite standing up. He feels the restraints on his arms and legs pulling against him. He thinks of Frankenstein, and feels the tears slide down his cheeks. “I don’t want to use it very long for obvious reasons, but this is a paralytic agent that will hold you absolutely still. Or at least still enough to stop fighting me.” He holds absolutely still. “It may mean keeping you on the nutrients for a bit longer,” she adds. “But we have a lot of nutrients—the container you’re hooked up to right now is enough to keep you going for ten years at least, maybe more. And it shouldn’t impede our research too much.” “How will I be able to answer your questions?” he asks. She smiles. “How thoughtful.” The smile vanishes. “You’ve hardly been answering them anyway.” “I’m telling you,” he says. “I don’t remember. It’s just pain, and then I’m back here, and you’re talking to me again.” Tears fill his eyes. “You have to believe me.” “You don’t believe me.” “I believe you,” he says as she slides a needle into his right arm. “I really, truly, believe you. I believe—christ, I believe —I believe—” “Hush now,” she says, bending over to kiss him on the forehead. “Hush now. It will be all right, I’ll give this time to work through, and I’ll let you watch a film or two before I kill you again. I promise. It really will be all right.” Her lips touch his forehead again before sliding down over his nose to his lips. And then her lips are on his, and she is trying to force them open, and this is too much, it is all fucking too much, and even if the world is tilting again and he is going to fall off it, she is going to fall off it, they are both going to fall off the planet but he has to push her off it first because her mouth is on his and her tongue is moving inside and he shoves, pushing back with his feet and his hands and his head as hard as he can, feeling everything but his head caught by the restraints holding him against the damn table, feeling his head knock against hers, feeling her push back, and then watching, yes, watching as she stumbles back, her heel catching on something, her arms flailing, watching as she falls, head slamming into the side table where she leaves the syringes. He hears the crack, feels his lips twitch, and shuts his eyes as she slides to the floor. The planet lurches to the left, again and again. When the planet is steady again, he opens his eyes. She has not moved. From the pool of blood beneath her head, he is certain she will not move. He tries to draw a deep breath. His chest feels heavy, weighted, numb. Everything feels numb. His feet. His legs. His chest. His arms— His arms. He looks down to see the needle in the left arm still steadily pumping in water, sugar, and nutrients, and the needle in the right arm still steadily pumping in the paralytic agent. The wires on his chest, ready to jolt him back to life at the first hint of cardiac arrest. He would scream, if he could, but his tongue is too thick, too heavy, to move, and in any case, he is certain that he has many, many years left yet to scream.

© 2014 by Mari Ness.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mari Ness lives in central Florida. Her fiction and poetry have previously appeared in Tor.com, Clarkesworld, Daily Science Fiction, Apex Magazine, and multiple other print and online publications. For more about her work, check out her blog at marikness.wordpress.com, or follow her on Twitter @mari_ness.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight. THE MISFIT CHILD GROWS FAT ON DESPAIR Tom Piccirilli

