A Scary Short Story Compilation by Support Indie Author Members

Read, Enjoy, Reread, and Recommend!

But do not attempt to sell or redistribute.

Thank you for your support of these fine indie authors!

- Ann Livi Andrews - ​

1 Table of Contents

Honorable Mentions

UNTIL DEATH DO US PART Page 3 by Karen Cogan

JUST AS LOST Page 9 by Patrick Brennan

LITTLE MONSTER Page 15 by Allan Walsh

THE SUMMONING Page 19 by Charlotte Zang and Alex Knudsen

VAMPIRE’S DELIGHT Page 25 by Caroline Peckham

Contest Winners

SPIDER, SPIDER Page 33 by Bea Cannon

PREMONITION Page 37 by Kayla Krantz

THE BLACK QUEEN Page 40 by Olga Werby

REMEMBER! Page 48 by Colin Anders Brodd

REFLECTIONS Page 54 by Phil Farina

2 Until Death Do Us Part By Karen Cogan

At the edge of the water, white-capped waves began to break, harbingers of the wrath to follow. A short while ago, the clouds had been merely gray. Now they boiled with ominous darkness as they sank toward the cowering earth. The wind whipped off the lake causing the tops of the trees to sway, as if groaning under great weight. Annoyed at having his fishing trip cut short, Joe turned the car away from the lake and the storm that brewed above it.

The road back to the main highway was ravaged with ruts. He steered between potholes, aware of the heaviness in the air and the darkening of the sky. He grimaced. Everything was going against him lately, even the weather.

Rounding a sharp curve, he saw an old man trudging along the muddy roadside with a fishing rod and tackle box. The man’s face was hidden beneath the wide brim of a frayed straw hat.

Beside him, ambled a short-haired mutt of a dog. It had once been a handsome creature. But now, age had grayed its fur, caused its legs to bow and its skin to fall in loose folds.

Joe drew alongside the old man who plodded steadily along as though he were unaware of any human presence. As the thickening mist engulfed them, Joe had an odd feeling of inexistence, or, at the least another dimension.

He banished this crazy thought. The old fellow probably had bad eyesight and didn’t see Joe. He had to be soaked to the skin and in need of a ride. Joe rolled down his window. The old man turned his vacant eyes on Joe, as if he could see through him. The weathered face held a pale, ghostly pallor. A rainy night and an old ghoul made Joe’s mouth so dry he was unable to speak. He struggled to banish the foolish idea and remember he had only stumbled upon an old man who was caught in a storm.

3 The man looked away, dismissing Joe’s presence. As he continued his lone trek into the mist, Joe let out the breath he had been holding and pressed the gas pedal with a panicked desire to hurry down the road. There was something strange about the old fellow. As Joe left him behind, he couldn’t shake the feeling he hadn’t seen the last of him.

No more than five miles down the road, the car began a familiar shake and rattle. Joe knew the screws in the carburetor often worked loose. Why hadn’t he checked them before he started this trip? He knew the answer. He was anxious to prove to himself he wasn’t the overly cautious and predictable person Tina accused him of being.

He pulled to the side of the road and opened the trunk. Rain pelted down in huge drops that stung his back and chilled him. Nothing indicated it was going to let up soon. Fishing around in his tool box, he made one quick discovery. He had neglected to put the short-handled screwdriver inside.

Without it, he couldn’t maneuver to reach the screws on the underside of the carburetor. He used his pocket knife to tighten them as best he could and got back in the car.

He started the engine. It jolted like a mechanical bull and died as he rounded a curve. It was raining harder now. He glanced down the road, hoping not to see the fisherman. How long since Joe left him? Ten minutes, perhaps? He shivered at the thought of having the apparition catch up with him.

An old, two-story house sat across the road. Dashing through the rain, he reached the cover of the porch. The house was in need of repair. The paint was peeling off the front door and the doorbell wires hung loose outside the buzzer. The front windows were criss-crossed in spider web veins of broken glass. Joe hoped someone still lived here. If it were vacant, he would be stuck here with a dead car. He knocked, shivering more from nerves than the chill of wet clothes. A sound of stirring came from within. The knob turned and an elderly woman peered through the crack. Her eyes went wide with surprise and Joe knew, soaked as he was, he must be quite a sight.

4 “My car’s broken down and I wondered if I could borrow a screwdriver. If you have any tools, that is,” he said.