Fate arrives disguised as choice. As if you could actually say, Screw this, I’m out of here, or just get down on your knees like everybody else. But John’s got to shrug and go, “Hmmm.” He knows that even here at the end of the line, holding his pitiful check for $188.92—boss took out forty dollars for the broken dishes even though he was the one who slopped soapy water onto the kitchen floor—watching the teller tremble with the eleven- gauge in her face, standing behind some weight lifter with muscles coming out of his asshole and piss pooling over his shoes, and despite what he knows is going to happen after this, John realizes Mr. Teddy Bear has got to be eaten. Teddy doesn’t like how slow the terrified twenty-year-old teller is moving and continues shrieking at her, “Move it. Hurry, goddamn you, hurry! I saw that! You put a dye pack in there? Did you?” Of course, she hasn’t; she can’t even move or speak, hyperventilating like that. She’s too much a daughter of television and can’t do anything much besides keep her arms straight up over her head and pray to Christ in Spanish. The gray stretch marks on her underarms clearly mark how much weight she’s gained and lost after her first couple of kids, but her pouty full lips are especially sexy now, the lower one quivering with the name of Jesus. Teddy’s rubber bear mask doesn’t fit him all that well. His beard is so thick that the mask won’t rest flush against the steep angles and planes of his contorted face. It lifts an inch or more whenever he speaks, which allows the sweat that’s been puddling in the curves and hollows of the rubber to drip out all at once. Spittle works its way out of the thin mouth slit. Ted tries to wipe his eyes clear, the back of his hand mopping the bulging forehead of the growling bear head. Teddy’s partner, Mr. Lucifer, might hold things together for another minute or two—if only his easy, muted voice can settle the situation long enough to soothe Teddy and the frantic teller. He’s got to get the other cowering folks in the bank to follow his orders, lay down on their bellies, hit no silent alarms, and just face the walls. “Ladies and gentleman, hush please.” The devil repeats himself twice more, and a respectful amount of Southern flavor seeps out of his hanging cadence, friendly and mannered like he might be talking to a group at a church social. His red mask has curved horns, a wide smile, and pencil-thin mustache. The voice matches it perfectly. “Gentleman and sweet ladies, if you’ll let us get on with this, we’ll be gone in no time a’tall. This here is government money we’re taking, not yours. We’re working men, too. Now just lay back and relax, and we’ll all be on with our day before you know it.” “It’s a dye pack. I saw it!” Teddy shrieks, hitting a high note that rings around the small enclosed room, picking up speed. “There! There it is!” John is the only bank patron still on his feet, but the smash-and-grab thieves haven’t noticed him standing there yet, as two old women and the weight lifter sob against the floorboards. John is a prime three hundred eighty-four pounds of graceful obesity and dire energy, almost as wide as he is tall (about five seven), dressed entirely in black: well- ironed jeans, a fine button-up, long-sleeve shirt and tie, standing so near the lacquered bank slip table in the center of the place that he appears to be a part of it. He is as immutable and immobile as obsidian. His arms hang loosely at his sides, his massive hands open for when he has to hug the dead to him. Teddy Bear isn’t having any of it though, still screaming and finally realizing the teller’s already out of her head, her voice rising and begging the Mother of God to save her. Those heaving, swaying breasts are doing things to Teddy, who prods one tit with the barrel of the shotgun. Without benefit of a bra, it jiggles for a while before finally settling. Mr. Lucifer is about to say something else, but it’s already too late, all the choices have been made. There’s only one way out now as Teddy pokes the girl’s other breast and she lets loose with a screech. The slobber pumps freely from his mouth slit, as he gives a braying laugh and pulls the trigger. No one ever gets used to the hypnotic sight of flesh and fluid applied to an area where it shouldn’t be. Everybody in the bank lifts his head and watches as her lower jaw alters into cherry gel rushing across her chest and the cash drawer in one violent splash. The corpse wheels completely around on its toes, revolving one and a half times in a pirouette, before taking a final awkward step and pitching forward. Most of her teeth are somehow intact, though, and a handful of them do a slow slide across the floor until they stop just outside the growing circle of the weight lifter’s piss. John can’t help himself as her ghost floats past him, still praying as her breasts finish bouncing, adrift and being reeled towards and aurora of seething golden light that hovers and opens just over her body’s left shoulder. His enormous hand flashes out and he eats her. The bank manager has seen this sort of thing before, and he enjoys murder. He’s done in one ex-wife already and is getting ready to do in another. He hides his smile well, but not in so dark or carefully guarded a space that John can’t see it. The weight lifter is sort of thrashing around on the ground, his muscles so taut that it looks as if he might snap in seven places before this is all over. A security guard stands there with his gun in its holster and his hands straight out in front of him, wrists twirling, ass angled to one side like he’s at a disco doing the bump and having a pretty good time. A few people continue to moan and murmur, so far down on the floor that they’re licking it. The dead teller is already inside John, and he can feel her settling into Gethsemane Hills, her arms still over her head and standing beside Manfred Filkes, the mailman who’d died from an aneurysm walking up John’s driveway six years ago. Filkes is digging the look of the frightened teller, who sways on her feet as she touches down in the middle of Juniper Boulevard. Filkes had been a pedophile, his mail cart full of illegal photos and magazines that would have sent him away for twenty-five years if only his brain hadn’t burst. His madness is palpable and unshifting, the primeval energy of hate and lust rising from him like heat from a brick oven. Filkes goes after her, even though she’s well out of his preferred age range. He manages to get one of his pale hands on her throat before John can get the thin John, the true John, down among the ghosts to slap the shit out of Filkes all the way across the cypress-lined street. Filkes can’t get rid of his mind full of baby rot even now, and cowers and sobs as he goes ass backwards over a plastic flamingo planted on a well- groomed lawn. The dead teller, whose name is Juanita Perez, is too shocked to cry anymore, staring through her fingers at the true John, muttering passages out of the Bible, but getting a lot of the words wrong. Almost everybody does. He whispers and tries to comfort her, saying, “It will be all right, Juanita. Be calm. I won’t let anybody hurt you here.” This place is no different from anywhere else in the world, the John inside himself tries to explain, and he’s right. When Juanita can finally move again, holding a palm to her bruised breast and glancing over at Filkes sitting on the curb, who’s bleeding heavily from his broken nose, she discovers large signs looming above her in the starlight. This is the town of Gethsemane Hills, population now 1,604, including thin John, who comes and goes, but is always on hand to keep things from spiraling too far out of control. About six square blocks of suburbia, where people occasionally still say hello to you on the street. There are no hills, but the name is the only one this hometown could have. There is power in names. It is a perpetual twilight of coiling shadows, violet-drenched dusk, and a blood-soaked sun, always with a gleeful moon glowing. Streetlights take the form of the gaslit globes of nineteenth- century London. There is no smog, but there’s a smoggy feel. The yards are flawlessly landscaped, flower beds weeded and fertilized, gardens tilled, rooftops all recently reshingled, the dogs well fed. John takes great pride in the place and does all the work himself. Indistinct, silent people sit on their stoops and front porches, watching Juanita closely. A few insubstantial shapes rise and begin to make clumsy eager gestures, stopping and starting and abruptly stopping again. These are the ambiguous movements of the uncertain, who see no reason to act but are propelled by memories of action. There is some laughter though, as well as angry men’s giggling, and a few whispered entreaties. A hand flashes out, silhouetted in the always failing sunlight—the fingers are crooked, the hand little more than a claw, damaged by arthritis, tension, or heaving doubt. Juanita whirls, gazing around at the rows of dimly lit duplicate houses, each of the similar staggering shadows weaving a bit, forward and back. They are waving to her, and then they recede. Doors are closed quietly—locks are thrown, televisions squawk, and children are tapping at upstairs windows, begging to be let out. Mr. Lucifer scans the bank one more time, finally noticing John standing there in the middle of the room. He shakes his head because he can’t figure out how the hell he’d missed the fat guy in the first place. The devil points his nickel-plated .38 and says, “Excuse me, sir.” “Be quiet,” John tells him, “or I will eat you.” “Pardon me?” “Shh.” “Hey, now, we’ll have none of that. You might have some trouble doing squat thrusts, but even a fella your size ought to be able to get down on the ground when he’s told.” Teddy Bear doesn’t look up. He’s intent on getting the other cashiers to empty the banded stacks of cash into his oversized rucksack. Juanita’s corpse propels them on so that everybody is really moving now, shoveling money like crazy. Rolls of change fall and break open, so Ted stomps on rolling coins and picks them up. John sees everything that needs to occur actually happening in about eight seconds. If he had a stopwatch he would click it . . . now. The arching, wavering lines of chance and force of will solidifying into a pattern he can put to use. He takes a step sideways as thin John, the true John weaves and thinks of ushering the lovely Juanita to bed. His heart is hammering and the flush of ticklish heat is flooding his groin. His breathing begins to speed up and a light sheen of cold sweat forms on his upper lip. Her house is already picked out at the end of the block: a one-story cottage with a bouquet of freshly plucked forget- me-nots already in a vase on the dining room table. Photos of her kids are framed on the mantel, and their crayon drawings are held in place by magnets and exhibited on the refrigerator door. He’s filled a bookshelf with some of the greatest volumes of poetry and classic literature. He’ll teach her metaphor and symbolism and the definition of subtle underpinning. A single white rose lies across the pillow of her queen-sized bed. The vanity is laden with lace undergarments, stockings, and garter belts. There are condoms in the nightstand drawer, along with several brands of spermicide and tubes of lubrication. He likes the way her rack bobbles. Juggling some change, Mr. Teddy Bear steps over Juanita’s lower jaw, still expecting to find dye packs everywhere. His eyes are flitting like mad, his eyelashes swiping against the rubber loudly. He spots Lucifer’s .38 and follows where it’s pointing until he spots John calmly standing before them. Somehow the bear mask manages to contort. “Get on your knees!” “I don’t do that,” John tells him. A large splash of sweat falls out from the mask and threads through Teddy Bear’s beard. “You don’t . . . ?” “No. Never. Not for anyone.” “You grotesque fat piece of shit freak!” John is lissome and quick without ever showing his speed, even while he’s in motion. It’s funny and impressive to see him bringing it on. He reaches into his gully-deep pocket and draws out his nail clipper, carefully stepping around the weight lifter’s yellow zone of urine. Ted has been holding the shotgun crooked in his arm for so long that as he turns, he wavers and spins two or three inches too far the other way, and John is already reaching. The devil politely says, “Hey, now . . .” The timing is impeccable, as if John had seen this happen many times before, perhaps in a recurring dream. Ted has to correct himself and bring the shotgun back again, as if to take John in his tremendous stomach. The bank manager is hoping for more viscera and mayhem; maybe the loan department supervisor he’s been banging will get it in the head next. In his mind, he runs scenes of bloody ballets, old women being blown upwards onto their tiptoes, hoisted through the air eight or ten feet, and splattering across his desk. He’s getting jittery just thinking about it. But John has already slid inside Mr. Teddy Bear’s space, too close now for Ted to do anything but growl. The security guard lets out the squeaky yip of a toy poodle because he understands this is the moment of finality. So does everyone else, even those not looking, breathing dirt in the corners beneath the teller windows. John grabs the barrel and pushes it aside, carefully aiming it toward Mr. Lucifer. His other hand rises, holding the nail clipper, going up and inside for Teddy’s throat. If Ted hadn’t been so pumped during the robbery, his arteries and major veins wouldn’t now be so thick and pulsing. It would’ve been a lot more difficult for John to lunge in there and clip Teddy’s jugular. The pain does what it’s expected to do. In his agony and panic, the arterial spray spritzing the bank counter and showering Plexiglas, Ted yanks hard on the trigger and blows off the greater percentage of Mr. Lucifer’s face. One long line of blood spurts across John’s shirt before he can move Teddy Bear’s head far enough to one side so Ted’s spraying throat only paints the checking account brochures and tray of free pens with the bank’s name on them. The blackness of his shirt and tie is so complete and wet with sweat that the blood doesn’t stand out at all. This is also how it should be. He opens both his immense hands wide hoping to catch Mr. Lucifer’s soul, but despite the fact that the devil’s got considerably less face than the dead Juanita Perez, Lucifer lives on. Thick colorful fluids bubble up as his esophagus gurgles wildly to clear a path to air. The bank manager is in such a state of arousal that he nearly passes out from the force of his orgasm. He can’t wait to get home and murder his wife. John hisses in expectation, hands clenching and unclenching, but Lucifer isn’t about to let go. There’s only one eye left in the sparse wedge of his face, and who knows if it can see anything. But it peers at John, gazing sullenly and all the while still blinking. Teddy, however, is waning fast. He coughs and tries to lean back away from the counter, but John holds him there against the nice marble tile so that no more of the slackening slurp of blood gets on his clothes. Ted’s heart gives three final hesitant beats before giving out. The aurora of roiling power opens again, dragging at Mr. Teddy Bear’s soul, but John’s enormous arms snatch the floating Ted out of the air and haul him from the draw of the raging eddy. John can’t help but give a smirk. From that golden light ushers the voice of a wounded man who suffered and offered what he could before the eyes of the world, and now rages with all the condemnation he can, claiming, “You are not the way.” John laughs as he always does, watching the maelstrom dissipate and diminish, because the voice is his own, but full of contrition and fear. Mr. Teddy Bear touches down in Gethsemane Hills and doesn’t take off his mask. He stares wide-eyed through the tiny slits and groans, “Oh, oh my, oh my sweet Jesus on the cross, take me home.” His voice, when not incensed by frustration and cocaine, is soft and almost melodious. Juanita Perez takes a step toward Ted because her murderer is now the only connection she has left to the lost world of the living. The sign above them is covered in a blur of black motion and soon reads POPULATION 1,605. The house across the street has an open front door. Thin John, the true John says, “You’re home,” and shoves Ted toward the house. First he’s got to pass some guy on the curb with a broken nose. He looks sort of familiar, like Mr. Filkes, the son-of-a-bitch mailman who sodomized Teddy when he was eight. He’s still got teeth-mark scars on his shoulders and thighs. Inside there’s half a key of coke already laid out in lines on the dining room table. His favorite video, Scarface, is in the VCR, and the television has surround sound, two motherfucking-huge speaks attached, and two others on either end of the couch. Teddy doesn’t know what to do and tries even harder to hide under his mask, going a little more insane. John eyes Juanita Perez, licking his lips. The nerve endings in his fingertips are igniting. Some of that K-Y jelly is cherry flavored, and her ass has a very nice slope to it. He smiles and takes her wrist, leading her to the new house. When Juanita begins to struggle, he wraps his bony fingers in her hair and drags her down the block. Her mind not quite numb enough to let her pass out and fade from this awful endless twilight of corrupted colors. She starts to sob and works up to a scream, even while John’s ripping her clothes off, leaving the rags draped across the perfectly trimmed hedges, the blooming azaleas. Kids are banging on their windows, watching, excited and sick. Juanita’s front door shuts and the whole neighborhood can hear laughter and squealing prayers for hours to come, with the revolting odor of cherries on the wind. They turn up their television sets and air conditioners. John gains a full two-and-a-half pounds and goes up to the counter, slipping his check into the small deposit slot. Mr. Lucifer is still crawling and gagging on the floor, staring at John with his one eye and trying to back away. John toes Juanita’s teeth aside. The horrified cashier stares through the Plexiglas at him as he continues to click the nail clippers. “Cash this,” he tells her. He is filled to bursting with the juice of despair and wants to buy himself a whore tonight.