The woman’s crinkled face broke into a kindly smile. “Why certainly, you poor thing. You’ve gotten all wet. Come inside and I’ll see what I can find you.”

Joe glanced at his muddy feet. “I better not. I’ll get your floor dirty.”

“Then pull your car into the garage. You can work on it out of the rain. I’ll show you where to find the tools.”

“Thanks. I really appreciate it.”

He raised the rickety garage door. The garage smelled musty, like the rot of an ancient forest. An old Buick was parked inside. Joe pulled alongside and got out, glad of shelter. Now, if only she had the right screwdriver.

The old woman appeared, carrying a cup of coffee. “Drink this. It will warm you up.” Joe sipped the hot drink gratefully.

She studied him a moment, and then said, “Now let me see. I have to think back to when I used to watch Walter work on the car.”

She squinted as she surveyed the garage. “I think you’ll find some screwdrivers in here. “ She pointed to a metal box that sat atop the workbench. Joe opened it and found a short- handled screwdriver that looked like it would do the job.

“Walter used to work on the car all the time. It was his pride and joy. I used to come out here and read the paper to him while he worked. If I were the jealous type, I would have taken a tire iron to that car.”

She tilted her head towards the Buick. “When he wasn’t fishing, he was working on that.”

5 Pausing, her face softened and a small smile parted her lips. Then she added softly, “I miss him a lot.” “Was Walter your husband?” “Yes. We were married forty-six years. It’s hard being parted after so long.” Joe felt a twinge of pain. Would he and Tina be together to celebrate forty-six years? He sighed. “It’s hard, no matter how you part. My wife moved out last month. We’ve only been married two years.” He was surprised to hear himself blurting this to a stranger.

As he maneuvered around the carburetor, she said, “Walter and I broke up once. We hadn’t been married very long.”

She gave a soft chuckle. “Nowadays, they’d say we were incompatible. Our dispositions were very different. Walter was a precise person. Everything had a place. It used to drive him crazy when I’d move things around and forget where I put them. Anyway I got tired of his constant harping about being organized and moved back with my parents. They weren’t surprised to see me. They thought I’d made a mistake marrying such an intolerant man in the first place.”

She paused, lost in the past.

Curious, Joe prodded. “You must have decided you could make it work.”

“We did. We missed each other terribly. All we could agree on was to work on the things that bothered us most and ignore the little things. It’s funny, after a few more years, those things didn’t seem important anymore.”

“I wish Tina and I could make things work. She complains I’m not spontaneous. But it drives me crazy when she does things without planning. Last month, she talked me into going on a weekend trip. It turned out there was a convention in the town she picked. We had to stay in a ratty hotel in a crummy part of town. I told her she should have let me handle the arrangements. I guess that was the last straw.”

6 She smiled softly. “Love sometimes means you have to accept someone and stop trying to change them. Goodness knows, Walter put up with my sloppy housekeeping for years.”

Joe tightened the last screw and rubbed the screwdriver across his jeans. The old woman was right. He had been trying to change Tina. Being an independent woman, she had resisted. He glanced at the old woman. She had a far-away, wistful look on her face again. “I wish I could touch Walter, kiss him one more time. I miss our life so much. I even miss that old gray dog he took fishing. I used to watch him come down that road while I did my knitting by the widow. He’d come in and tell me, ‘Aggie, I caught us some fish.’ He’d clean ‘em and I’d fry ‘em and that dog would wait for the scraps.”

“Old gray dog?”

“Yes. He was Walter’s most constant companion, if you don’t count that old straw hat.”

The hair rose on the back of Joe’s neck. The old man walking along the road had an old gray dog.

Was his ghost coming back to his beloved wife? He was seized with a desire to get away from here.

“I appreciate your loaning me the screwdriver. Will you take a little something for your trouble?” Joe spoke hurriedly as he reached for his billfold.

“Goodness, no. I just hope you and that young lady get back together. Don’t grow old alone. You have so much life to live together.”

“Thanks. I won’t, at least if she’ll have me.”

Joe jumped into the car and backed out of the garage. He could see the old woman looking down the road. She was waiting for Walter. She knew he was coming. In his rearview mirror, Joe saw the ghost trudging along, unaware of the soaking rain. He was heading for the house.

7 In less than a half hour, Joe made it to the nearest town. He stopped for gas at a truck stop. Still shaken from his near miss with the apparition, he decided another cup of coffee might calm his nerves.