© 2002 by Tom Piccirilli. Originally published in The Darker Side: Generations of Horror, edited by John Pelan. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Tom Piccirilli is the author of more than twenty-five novels, including A Choir of Ill Children, The Cold Spot, and The Last Kind Words. He’s a four-time winner of the Stoker Award, two-time winner of the International Thriller Award, and has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award and twice for the Edgar Award. Marilyn Stasio of The New York Times Book Review called The Last Kind Words, “A caustic thriller . . . the characters have strong voices and bristle with funny quirks.” New York Times bestselling thriller writer Lee Child said of Tom’s work, “Perfect crime fiction . . . a convincing world, a cast of compelling characters, and above all a great story” And Publishers Weekly extols, “Piccirilli’s mastery of the hard-boiled idiom is pitch perfect, particularly in the repartee between his characters, while the picture he paints of the criminal corruption conjoining the innocent and guilty in a small Long Island community is as persuasive as it is seamy. Readers who like a bleak streak in their crime fiction will enjoy this well-wrought novel.” Keir Graff of Booklist wrote, “There’s more life in Piccirilli’s The Last Kind Words (and more heartache, action, and deliverance) than any other novel I’ve read in the past couple of years.” And Kirkus states, “Consigning most of the violence to the past allows Piccirilli to dial down the gore while imparting a soulful, shivery edge to this tale of an unhappy family that’s assuredly unhappy in its own special way.”

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight. NOVEL EXCERPT Grey Matter Press Presents: OBJECT PERMANENCE (novella excerpt) John F.D. Taff

Please enjoy the following excerpt of “Object Permanence” by John F.D. Taff from his all-new, five-novella collection of emotional horrors, The End in All Beginnings, published by Grey Matter Press this fall. Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of Code Zero and Fall of Night, said of The End in All Beginnings: “Taff brings the pain in five damaged and disturbing tales of love gone horribly wrong. This collection is like a knife in the heart. I highly recommend it!” A limited supply of the autographed Special Advance Edition of The End in All Beginnings is now available, only from greymatterpress.com.

He was there again today, standing in the corner, arms limp. He wore nothing, but didn’t conceal his nudity. I got so little company those days that his presence could actually be comforting, if it weren’t for the total lack of features on his face. I don’t just mean that his features were indistinct or forgettable. I mean he had none. No eyes, ears, nose, mouth. His head was a smooth, shining white ball atop a lanky body. He gave me the impression of a living bedpost. In fact, the only recognizable thing on his entire body was his erect penis, jutting into space. Like its owner, it had very little detail. No veins, no pores, no dark band to mark where he’d been circumcised. Only the small hole at its tip was visible. I half suspected that, were I to stand and examine the top of his head, I’d find a similar dark hole. But, of course, I couldn’t. Violent ones like me were strapped into a jacket and leashed to the padded wall. No sudden movements to alarm the staff. I mean, Christ! I’d already killed three or four people. I forgot. God help me. That’s the problem. I had a mantra of names that I recited hour after hour, day after blurry, drug-fogged, endless, run-together day. Everyone I knew or had known, being very careful to leave out the ones I knew were dead. I shuddered to think what might happen if I were to remember them. The ones I forgot were the problem. I tried so hard to remember, but sometimes the drugs and the electroshock therapy—Yes, Virginia, there is a Sears DieHard!—made me forget. And that scared me. What happens if I forgot myself? It’s like the light bulb in the icebox. Is it really off when you close the door? Or is it on all the time? An interesting question. And I couldn’t tell if I was the icebox or just another light bulb.

• • • •

“And how are you today, Mr. Stadler?” Dr. Benton asked, keeping his distance. “Fine,” I answered in a noncommittal tone. He’d already forgotten about me and moved straight to the words and numbers on the chart he held tightly. “Any side effects from the electro-convulsive therapy?” he asked, almost not expecting or wanting an answer. “No more than usual,” I answered, moving slightly, enough to cause the metal clasp on the leash to jingle against the jacket straps. He looked up, trying not to appear to have done so too quickly. “You don’t like talking to me, do you?” “Don’t like you, Mr. Stadler?” he asked. “Why would you say that?” “No, you don’t know me enough to dislike me. You just don’t like to talk with me.” He considered this, plainly uncomfortable. “Well, it could be the fact that you’ve assaulted six staff members in two years. Maybe I don’t want to be the seventh.” He smiled, tight and grim. “If you have any trouble, I’ll be back again in three hours. We can discuss it then. And we can move you into your own room tomorrow . . . if you’ll cooperate.” He turned and rapped sharply on the little Plexiglas window high up in the padded door. “Wait!” I pleaded as the door drew open and light from the corridor—outdoor light, sunlight—crept into my room. “I didn’t mean to. I try so hard . . . to remember. But, they’re falling away like leaves. I’m afraid of the shock treatments. Afraid they’ll make . . . afraid I’ll forget me.” This held him in the doorway for a second. But he turned and left, the door closing behind him, and I heard the sound of the bolt slide into place. I began the mantra immediately. After the first run through, I thought for a moment, then added my own name.

• • • •

“Where do you go when you’re not with me?” I raised my head as much as possible from the thinly padded table. “I mean where do you go? What do you do?” “I go home. I see other patients. What kind of question is that, anyway?” He laughed, flicking the tip of a needle that seemed to appear from nowhere. Alarms went off in my head, but the two burliest interns the institution could dig up were nearby in the small room. Not much more that a strapped-down person could do other than comply. “You need to lie still for a moment,” Dr. Benton said, swabbing my forearm. “So, where do you go?” I repeated. I saw one of the interns roll his eyes. They wanted the main event, enough of this talky stuff already. “I told you,” he paused, the tip of the needle poised to pierce the skin. “I have no idea what you’re asking. Or why, for that matter.” “It’s an icebox question.” I laughed, lowering myself back onto the bed. “A what?” I felt the needle slip into my arm as easily as if it had found a hole made for it. There was that disturbing feeling of something foreign jetting into my body as he plunged down on the syringe, and the drug rolled into me like fog. Almost immediately, I felt warm and heavy, a dribble of sticky pancake syrup. “You know, like does the light in the icebox really go out when you close the door? Didn’t you ever think about that when you were a kid?” “Well, yes,” he hesitated, wondering about the connection. “What do you do when I’m not there to see you do it? Do you even exist when I don’t think of you?” “Just relax, Mr. Stadler.” He motioned and the interns came toward me, towering walls of crisp white. On went the electrodes with their jelly, the mouth protector, the close-fitting cap, the chinstrap. “Doctor,” I mumbled. “Will I remember you?” “Yes, Mr. Stadler. You will. You’ve been through this procedure before.” As I slipped into unconsciousness, I thought I smelled ozone, sharp and acrid. Then, blessed light.

• • • •

Oh God, not her. She stayed the longest of all. And I could barely stand to look at her. She’s built like a cheerleader, with curves that caused neck injuries just looking at them. Nice ass, perky, high-school tits. Then there was her skin. The entire surface of her body was a scab, a thick, crusty wound, constantly healing, but never quite. Unlike the nude man, she moved about, though never getting close to me. And she didn’t speak. But when she moved, the sound! The sound set my teeth on edge, because it was rough and grinding and sandpapery. Fissures and faults cracked opened on her body when she moved, exposing something underneath as deep and glistening as her skin was thick and dry. The angry red of that raw flesh gave way almost immediately to cloudy yellow tears that trickled down her body. She was a monstrosity. She didn’t seem to notice me as she paced across the confines of my cell, her feet rasping the floor. I’d tried talking to her, but the most I got was a slight glance, an inclination of the head, a flick of the eyes. I had no idea how long I’d been there or— Oh, yes. The shock treatment. I’d— Forgotten. Shaken, I launched into my mantra of names, reciting aloud, enunciating each slowly so that both mind and tongue wouldn’t forget how to pronounce them. The scab woman stopped her pacing, turned to face me, startling me so that I broke off mid-name. Her face moved, her cheeks stretching and bulging, her mouth contorting as if in pain. Her eyes blazed at me. There was a tearing sound, horribly loud and strangely intimate. A rush of fluid spilled from her lips, streamed down her chin and neck. Her lips stretched across her face slowly, with a sound like someone pulling a hunk of bread from a crusty french loaf. Teeth, shiny and moist and gummy pink, flashed between them. A smile. Suddenly, my head spun. The electric smell of the treatment room buzzed inside my nostrils, and my stomach tightened. I think I screamed before I threw up, before I fainted. She stood over me and smiled that wound of a smile down at me, fierce and triumphant.

• • • •

I awoke in the infirmary—sort of a strange place to have inside a facility that’s basically a big infirmary itself—and the nurses were not happy. A violent one in here usually spelled trouble. I had injured two staff members on one of my first visits years ago. This time I was the one who’d been hurt. Didn’t remember how. I must have fainted, gouged my head on one of the jacket’s buckles. Pretty nasty, especially considering that I hadn’t been found until the next morning. And head wounds bleed a lot. At least I thought it was my blood. I hadn’t been able to get a good look at the cut. They had me strapped down pretty tight No one to talk to here, even though it was the first time I’d seen real people in days. They were real, I guess, even though they all looked so nondescript, so plain, so— Forgettable. Dinner was fed to me—couldn’t be trusted with my hands free for a moment, much less possess a spoon—by a bored bull of an orderly. Large kid, maybe twenty-three or twenty- four. Looked like a college ball player who had learned the hard way that those professors really were just passing him so that he could catch the winning pass in the Rose Bowl. Quick, efficient and neat, he slid the soft, gray starchy food into me in just ten minutes. After, it was lights out. I saw the shadow of the guard outside the infirmary as the orderly left. Then, the loud click of the lock engaged. I wasn’t sleepy, but I no longer fought the drugs they snuck into me. The bed spun, threatening to throw me against the walls, and my stomach lurched uncertainly. It passed, and I slept.

• • • •

But not a long or particularly restful sleep. I awoke and there he was, standing in the corner. The third of my nightmare visitors. With disgust, I noticed the smell. It was pervasive, overwhelming. I was at its mercy since I couldn’t even reach up to cover my nose and mouth. It was like someone had emptied every bedpan in every bathroom in the hospital there in that room. I tried to breathe through my mouth, but it did little good. I drew the odor in with every breath, shed it with every exhalation. The air in the small room seemed to ripple with its foul load. Unable to bear it any longer, I leaned my head as far over the side of the bed as I could without breaking my neck, vomited my dinner. I lolled there groggily for some time, my head inches from the puddle I’d just let loose. Still the odor of excrement filled my nostrils. As I pulled myself back onto the bed, I caught sight of his silhouette in the corner. His outline was rough and lumpy; misshapen. Not the smooth, true lines of a real person. He moved. A cold chill swept through me when I realized that he was coming toward me. I rustled the covers, clinked the buckles and clasps on my jacket in an attempt to gain the attention of the—probably sleeping—attendant outside my door. My voice, however, seemed locked in my throat. My movements neither brought the orderly nor stopped the figure, which was now at my bedside. The overwhelming odor flowed from it in waves. Its proximity made my sensitive stomach spasm in anticipation of another bout of vomiting. It took a moment for me to see its form distinctly, but when I did, I would have rubbed my eyes in disbelief had I been able. Its body was a bulging, twisted mass of dark material, glistening in the thin light that leaked in under the door. Shit. Without warning, a hand emerged from the blackness, grasped me. I screamed at its slick, warm touch, thankful then for the heavy leather of the straitjacket. Its flesh squished and slurped as it squeezed my arm, and I realized, sickeningly, that it was attempting to get its arm under me, to lift me. To embrace me. I didn’t struggle as it lifted me to my feet, drew me close. The jacket dropped jingling to the floor, and I felt the creature’s warm putrescence press through my paper-thin gown. A part of me seemed resigned to this, calm and accepting, even grateful. Its embrace tightened, and instead of being uncomfortable, I found myself actually sinking into the form. The sensation was both repelling and strangely soothing; as pleasant as stepping into a hot bath. As I oozed into it, I began to feel slightly dizzy, light- headed. Drunk almost. Then, even the sensation of him being there—the thickness, the warmth, the overpowering smell— disappeared as I sank deeper. I felt as if there were nothing now, and I was hovering over a deep chasm. A part of my brain screamed at me from a distance, which seemed farther and farther away. It had nearly consumed all of me at that point, but my hands clutched at its chest as if hanging onto a doorframe. This purchase, however, was slippery, and gave way. I found myself, somewhat against my will, pulling back, retreating from that warm embrace. The more I pulled, however, the harder it became. Like quicksand, its body held me as I struggled. It tried to squeeze me into its form, enveloping me in its arms. But I caught them, slick and muscular as two snakes, and we wrestled. With the strength that only the truly desperate can muster, I wrapped my ankles around the foot of the infirmary bed and leveraged my weight against its body. With a terrific squelching, I wrenched myself from it, flung it from me. It spun across the room, splattered against the wall, lost all form and slid to the floor. I stood there for a moment, stunned, dripping with shit, covering my eyes, in my nose, down my throat. But I remembered. I am Chris Stadler. I remembered everything. Wobbly, I fell to my knees, and my head smacked the floor wetly. Barely conscious, I retched what little there was left in my stomach into the mess that was the room. When there was nothing left, I continued to vomit, until I was sure the only thing coming out of me was blood.

• • • •

You’d better believe that the doctors, nurses, orderlies, and the poor people that had to clean up that mess wondered how a person could be so full of shit. I was accused of deliberately “retaining stool,” as they put it, and placed on a modified, high-fiber diet along with plenty of monitored potty breaks. I didn’t fully understand what happened that night, but I was changed. I felt different somehow, more aware of myself, who I was, where I was. I remembered for the first time in years what had happened. I was put there two years prior by my only living relative, my great-aunt Olivia Hardison, because of a supposed advanced degeneration of my memory, similar to Alzheimer’s disease. I had been under the impression that whenever I forgot someone, they ceased to exist. Doctors call this object permanence, and it’s something that babies experience, then grow out of. I was put there because I forgot. But now, I remembered. I knew that I needed to see my great-aunt. And something told me that she wouldn’t be very thrilled to see me.

• • • •

Night again. Whatever they were giving me had made me so regular that I was exhausted. I replayed in my mind what had happened and why. One thing was apparent. The reason for placing me here—that people and things I forgot disappeared—was not a delusion. I knew that. It really happened. And, I could control it, had controlled it, used it like a power. But why did my aunt have me committed? Why were they so hell-bent on keeping me pumped up on drugs? What could I do to get out of here?

• • • •

At about two a.m., she returned. The straitjacket dropped from my body, fell to the floor. So did my institution-gray pajamas, and I was nude. She moved toward me, chilling in her aspect and intensity. Crackling like dry toast, she knelt, and a thrill of perverse exhilaration raced through me. She hunkered on the floor, then stretched out. In a parody of enticement, she ran her hands roughly over her scabrous form, flakes falling from her curves, a sound like sandpaper over wood. Then, she slowly opened her legs, spread them with all the abandon of a centerfold. I could scarcely see in the dim light, but as her legs parted, that horrible tearing sound came from between them. A vertical gash opened where her sex should be, deep and red and wet. I nearly jumped when she reached out, grabbed my naked leg with her rough hand, pulled me down. Initially, I resisted, but I succumbed. I sank slowly to my knees. Her legs encompassed me in their strong, craggy embrace. I nearly passed out with revulsion and pleasure as I entered her. It seemed to last forever, the thrusting, the grunting, the tearing and rasping. As we neared climax, she put her mouth to my ear, and in a partially recognizable voice, gasped, “Remember!” There was an explosion within me, and I passed it into her. As I watched, she became a new woman, complete, healed, and whole. And as shockingly beautiful as she had been hideous. She smiled at me, but I couldn’t see the color of her eyes in the darkness. I rolled off her, and a wave of exhaustion swept through me, more profound than anything I had felt in the last several days. I was swept away.

• • • •

When I awoke, I was covered with rust-brown dried blood. She was gone. I stood, very wobbly, and looked out the tiny window of my cell. Although the lights were as bright as ever in the corridors, there was no one about. No one. I frowned at this, and pressed my face against the glass for a better look. As I did so, the door, to my astonishment, moved, swung open without a sound. For a moment, I stood there—naked, cold, covered in flakes of dried blood—and did nothing. Then, I took two tentative steps into the bright hall. I half expected a team of orderlies, doctors, and police officers to round the corner and club me back into the room. Then, it’d be a return to the drugs and high-fiber diet for me. But no one came. Confused, I walked farther down the corridor, out of the secure wing, past the nurses station, past the administration offices. No one was here. Not even the other patients. I was somewhere near the lobby of the infirmary when I realized what was going on. I’d forgotten them. All of them. They were gone, as gone as if they’d never existed. This didn’t make me feel as great as I might have hoped. Although a big part of me was glad to be rid of them, another big part was dazed and lost. I had to see Aunt Olivia. I smiled at my reflection in the infirmary’s glass door; a demonic figure, nude and red and leering. With a purpose, I padded slowly down to the staff lounge for my first unattended hot shower in more than two years.

• • • •

A canvas laundry sack was the closest thing to a suitcase I could find, and I filled it with everything I could. Toiletries and aspirin, canned foods, office supplies. The employee locker rooms turned out to be a treasure trove of money and clothing. I left with more than $4,000 in cash, an assortment of credit cards, and a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that seemed made for me. Slinging the heavy sack over my shoulder, I went outside into the parking lot and looked back at the facility. It was, in my estimation, the most unassuming building I had ever seen. Low slung, one story, with minimal glass, and bricks that blended with the wooded surroundings. It seemed architecturally designed to fade into the background and be forgotten, along with its inhabitants. I had also found the keys to a 2012 Dodge Dakota, which took me some time to identify among the parked cars. I hoisted the laundry bag into its bed and climbed into the cab. I started the truck, pulled out of the parking lot. I remember you, Aunt Olivia, I’m coming to see you. I think you’ll remember me.