The café had a homey atmosphere with checkered tablecloths and a counter where the country folk could sit elbow to elbow and talk. It made him long for Tina. He hadn’t talked to her since she left. He’d been too proud to admit he missed her. When he got home, he would give her a call.

He sat down at the counter and waited for the matronly woman who was serving food. She glanced his way and gave him a quizzical smile. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

“I did. There was an old man coming home with his dog from fishing at the lake. He had the strangest expression I’ve ever seen. It still gives me the creeps.”

“Oh you must mean old Walter,” she interrupted.

“Yes. That’s his name. He was heading back to his house to see his wife. Have you seen him since he died?”

The woman smiled. “Wait a minute. Old Walter may look like a ghost, but he ain’t one. At least, not yet. He’s just an old fellow who likes to go fishing.”

She paused. A sad look filled her eyes. “He ain’t been the same though, since his wife Aggie died.”

Connect with Author

Amazon

Goodreads

8 Just As Lost

By Patrick Brennan

The bus's red lights receded along the straight, wet street far faster than Will could run and if he wanted to get home, he'd have to chase them the whole way. Clouds shot from his mouth as he stopped, gasping beneath a fierce white light. He had nothing in his bank account and only a few coins in his wallet. The journey up had been more expensive than he'd thought, as had the cinema. At least he'd only had to pay for the one meal afterwards. Pizza with lumps of chicken on it. Chizza they called it. His phone was drained so he couldn't even call his parents ​ and tell them. Even if he could, it was much too far for them to drive at night. How would he get home now?

Will sat on a bench by the light speckled water and put his arm over his eyes and the tears pooled in the folds of his coat's slick material. The water sloshed and splashed passing by and in his blurry eye corner Will saw a shape beside him. He started and stood but it was only a statue and he sat again, trying to breathe and relax and think. There must be someone he could ask for help.

A guard walked by on the other side, thin faced and grey haired, hi-vis jacket and cap, arms behind his back. Will ran across the street through a puddle and the guard turned and extended his baton with a whish and said, “Stand back!”

“I need help,” said Will, still standing in the street. “I need to get home. I don't have any money. I missed the last bus...”

“People like you should stay at home,” said the guard, moving the baton through the air slowly, drawing shapes with the tip over Will's head. “You belong indoors or underground. You're not able for the city. You're not able to do what needs to be done.”

“You're supposed to help me,” said Will.

“Whatever I do is what I'm supposed to do,” said the guard. “Now stand still while I give you what you deserve.”

The guard drew back the baton to strike and Will ran. He ran and ran, splashing through the wet streets, and his trainers squelched and he nearly slipped on the footpath and rounded a corner and was looking behind him for the guard when he bumped into a group of lads. Some wore hoodies and some wore crisp shirts. The street lights made them all look yellow.

“Watch where you're going,” screamed one of them. He wore yellow trainers and a black shirt and mirrored sunglasses and his hair was all shaved except for a strip in the middle. “Look

9 at this arsehole, lads,” he went on. “I know a pussy when I smell one. You lads go on and I'll take care of our friend here.” The lads laughed and went on, leaving Will and the man with the funny hair staring down at him. The man reached into his pocket and Will waited for a flash of metal and there it was but it wasn't a knife, it was a lighter, and a cigarette, which the man lit. “I'm only messing with you Will. Didn't piss yourself, did you?”

Will looked at the man, trembling at his own image in his sunglasses. The man took them off, revealing small brown eyes, and Will knew him then. Ian, in the class below him back in school. A small and weedy lad, always giving back-answers to the teacher. Now he had six inches on Will, a mountain of tight muscle.

“I missed the last bus,” said Will. “I need to get home...”

“Thought you'd be working for NASA or something by now, living in a mansion,” said Ian, a perfect white smile dangling by his cigarette. “Great smart lad you were in school. Funny how things go isn't it?”

“I need to get home...”

“Oh, you still live down at home, do you? Isn't it grand for some. Still sucking mammy's tit.”

Will turned.

“Calm down, it's only a bit of banter.” Smoke through the nose. “See that red door down the street? The woman who runs it owes me a favour. Remember who helped you out though.” He winked, put his glasses back on, and headed back to his friends. As he walked from under the distorting streetlight, Will saw his trainers were not yellow but white, his shirt not black but red.

Rain pelted the street behind Will as he went through the red door to a dimly lit lobby. Behind the front desk was a middle aged woman with frizzy blonde hair, wearing a low cut green top, leaning over to look at a magazine. Her right arm was missing, a smooth stub peeking from the short sleeve.