© 2014 by John F.D. Taff. Excerpted from The End in All Beginnings by John F.D. Taff Excerpt published by arrangement with Grey Matter Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR John F.D. Taff has published more than seventy short stories in markets that include Cemetery Dance, Deathrealm, Big Pulp, Postscripts to Darkness, Hot Blood: Fear the Fever, Hot Blood: Seeds of Fear, and Shock Rock II. Over the years, six of his shorts have been named honorable mentions in the Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror. His first collection of short stories, Little Deaths, was published in 2012 and has been well-reviewed by critics and readers alike. The collection made it to the Bram Stoker Reading List, has been the No. 1 Bestseller at Amazon in the Horror/Short Stories category, and was named the No. 1 Horror Collection of 2012 by HorrorTalk. Taff’s The Bell Witch is a historical novel inspired by the events of a real-life haunting and was released in August 2013. His thriller Kill/Off was published in December 2013. Two of his short stories have been published in Grey Matter Press anthologies: “Show Me” appears in the Bram Stoker Award-nominated Dark Visions: A Collection of Modern Horror—Volume One, and “Angie” is included in Ominous Realities: The Anthology of Speculative Horrors. More information about John F.D. Taff is available at johnfdtaff.com. NONFICTION THE H WORD: MISUNDERSTOOD MONSTERS Janice Gable Bashman

Misunderstood monsters—mindless evil or innocent creatures thrust into circumstances beyond their control? If we look at monster history, there are many monsters who harm, damage, or kill because they blood-lust and enjoy it, and because it feeds a hunger that can only be satisfied by the evil they perpetrate on others. But what about those monsters who, in their search for something else—whether it is love, acceptance, or fulfillment—hurt others in the process? What if these monsters feel sorrow, guilt, or remorse after having engaged in their evil deeds? What if their views of the world and how to behave are skewed by their interaction (or lack of interaction) with it? Should we empathize with these misunderstood beings? Or are they simply monsters? Let’s take a look at some misunderstood monsters.

Frankenstein’s Monster This creature, created from the body parts of deceased criminals, has no real identity. He’s an abomination—huge and ugly—and people fear him for good reason. He turns on those who have abandoned him. Aware of how he looks and how others react to him, it pains him. Even if Frankenstein’s monster thinks he has a chance at love and acceptance, it is quickly quashed. But this damaged creature keeps seeking love despite his failures. So, what is a monster to do? He tries harder to acquire the love he needs.

Wolf Man Huge and covered in hair, this scary beast is violent. However, the question remains: is he evil? Sure the Wolf Man hurts others—a lot—but once he transforms back into human form, he feels remorse for what he has done. He doesn’t want to hurt others and desperately wishes he had the power to control his actions, resulting from his transformation into the beast during the full moon.

Quasimodo Quasimodo is a character in Victor Hugo’s book The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The hunchback, whose name refers to his physical deformity, repulses others because of how he looks. People fear him and avoid him, never really knowing the man inside the damaged body. Although he doesn’t harm others, he is considered a monster by those who know about his existence. Quasimodo isolates himself out of necessity. All can agree he is simply misunderstood, or perhaps not understood at all, given that he has little to no contact with people. King Kong What is a monster ape to do? Ripped from his home, taken across the world, and forced to live a life in captivity and as a curiosity, King Kong has no choice but to react to the circumstances thrust upon him. When he believes a woman he cares for is in danger, he breaks free and saves her, ultimately climbing with her to the top of the Empire State Building, fighting the planes sent to attack him in order to protect her. Yes, he is a monster simply because humans deem him one, because he is gigantic and different. But his actions show that he is misunderstood, at least in terms of our definition of a monster. If he was truly a monster, would he have acted to save the life of a human? Would he have even cared?

Grendel Depending on one’s perspective, Grendel is either an evil, bloodthirsty monster, incapable of rational thought, or a misunderstood monster that is able to think and feel. Grendel is said to be the descendent of Cain. According to the Bible, Cain is the son of Adam and Eve and the first person to commit murder. Because Grendel is a descendent from Cain, he is considered an outcast by God and an evil being as a result of his ancestor’s murderous ways. In Beowulf, Grendel is not judged for what he is but for what others perceive him to be—a monster who attacks Heorot on a regular basis and slaughters and eats the Danes gathered there without reason or remorse. However, author John Gardner looks at Grendel from Grendel’s perspective in his book of the same name. Here, Grendel, once innocent and living in isolation from the outside world, is misunderstood when he is thrust into the presence of others. Grendel only wants to be accepted by society and to have fun with those around him, but the people of Heorot perceive him as a bloodthirsty monster. In retaliation, and because he feels angry and lonely, he raids Heorot each night, reinforcing the misunderstanding that initially brought him to harm others. Perhaps if Grendel wasn’t misunderstood in the first place, he wouldn’t have turned into a misunderstood monster.

Dracula If your only means of survival is to feed on the blood of others, does that make you a monster? Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a vampire, capable of human thought, but lacking human empathy. His only concern is satisfying his needs. Attacking because he is expected to do so, and needs to do so, Dracula must continue this behavior to survive. In addition, he must protect himself or those who fear him will drive a stake through his heart. Despite his failings, Dracula wants to be accepted by society. He has aspirations just like everyone else does. So, if it isn’t his fault that he has to feed on blood, is he a monster or simply misunderstood? • • • •

Each of these monsters is dangerous. They are strong and often unable to control their urges. They do what they must to survive, even if it means hurting others. Misunderstood for sure. Monsters—definitely. But if circumstances were different, if these monsters weren’t damaged psychologically or didn’t have needs deemed unacceptable by society, perhaps we wouldn’t be calling them monsters at all.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Janice Gable Bashman is the Bram Stoker nominated author (w/New York Times bestseller Jonathan Maberry) of Wanted Undead or Alive (Citadel Press 2010) and Predator (YA thriller, Month9Books, coming October 2014). She is editor of The Big Thrill (International Thriller Writers’ magazine). Her short fiction has been published in various anthologies and magazines. She has written for Novel & Short Story Writer's Market, The Writer, Writer's Digest, Wild River Review, and many other publications. She is a speaker and workshop leader at writers’ conferences, including ThrillerFest, Backspace, Pennwriters, The Write Stuff, Stoker weekend, and others. She is an active member of the Mystery Writers of America, Horror Writers Association, and the International Thriller Writers, where she serves on the board of directors as Vice President, Technology. ARTIST GALLERY Galen Dara

Galen Dara sits in a dark corner listening to the voices in her head. She has a love affair with the absurd and twisted, and an affinity for monsters, mystics, and dead things. She has illustrated for 47North, Edge Publishing, Lightspeed, Fireside Magazine, Apex publishing, Lackington Magazine, and Goblin Fruit. Recent book covers include War Stories, Glitter & Mayhem, and Oz Reimagined. She won the 2013 Hugo for Best Fan Artist, and is nominated for the 2014 Hugo for Best Professional Artist. Her website is galendara.com, and you can follower her on Twitter @galendara.

[To view the gallery, turn the page.]

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: GALEN DARA Wendy N. Wagner

Before we get started here, let me just confess: my house is full of Galen Dara art, ranging from prints made from the illustrations in Rigor Amortis to a print of two robots making out—which came off the Geek Love cover, if I remember right—to a very small print of an illustration you did for Lightspeed Magazine. I feel like whenever there are people in your work, no matter the medium, they’re portrayed with this wonderful tenderness. As someone who does a lot of work within dark fantasy and horror, how do you make that work? I mean, aren’t a lot of your commissions for really grim, gory, scary pieces of fiction?

Well I’ve been pretty lucky to work with amazing authors who are gifted at creating stories and characters with incredible depth and complexity. The cover art for this issue of Nightmare is a great example; the Crow Witch is inspired by an intriguing character written by one Wendy N. Wagner in her novel Skinwalkers. I bring my own style and sensitivities to the art, but I am just thrilled when I’m able to work with creators who have respect for the people in the stories they are telling. Artist Greg Ruth wrote a wonderful essay published at Tor.com in May about the value horror stories have for us as humans. There are many necessary things that “grim, gory, and scary” teach us, prepare us for. I find enormous worth in good storytelling, especially of the darker variety. I hope my illustrations do justice to the genre.

It seems like your work in the last two years or so has featured a lot of very soft colors and very flowing lines. Was that something new you were exploring?

I’m rather self-taught as a digital artist; I initially got my BFA in painting. Years later I took a Photoshop course to help me edit my photos. Through trial and error I found I could clean up and add a bit of color to my drawings, and over the course of the next couple years I taught myself how to create entire paintings using Photoshop and a Wacom tablet. Each new piece I create is another chance for me to explore the medium and my technique further.

In your work as an illustrator, you produce a lot of digital art. What’s your process like when you’re working digitally—and is it different than when you’re working with other kinds of media?

Working digitally was pivotal for me to illustrate the way I do; the ability to jump right in and start a piece and still have the flexibility to move things around, undo mistakes, create alternate versions of the same piece. Basically I can experiment with impunity! When I work traditionally, I have to deal with the consequences of my impatience while the paint is drying. Something I’m starting to experiment with is using Photoshop to do my preliminary layouts, like how I currently do, but once I’ve nailed the direction I know I want to go (the point where currently I flatten the image and start “painting” digitally), to then print it out large, transfer it to a primed surface, and continue the work with traditional mediums. I watched Donato Giancola do something similar a few years ago and have been itching to try it.

Back in May, you had a blog post that shared this great picture someone had done up, with an artist working on a giant tablet and the sassy caption: “Oh, you don’t use digital because it’s not real painting? Tell me more about how you mix your own egg tempera pigments.” Do you ever get snark for working digitally? Do you think that’s an attitude that will die out?

I do think that attitude is dying out. There will always be purists who proclaim the evils of new technologies that help artists “cheat,” but artists have loved to use technology to assist them in their creations. In the 1600s, Johannes Vermeer may have been using specialized optical devices to aid him in painting his incredibly realistic paintings, a realism he never could have achieved by strictly eyeballing the subject. In the 1800s, John Rand figured out how to mix paint and put it into small tubes with screw-on caps, which completely changed how artists were able to use color (not to mention freeing them up to create art outside of the confines of their studios). While I miss getting my hands messy and miss having the completely original art piece I get when I paint traditionally, I do not consider the art I create with my tablet and laptop any less “real” or valid.

Let’s talk about the Hugos. Last year, you brought home the Hugo for Best Fan Artist. This year, you’ve been nominated for the Hugo again, but this time in the professional category. That seems like a huge jump to make. How do you feel about getting nominated for science fiction’s biggest award two years in a row? And does it feel different this time?

Oh. Yeah, that. When I got the email a few months ago informing me I had been nominated to be on the ballot for the Best Professional Artist, I quite literally fell out of my chair in a wave of nauseous terror and anxiety. Lots of conflicting emotions. Last year when I won the Hugo for Best Fan Artist it was at an odd intersect in my career; by the time the award ceremony came around, I was no longer doing work for fanzines and I had my first professional illustrating gig under my belt. When it was all said and done I went home, got back to work, and figured that would be the last of that. I am still not entirely sure how to express what it feels like to be on the ballot this year with the likes of Julie Dillon, Dan Dos Santos, John Harris, John Picacio, and Fiona Staples. It’s an honor of shocking proportions.

Another thing about the Hugos—in prior years, there have only been, what, two women ever nominated for Best Professional Artist? And then this year, there are three of you up for the big award. What do you think about gender in your field? Is science fiction and horror illustration still a male-dominated field, or is that really starting to change?

Well, the perception definitely skews towards male- dominated. It’s a very complex issue with no easy answers. There are many amazing artists who happen to be women working in this field who don’t give their gender or their career choice a second thought. This is just what they do: make awesome art and make a living doing so. Two years ago, Julie Dillon walked away with the Chesley award for Best Interior Illustration. Last year Julie Bell won the Chesley for best unpublished work. Several female artists won either gold or silver medals at this year’s Spectrum Fantastic Arts award ceremony, including Victo Ngai, Tran Nguyen, Yuko Shimizu, and Yukari Masuike. But taken as a whole, these accolades are few and far between. As you noted, before last year only two women ever had been nominated for Best Professional Artist in the Hugos; it’s been nine years since an artist who happens to be female has been nominated for a Locus Award; Kinuko Y. Craft is the only women to be named Spectrum’s Grand Master, and while the recent documentary Making It (about surviving as an SF illustrator) did include interviews with such artists as Becky Cloonan, the promo photos showed just the male artists. The issue has gotten a lot of discussion. It’s on a lot of people’s radar. Right now we have a historic Hugo ballot split evenly between the genders. Regardless of who gets that shiny rocket come August, that is kind of a big deal.

Tell me about the Illustration Master Class. You did it in 2012, right? And you’re going back this year. What’s it like? How has it helped you as a creator?

Oh, that’s such a wonderful opportunity—I’d highly recommend it for anyone interested in working in the SF illustrating field. It’s a week-long immersion course where you work intensively onsite with a handful of other illustrators, rubbing elbows and getting feedback from such art world rock stars as Rebecca Guay, Dan Dos Santos, Donato Giancola, Irene Gallo, Greg Manchess, Lauren Panepinto, Julie Bell, Boris Vallejo, and Ian McCaig. Brom was the guest artist the first year I went. Mike Mignola will be there this year, as well as Brian and Wendy Froud. It was a pivotal turning point for me two years ago. I’m excited to see what I can glean this year, at this point in my career.

You’re a very busy lady. You just did the art direction for Lightspeed’s Women Destroy Science Fiction! issue. You just took part in the Spectrum Fantastic Art Live annual show—the book for that comes out in November, I think. What else do you have coming along in the near future? And where can we find more of your great art?

Right now I’m busy working on art for Fireside magazine, Lackington’s, Resurrection House, Ragnarok Publications, and Tyche Books, all stuff that should be going live before fall, fingers crossed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Wendy N. Wagner grew up in a town so small it didn’t even have its own post office, and the bookmobile’s fortnightly visit was her lifeline to the world. Her short fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies including Beneath Ceaseless Skies,The Lovecraft eZine, Armored, The Way of the Wizard, and Heiresses of Russ 2013: The Year’s Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction. Her first novel, Skinwalkers, a Pathfinder Tales adventure, is due out March 2014. An avid gamer and gardener, she lives in Portland, Oregon, with her very understanding family. Follow her on Twitter @wnwagner. INTERVIEW: DEL HOWISON OF DARK DELICACIES BOOKSTORE Lisa Morton

Imagine a horror-specialty retail store that has not only survived for two decades but has helped shape the very genre it markets, and you’ll get some idea of why Dark Delicacies is one of horror’s (not so) hidden treasures. Located in the Magnolia Park area of Burbank, California (where Dark Delicacies’ success seems to have spawned neighboring stores with names like Halloween Town and Creature Features), Dark Delicacies was founded by Del Howison and Sue Duncan, who were married in the store (on Halloween, of course) several years after opening in 1994. Although their original focus was on books (new and used), they’ve since expanded into clothing, DVDs, memorabilia, and even horror-themed scents. As the store’s reputation grew, their legion of author friends urged them to expand into areas outside of retailing, and Del (with Jeff Gelb) edited three volumes of the award-winning Dark Delicacies anthologies and a Dark Delicacies comic. This interview was conducted with Del, since Sue prefers the role of silent partner.

This December, Dark Delicacies will be twenty years old, and it remains one of the most unique stores in the world. Did you have any models when you opened the store?

It was from Dangerous Visions in Studio City that I learned the value of signing events. Art and Lydia put on signings religiously for the fans. I also learned a couple of things not to do by attending their and other stores’ signings.

Did you ever consider extending your specialty to other genres as well?

There were mystery stores and stores with large science fiction areas, so we didn’t want to go there. We didn’t want to be competition. We wanted to be unique. We also knew just enough about those other areas to hurt ourselves.

You’ve built up a core of loyal customers. How did you make that happen?

By being here twenty years and making mistakes. But more so by making friends and fans slowly, treating people right, listening and handling things the way we would want them handled if we were walking into the store for the first or fortieth time. You have to be able to adjust. You have to trust your gut. You have to walk around your store and look at different areas and ask if the products there are earning their keep, and change it even if you are dumping something you really like for something that may not really appeal to you personally. Keep your vision and core aim, but change if you need it. A grocery store doesn’t only sell the food that the owner personally likes but food in general. That’s its aim and vision. Within that vision is room for flexibility.

How important was knowledge of the horror genre to making Dark Delicacies a success?

Of prime importance. Yet, at the same time, nobody is born with that knowledge. It is learned. For somebody to work with me, I would prefer customer service and retail experience over horror knowledge. But they’d have to be interested in it and willing to learn, because our customers ask a lot of questions.

Was there a point in your early history when you thought, Hey, I think we’re actually going to make it?

Not yet.

Since you opened the store in 1994, you’ve extended the brand to a series of three highly acclaimed anthologies, a comic book, and even Dark Delicacies scents. Did you always plan on expanding past just a retail store? Like a shark, keep moving or die. I’m currently looking at a web talk show, a novel, film, whatever. None of these may work out. That’s okay. I’m not afraid of failing. I’m afraid of not trying.

How important to your business model have signings and author events been? Has it changed over time?

The signings and events are our bread and butter. They’ve altered in the respect that we have more of them a month and the focus has changed, or at least grown in scope, to include composers, artists, directors, actors, FX people, etc. They’re not just authors anymore, since horror entertainment has grown by leaps and bounds digitally. The very first month we were open Sara Karloff signed for us. She was our first, and Tony Todd was our second. We have never had a month without a signing, and it has now grown to where we barely have a week without a signing or two.

Aside from your genre focus, are there other aspects of Dark Delicacies that separate it from other specialty bookstores?

After twenty years, it is still a mom-and-pop store. Sue or I are here or in touch with the store every day of our lives. We were married in the store and even on our one day a week that we are closed, we’re usually running around taking care of store business. There is an attempt to cover all bases of horror, from skull-and-crossbones baby bibs to original jewelry. We cater to customers from the womb to old age.

Dark Delicacies has been around long enough to see the genre endure a few ups and downs. How do you ride out the lower parts of the cycle?

There were and probably still will be months where we’ll wonder if we’re going to cover all the bills. But I don’t change my spending and buying philosophy with the roller coaster. When times are good I don’t spend more, nor do I cut down on bill paying when times are tough (although I may cut closer to the minimum on some credit cards to get through). I try to maintain an even flow so that as the business goes up and down I don’t feel the ride as much.

You take a lot of interesting items on consignment. Have you ever been pitched something that you wouldn’t carry because it was just too extreme?

When I started, I had some serial killer art. Not that it was wrong, but it didn’t fit the direction I wanted the store to head in. Now some of that is carried by a local art store called Hyaena who specialize in brutal and horror art. They are doing well with it, I believe.

Do you have any personal favorites among all the items you’ve carried?

Sure, items signed by the masters who have passed and whom I’ll always miss, like Matheson, Bradbury, Bloch, and Harryhausen.

Has the success of shows like Oddities or even American Pickers made you consider carrying more antique items?

I do and always will if I find the items and they fit us, like poison bottles, gargoyle motifs, and such. We’re also a couple of blocks from The Bearded Lady Oddities, which carries some neat stuff, too. This area has turned into a Horror Hood. I love Magnolia Park.