“Ian Joyce sent me,” said Will. “He said you'd help me.”

Without taking her eyes from the magazine, she opened a drawer in the desk and handed him a key.

“Can I use your phone, please?” said Will. The woman, still looking only at her magazine, handed him a black telephone receiver from under the desk, dial tone buzzing, then put her hand back where the receiver's curly cord originated. Will realised she was offering to dial the number and called it out to her. His mother answered.

10 “I missed the last bus, Ma,” he said. “I'm staying up here for the night. I'll be home tomorrow...”

“Oh God Will. I told you not to go to the city. Something always goes wrong. You're not able for it...”

“I'm able for it,” said Will. “I'm fine. Stop worrying about me. I'm fine. I'll be home tomorrow.”

“Your father'll be worrying about you...”

“I'm not a child,” said Will. “Stop worrying about me. I'm able for it.”

Will handed the woman the receiver and she pointed with it to a barred door to her right, like in a prison. Behind the door a steep staircase led underground. Will looked into the cavernous depths, a draught bringing up a smell like someone cooking fish, and back at the woman, who still held the black receiver and looked at her magazine. He put his hand on the round, narrow railing by the wall inside the door, his only guide down through the dark. The metal was painfully cold and at places was covered in something sticky such that Will had to take his hand away and pat with his fingers a couple of inches onwards to test if it was yet clean. Endless steps and endless dark. He counted them. Twenty steps. Fifty steps. A hundred steps. He passed under a dim bulb which lit nothing but a tiny circle on the ceiling., and the lower he went the colder it became. After another hundred steps he banged his forehead on something hard. He groped and found a door handle and beneath it a hole for his key.

Light at last. A panelled window let in the monochrome glow of another orange streetlight; a room with many single beds in four rows. Only one bed was occupied, the one by the window, a large breathing mound under the covers, jostling and turning. Will chose the bed furthest from it, by the wall. He sighed as he lay on top of the wool blanket in his clothes, dangling his dirty trainers past the end of the bed, and closed his eyes.

Noises came from the occupied bed. Squealing and giggling. Moans. Quiet laughter. Will put his fingers in his ears, and tried to sleep.

He thought of Emma again, the girl he'd come up to the city to see. He'd known her in school and one night they got talking on Facebook and he'd asked if she wanted to go see a movie and she'd said yes. He'd come up to the city on the bus that morning but when he'd met Emma she was different, cold and distant and glassy eyed. She'd barely spoken except to say she didn't like whatever he'd been talking about and he followed her to the cinema and they watched a boring remake of some stupid movie and she cried almost all the way through and afterwards she said it was the movie had made her cry but it had been a stupid movie about someone

11 shooting aliens. Then she said she had to go and meet her friends and it was already getting dark then and Will had used up his phone's battery looking at the maps, figuring out which tram would take him back to the bus stop, and the maps on his phone had been wrong or outdated and soon the setting sun was pinking the stretched clouds and then it was dark and he was chasing the last bus and stuck here in the city forever.

He unplugged his ears. The noises in the far bed had changed. Suffocated gargles. Half-tempo sobbing. Muffled screams. He sat up and watched the shape move beneath the covers, shuddering and shivering. Then it twitched as if having seizure, and fell from the bed with a wet thud.

“Stay here with me,” it cried in a voice somehow familiar, as if from the end of a distant tunnel. “Stay here with me...”

Will turned to the wall, praying whatever it was would go away. A sound like a hundred bare feet on wood getting closer. Rolling along the floor.

It stopped by his bed.

Will opened his eyes. He had just stepped from the bus into the city. Sunlight glinted on the glass of the tall buildings. Emma was there, waiting for him, smiling with her little white teeth. She ran, her black ponytail swinging behind her, and hugged him, pressed her body against his, kissed him deeply.

“I'm sorry about before,” she said. “You know I want you...”

“I didn't know,” said Will.

“I want you.” She unzipped his trousers, placed her hand on him. She was so warm. “Stay with me forever...”

Will kissed her and held her tight and above, the glass in the buildings cracked and shattered and fell like shining raindrops.

Blinding white fluorescence. A deafening squeal like a pig getting slaughtered, inches from Will's ear. The woman from the front desk, carrying a baseball bat in her one hand, had burst in and switched on the light. Will jumped up, standing on the bed, hands against the moist wall. The mound lay on the floor beside him: it was like two limbless, headless torsos laying on top of each other, connected as conjoined twins, covered in pale, goose-pimpled flesh, like raw chicken. Dark mounds of hair covered each end. It breathed hard and smelled like a dog house. Towards him it was reaching a fleshy slab, like a hand with the fingers melted together, the needle-like “arm” behind it extending telescopically.

12 “I won't let you take him!” screamed the woman, with an Eastern European accent. The mound screamed and snorted and its fleshy protuberance latched to Will's mouth and nose so he couldn't breathe. The woman ran to the mound and pummelled it with her bat, swinging it straight down furiously. It screamed and unlatched from Will's face and rolled under his bed. Will felt cold slime on his face and jumped down and ran for the door, but it had locked behind the woman. He fumbled for his key but there was no keyhole. The flesh mound rolled out from under the bed into the woman's legs, nearly knocking her over, bleeding and squealing. The woman kept on hitting and hitting it and its red splashed across the wall and over the woman's face and clothes. The mound fell silent soon and twitched again and the woman kept on hitting it until a string of wet offal burst onto the floor and all was still. The woman, breathing heavily, threw the bat to the floor, where it landed with a flat thump. She brushed her hair, caked with blood, from her eyes.

“What the hell was that thing?” said Will. His stomach churned. The thing's long, thin arm lay flaccid, leaking red across what had been his pillow.

“Many have been trapped down here with it,” said the woman, “Many have wasted their lives before they saw it for what it was. It shows you what you want to see, but it takes something from you.”

She moved to another bed, free of blood and gore. “My name is Joan. Come over here. I need your help.”

Will sat on the bed beside Joan. She took out a compact and handed to him.

“Hold it up for me,” she said.

She took out a tissue and dabbed at her bloody face, directing Will to move the mirror up or down as he trembled.

“After you left me,” said Joan, “I realised you didn't belong here. Your friend must have sent you as a joke...”

“He's not my friend,” said Will.

“No? Then why are you here?”

“I don't want to be here,” said Will. “I hate it here. I got everything wrong. I don't know what anyone wants from me. I want to go back to how it was before.”

She took the compact back and moved to the other side of Will so she could put her arm around him. “I had a son,” she said. “His name was Armand. We found a note afterwards. He said the boys in his class were making fun of him for never having kissed a girl. He was fifteen

13 years old when he died. Fifteen. I think every day what I'd say to him if I could, other than that I love him.”

“What would you say?” said Will.

“I'd say, you'll never find your way back by following someone just as lost as you are.” She looked at the dead mound, at the blood streaking down the wall, and stood. “Come,” she said.

She unlocked the door and led Will back upstairs. The stairwell was bright now, flooded with white light, and the railing was bright and clean. The journey back up seemed much shorter.

Waiting in the lobby were Will's parents, his father and his mother, and they smiled when they saw him. They joked and hugged and kissed him and thanked Joan for looking after him.

“I wasn't ready,” said Will as he walked with his parents to the car. “I wasn't able. Everything went wrong.”

The streets were dry now, and a red dawn was breaking.

“Things go wrong for everyone,” said his father. “But they'll go right one day.”

“It's love that matters,” said his mother. “You'll never find your way back by following someone just as lost as you are.”

Connect with Author

Amazon

Goodreads

14 Little Monster

By Allan Walsh

The creature was hideous; dimples in its bulbous yellow eyes reminded little Jordan of his toy golf ball. Wart-ridden, black skin glistened over its body like an oil slick on a giant toad. Jordan stared at the thing's long arms, his eyes strayed down one of the creature's muscular biceps, across its trunk-like forearm to the huge hand -- knuckles dragging through the dirt, leaving a slimy black trail as the creature skulked along.

"I hope I don't get that one," he grumbled, flipping the cereal box over. Words seeped down the front of the packet -- 'Monster crunch, a little fiend in every box -- Collect all six.' He already had Godzuku and the Trull, he didn't care which of the others he got, just as long as it wasn't the Akuma. That one gave him the creeps. He slid his finger under the flap.

"Ouch!" He pulled away and looked at his finger. A line of crimson leached out from a paper cut. Jordan popped his finger into his mouth and sucked on the wound; the metallic taste of blood crept over his tongue. A moment later he tried again, this time tearing the flap open. He took the waxy packet from the box and pulled on either side. The seam gave way with a jolt and cereal burst into the air, clattering down to the tabletop. There it was. The Akuma. Just lying there on its back. Its googley, yellow eyes glaring up at him. A pocket sized collectors card lay beside it.

Jordan grabbed the figurine, fingers clamped tight, blood oozing from the slit in his finger and smearing over the Akuma. The little black monster flew through the air and crashed into the faded, floral wallpaper above the fireplace. It clacked off his mother's chipped, red vase, onto the mantle-piece and tumbled to the unpolished floorboards in front of the fire.

"Jordan! What are you doing?" his mother called from down the hall.

"Nothing."

"What was that noise?" she asked, clambering into the kitchen, hair wrapped around big pink rollers, matching pink, flannelette gown flapping at her ankles.

"I just dropped my toy monster. It was an accident," he said.

"Are you sure you just dropped it?" she asked.

"Swear on my mother's soul," he said with a devilish grin.

"Alright then, but you be more careful in future," she said, ruffling his long, brown fringe. "And don't forget to wash your hair later." She wiped her hand on her gown and eased

15 herself onto one of the chairs at the table. It creaked in protest, flakes of the aging, off-white paint falling to the floor. "I wish you wouldn't keep making a mess everywhere, you little monster, and what in hell is this?" she asked, picking up a small black figure from the tabletop.

Jordan's brow furrowed as he looked at the figure, then towards the fireplace, and back to his mother's hand.

"Where d'you get that from?"

"You left it on the table."

"Give it here," he said, grabbing the toy from her hand.

"Oi, don't snatch, it's rude." She picked up the cereal box and inspected it at arm’s length. "That one's certainly the ugliest of the six. What is it?"

Little Jordan picked up the collectors card. "It says 'The Akuma.’ Akuma is Japanese for 'Evil Devil.' Conjured by the K... Kur--"

"Here, give it to me," His mother said holding her hand out towards him. Jordan handed her the card.

"Conjured by the Kurai Wara Ningyo or Dark Straw Doll curse found in the 'Book of Bones.' This spell book was recently discovered in an air-locked chamber within the underwater ruins of Yonaguni, Japan." She rubbed her eyes and continued. "It is believed that a doll must be marked by the victim’s blood to bind them."

Jordan stood static, plastic monster in hand, wide eyes fixed upon it. Images clawing their way into his mind… the cut... the blood... the figure. His attention snapped back to his mother.

"What else does it say?"

"Hmm, let me see... Once the doll is bound to the victim the spell must be sealed, then the Akuma will come. It may be a day, it may be a week, but it will come." Her hand moved to cover her mouth. "Oohh, that doesn't sound very nice at all. Why do you like these horrible things so much, Jordan?"

Jordan didn't answer, he just stood there staring at the Akuma.

"You're looking very pale love, are you feeling alright?"

The question washed over him. "Huh? What?"

"Never mind, love, you just sit down and eat some breakfast, it'll do you good. Now I'm going to fix my hair."

16 Jordan watched his mother walk down the hallway into the bathroom and close the door behind her. He slumped into the chair, chin on chest, shoulders sagging, arms hanging loose at his sides. Almost didn't hear the hair-dryer grate out its harsh tune as the little monster dangled precariously from his fingers.

What am I worried about? It said the spell must be sealed. I don't even know the spell, how can it be sealed?

The figure slipped from his grasp and clacked to the floor. He squeezed his eyes shut, rubbing them with the heels of his palms.

And anyway, it's just a stupid myth about a stupid monster that nobody has even heard about.

He opened his eyes; the little toy sat on the table before him. A chill swept down his back. Jordan swiped at the figure with the back of his hand and it bounced across the floor.

"Stupid monster toy!" he said, glaring at the figure as flames crackled and lapped in the hearth behind. "How about I just get rid of you all together." Jordan leapt up, the wooden chair legs scraping across the boards. He stomped towards the toy and kicked it into the fire. The flames flared up, sparks crackling from the figure, blue smoke rolling up into the chimney. The Akuma bubbled and melted away, filling the room with an acrid scent.

"What are you doing now?" His mother's voice shrilled out. Jordan jumped and spun around to see his mother standing in the doorway -- hands on hips, foot tapping, the furry little pom-pom on her pink slipper bouncing up and down.

"Gees mum, you scared the life out of me."

"What are you doing, Jordan?" she asked again. Jordan's mouth twitched as he watched his mother cross the room to the