Do you attend a lot of trade shows looking for new items? What are the defining characteristics something needs to have to become part of Dark Delicacies’ stock?

We look everywhere, from trade shows to estate sales. My wife defined it best when she rejected an item of jewelry from a local artisan as not befitting the store when she said, “It can’t look too motorcycle and it can’t look too Grateful Deadish. It’s that other thing.”

Has the recent increase in popularity of e-books affected your business at all?

Yes and no. The only thing it eliminates seems to be the mass market books because they were designed for convenience, which the e-readers have now taken over. But over all I think they help in getting more people to read.

Does social media/an online presence matter much to Dark Delicacies?

Even though we are a brick-and-mortar store we wouldn’t exist without the web and social media. I work it every day.

Have you ever considered opening up branches or a second store somewhere? What about licensing the name?

Everybody else seems to have been considering it. I get emails everyday asking me to open up a branch some place. Maybe someday. We’ll see. But it would be a different store depending upon where it was located. On the other hand, I am now venturing into Dark Delicacies Productions with media ideas, so licensing could be happening down the road. I’m open to ideas. Has Hollywood figured into the success of Dark Delicacies at all? Could the store work as well anywhere outside of Southern California because of that?

At first we were the epitome of location, location, location. But now it has grown to the point that I’m rethinking that because we have a brand name.

I’ve seen many younger authors talk about how their dream is to sign at Dark Delicacies, or crow about their book reaching a certain ranking on your bestseller list. Was helping new writers be discovered a goal from the beginning, or just a happy by-product of your success?

Absolutely. The same way I always leave some spots open when I edit an anthology to get new blood into them and give some of them a start. The e-market is open to more, but not as highly regarded as the print market, even today. I heard one author at the World Horror Convention in Portland say that they considered it a “Rite of Passage” to sign at Dark Delicacies. That made me smile.

Is it ever hard being both married partners and business partners? Do you ever think horror has taken over your lives?

Twenty-four/seven would be hard with any business partner or marriage partner. She’s lucky I’m so easy to get along with . . . just don’t show her this answer.

Do you ever find yourself wanting to take home everything?

In the beginning, yes, because we were selling our own collection. But now we think of it as a revolving collection that we get to spend time with. Occasionally too much time.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 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, and 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. More recently, in 2013 she debuted 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 SPOTLIGHTS AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: LANE ROBINS Erika Holt

Have you ever had any strange or creepy experiences in old houses or buildings?

Writer’s imagination mixed with architecture? Life can be nothing but creepy experiences. That said, I’m usually well aware it’s only my imagination. There are only two standout moments. When I went to college, the first dorm I stayed in had this weird ghost cat kind of thing happening. I’d be in bed, in the dark, and then there’d be a thump on the bed, the kneading of paws in the blankets. A weight at my side. I figured I was just missing my pets. But apparently most of the rooms in the dorm got a visit. One girl woke us all up shouting: she was convinced rats had gotten into her room and into her bed. Same phenomenon, different reactions. The other experience was much creepier. I work part time in one of the oldest department stores west of the Mississippi River (I don’t know why it divides the states that way, but that’s our claim to fame), and it’s a really noisy place. They still run pneumatic tubes, so the walls hum and grumble all day long. I went down to the basement after hours, alone in the store, to shut off the tubes, and there was this single strange moment . . . The basement is partitioned into several sections —some stuffed with merchandise, some with shrouded mannequins, some storage in tiny spaces between the walls, two feet wide at most but forty feet long—and it’s not the most welcoming place. But it was familiar by this time. I had turned off the tubes, bringing silence to the store, and was heading back out of the basement when something snagged in my hair, just caught it, flipped it back, a tiny ouch moment. Then a sigh. There’s something very human about a sigh. Very distinctive. It doesn’t really sound like much else. There was nothing to catch my hair, no one to make that pained, exhausted sound. But I was completely convinced that someone had been there. For the first time, I was spooked. Headed up the stairs at a steady clip, finished up, and got gone. I mentioned it later, feeling pretty foolish, and the other clerk, a son of one of the owners, told me that a generation previous, one of the managers had shot himself in the basement. Do I believe him? Was he pulling my leg? Probably. I haven’t heard that sound since, in all my trips to the basement. That’s okay by me. I love writing about ghosts; not that enamored of encountering one.

You allude to Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Cask of Amontillado.” Would you say his writings have influenced your work? Any other influences? Poe almost had to be an influence. My father read “Annabel Lee,” “The Bells,” and “The Raven,” to me while I was still in a crib. Nightly. (As well as de la Mare.) And what speaks to a fledgling teen writer more than Poe’s “Alone”? From childhood’s hour I have not been/ as others were . . . Poe just doesn’t mess around. From the first moment you start reading his stories, he builds up this palpable sense of dread, all circling around a central character. I loved that, looked for it in other books. I found some of that in William Sleator’s novels: he keeps you cruising along, aware that things are going wrong, and finally hits you with this sort of shriek of horror. That moment when you-the-reader and you-the-character have gone too far to turn back, even though the path ahead is terrible. Wonderful.

Does the black window have any symbolic significance?

Windows are rife with symbolism. In this story, I wanted a few things from my window glass—whether I succeeded or not is up to the reader. Windows are great for isolation. Letting you look at other people, other worlds, and still be separate. They’re a barrier that teases. And of course, like a door, they have the potential of opening when you least want them to. Then again, if the window is clear enough, you might not even realize it’s there, keeping you apart. That’s sort of the feel I wanted with Holly. Watching her siblings, but held separate without realizing it. And a black window . . . if a window is something you see through, then a black window is just a perversion of the natural order of things. Worrying.

This story works both as a literal horror story and as a metaphor for grief and loss. Did you intend it this way?

For me, horror stories need to be reflective. I want the events to happen to just the right character: the one who’ll be most changed, most affected by the events. And while I love scary stories—the pleasant shiver up your spine, that shifting glance to make sure you’re alone as you thought—I feel like horror, like SF, has the potential to speak to people in broad ways. There are things that wake us in the middle of the night, plague us—will we die alone, will we lose a loved one, that sort of thing. Mundane but powerful worries. I wanted to tap into that. And Holly the archaeologist seemed like a good choice. Here’s a woman who’s made her life dealing with the long ago dead, learning that nothing has prepared her for losing her family. She’s very much in denial of that loss, focusing on all the minutiae—her lost job, her new responsibilities—and nearly loses her siblings because of that.

What does your year ahead look like, writing-wise? To paraphrase Allie Brosh, “Write all the things!” I just turned in a psychic romance novel to Blind Eye Books. I’m working on a complicated tangle of an alternate history SF thriller, and I have a dark fantasy trilogy nagging at me.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Erika Holt lives in the cold, white North (i.e. Calgary, Canada), where she writes and edits speculative fiction. Her stories have appeared in a number of anthologies including Evolve Two: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead and What Fates Impose. She has also co-edited two anthologies: Rigor Amortis, about sexy, amorous zombies, and Broken Time Blues, featuring 1920s alien burlesque dancers and bootlegging chickens. AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: DENNIS ETCHISON Lisa Nohealani Morton

Can you tell us a little bit about the genesis of “Talking in the Dark”?

Here’s how it came about. A friend of mine wrote a nonfiction overview of horror, and after the book was published, he received a great many letters from readers, pointing out what they thought were errors. When it was time for a paperback edition he was busy with other projects and asked me to fact-check the letters for him. Some were right, some were not, but a lot of them came from fans eager for a chance to write to their favorite best-selling author. I began to see a common pattern, and couldn’t help imagining a generic version, which became the letter Victor writes to Rex. They really said such things as “You are my favorite author and greatest fan” (not a typo!) and, more than anything else, “Where do you get your ideas?” My original title was “The Sources of the Nile.” My aunt and uncle once owned an ice cream shop called the Blue-and-White, the colors of Stockton High School across the street, which also happen to be the parts of the Nile River in Egypt that intersect at a place called Gezira, the fictional town in this story. I also remembered a certain editor in our field who used to make cross-country car trips specifically to visit fans who had written letters to his magazine. Hm. The story writes itself, doesn’t it? I intended it to be a tragedy, but some have taken it to be a comedy. So we really can’t control how our work is received. Unless we’re manipulating our readers as source material . . .

What are you working on lately? Any upcoming publications readers should look out for?

I’ve spent a lot of time proofreading the ebook editions of my collections The Dark Country, Red Dreams, The Blood Kiss, and The Death Artist for Dave Wilson’s Crossroad Press. They’re available now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other websites, and should stand as the definitive versions. It Only Comes Out at Night, a massive career retrospective edited by S.T. Joshi, will be published later this year by Centipede Press. Tom and Elizabeth Monteleone are bringing out a collection I’m assembling for Borderlands Press, called A Little Black Book of Dark Stories. Peter Atkins and I are putting together a reprint anthology of dream stories, A Long Time Till Morning, and I’m working on an all-new collection of my own, but no publisher has been set for either of those yet. My most recent stories can be found in Stephen Jones’s anthology A Book of Horrors and in Jason V. Brock’s forthcoming Darke Phantastique. Meanwhile, my nonfiction book from last year, Matheson on Matheson, should still be available from Bad Moon Books. And of course more ebooks will soon be ready. When you’re reading a horror story or novel, what kinds of things delight you? What kinds of things scare you?

It’s always a pleasure to be surprised by something new and fresh, something unlike anything I’ve read before; that’s the goal, but it doesn’t happen very often. Still, I hold out hope. What scares me? It’s purely subjective. Something that’s frightening to some is a joke to others. It all depends on who you are. Ray Bradbury’s “Zero Hour” and “The Veldt” and “The Small Assassin” scared me when I was young, as did Algis Budrys’s “The Master of the Hounds” a few years later, along with many of Ramsey Campbell’s stories and novels. Like Ramsey, I’m particularly visual in my own stories, at least in the way I imagine them in my mind, so—or perhaps because of that—I can’t avoid being influenced by what I see in movies. Karl Edward Wagner thought that the end of this one was a direct reference to “Don’t Look Now,” based on the Daphne De Maurier short story, but I wasn’t consciously aware of it, though Nicholas Roeg’s film certainly affected me deeply.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 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 Lightspeed, Daily Science Fiction, the anthology Heiresses of Russ 2012, and elsewhere. She can be found on Twitter as @lnmorton. AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: MARI NESS Caroline Ratajski

What was the inspiration behind this story?

Undergoing medical testing.

You chose not to name your characters—why?

From a plot and story point of view, at this point, the narrator can’t even remember his own name, let alone hers. She has no real need to tell him her name—in fact, it’s in her interest not to tell him, in the extremely unlikely event that he manages to escape. From a deeper point of view, I’ve encountered several medical people who get my name wrong even as they are running medical tests on me or having problems drawing out my blood. I think that was probably playing a bit of a role as well. And from a writing process point of view, getting the right name for a character is really not one of my strengths as a writer, so if I have a good reason to skip this part, I do.

The killer refuses to believe her victim’s answers regarding the nature of the afterlife. What makes her so skeptical/reluctant?

I think she wants to believe that what she’s doing does have a point, that she’s going to get something out of all of this, that she isn’t just killing the guy for no reason. And she has good reason to believe that the guy resents her and hates her—look at what she’s doing to him, after all—so he could well be lying just to frustrate and anger her. And I think it’s possible that he lied to her in the past—or that she thinks he did. And he just can’t remember it.

What made you decide to tell the story from his point of view instead of hers?

I don’t know what doctors are thinking when they order more tests. I do know what I’m thinking. “Why? Why? WHY?” Which led to this.

While you highlighted that they were never lovers, as far as the narrator believes, you don’t further define their relationship. Why not?

Two reasons: First, I was more interested in what was happening just then—after all, whatever did happen in their past is, I think, less interesting than what she is trying to do now. Second, all of this has really done a number on the narrator’s mind. Many of these deaths are painful; all of them are disorientating. So even if he could remember their original relationship, I’m not sure we could trust his version of it. So she’s the only person who could define their relationship— and she’s not interested in their relationship. She’s interested —I’d say obsessed with—what happens afterward.

Which horror author(s) would you say inspired you the most? How have they influenced your work?

You know, I can’t really say I’ve ever been inspired by any particular horror author. I have been a bit more inspired by some horror movies, especially those that focus on psychological horror instead of blood and gore. I was mesmerized by Pan’s Labyrinth, for instance, and I thought both the Japanese and American versions of The Ring were brilliantly done even if it meant I had to side-eye videos and DVDs for a while. But the inspiration from those films tends to show up in my other work—the dark fantasy, retold fairy tales, and science fiction. Horror is different. When I write horror, like this piece, and I don’t do this often, it is almost invariably in response to some mundane horror, some minor hell that I feel I can’t get out of. It’s the mundane horrors of real life that brings forth the monsters. What work do you have out now or forthcoming, and what are you working on now?

I have a few more new stories and poems coming out this year from Daily Science Fiction, the Upgraded anthology edited by Neil Clarke, Goblin Fruit, Papaveria Press, and a few other places I can’t talk about just yet. And one of my short stories, “Twittering the Stars,” is about to be reprinted by Upper Rubber Boot Press. I’m very pleased, since that story—one written entirely in tweets, that can be read either backwards or forwards—has been a bit difficult to track down in the last couple of years. There’s a more or less regularly upgraded list of my publications over at my blog, marikness.wordpress.com. Regarding what I’m working on now—well, I’ve been using this interview to procrastinate on a story. Bad writer! Bad writer! I do have a few more stories to finish up beyond that one, and then it’s back to working on a couple of novels that keep stubbornly refusing to write themselves. Maybe I should write a story about that.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Caroline Ratajski is a writer and software engineer currently living in Silicon Valley, California, USA. Previously published as Morgan Dempsey, her fiction is available in Broken Time Blues and Danse Macabre, as well as at Redstone Science Fiction. She is represented by Barry Goldblatt of Barry Goldblatt Literary, LLC. AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: TOM PICCIRILLI Britt Gettys

In On Writing Horror: A Handbook by the Horror Writers Association, you discuss your short story, “The Misfit Child Grows Fat on Despair,” saying that you didn’t want to explain the more fantastical details of the story, such as the existence of a town within your protagonist’s gut, because doing so would take away from the story’s impact. How much of horror do you believe comes, not only from the unknown, but the reader’s own sense and justification for what is occurring in the narrative?

Well, I don’t think that readers really need to know every detail and bit of info about a story. They’ll come to their own conclusions about the nature of the piece one way or another. Perfect example is, “What is haunting Hill House?” when we read The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. Is it a ghost? Is it many ghosts? Is there no ghost at all? We never find out and so the book is that much more powerful because of that. Some people like to guess at the answer. Some just let it roll off their backs.

There are moments in “The Misfit Child Grows Fat on Despair” where the writing and content can be read as amusing, yet this doesn’t distract from the overall eeriness of the piece. How do you balance the comedic and the horrific in your work, and is comedy something you believe can emphasize horror?

I do believe that horror and eeriness are underscored more by humor, and vice versa.

In the story you toy with the convention of the stoic hero, setting up your protagonist, John, as someone who might jump in and thwart the bank robbery, but instead the narrative takes a much darker turn. What led you to write this kind of story, and what was the genesis of John as a character?

Those kind of funky twists just happen at the moment. I lean one way for the sake of story, and then dodge a different way when it feels right. So having John something of a hero in the opening pages and then learning he’s something of a psycho in the end is spooky and freaky.

Your first novel, Dark Feather, was the first piece of writing you ever sold. Had you written many short stories before that, or was short fiction something you got into after writing the novel? Do you find one form to be more suited to you than the other? I had written a lot of short fiction but couldn’t sell much. After Dark Feather, I wrote a couple more novels that were rejected all across the board. I finally decided to go back to square one and learn how to do short stories, learn how to edit myself, and then when I started selling stories regularly, I re-edited all those unsold novels and they began to sell, too.

You once said in an interview with LitReactor that writing must come first, second, and third in an author’s life. This can be interpreted in a variety of ways, so what’s your interpretation?

Writing takes precedence over just about everything else. Ray Bradbury said that he wrote with thick drapes over his windows because he didn’t want to see when it was sunny outside because he had to stay in and write. I feel the same way. You need to prioritize writing at the head of your “things to do” list. So write, write some more, and then even more. To paraphrase Jack London: If inspiration doesn’t come to you, hunt it down with a club.

Are you currently working on any projects, and if so, could you tell us a bit about them?

I’m working on my next novel, Blue Autumn, which is due in December. It’s about an ex-con boxer who gets out of prison and returns to his small hometown to learn why a car with his best friend, his sister, his lover, and another passenger tried to outrace a train at a crossing and all got killed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Britt Gettys recently graduated from Pratt Institute, where she obtained her BFA in Creative Writing. She currently works as a freelance entertainment writer, reviewing and critiquing television shows despite the fact that she has no real qualifications to do so. Additionally, she illustrates graphic novels, and her work has been featured in two Pratt-sponsored exhibitions. Britt hails from Seattle, Washington, where she spends her time writing, cosplaying, and painting. MISCELLANY IN THE NEXT ISSUE OF

Coming up in August, in Nightmare . . . We’ll have original fiction from Desirina Boskovich (“Dear Owner of This 1972 Ford Crew Cab Pickup”) and Ben Peek (“Upon the Body”), along with reprints by Tia Travis (“The Kiss”) and Simon Strantzas (“Out of Touch”). In our column on horror, “The H Word,” Lucy A. Snyder will be discussing the intersection of horror and science fiction, and of course, we'll have 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! Looking ahead beyond next month, we’ve got new fiction on the way from Sunny Moraine, Daniel José Older, and, of course, in October, we have our special double-issue Women Destroy Horror!, guest edited by the one-and-only Ellen Datlow. Thanks for reading! STAY CONNECTED

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John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publisher and editor-in-chief of Nightmare, is the series editor of Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is also the bestselling editor of many other anthologies, such as The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Armored, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, and The Living Dead. New projects coming out in 2014 and 2015 include: Help Fund My Robot Army!!! & Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects, Robot Uprisings, Dead Man’s Hand, Operation Arcana, Wastelands 2, and The Apocalypse Triptych: The End is Nigh, The End is Now, and The End Has Come. He has been nominated for eight Hugo Awards and five World Fantasy Awards, and he has been called “the reigning king of the anthology world” by Barnes & Noble. John is also the editor and publisher of Lightspeed Magazine, and is a producer for Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams.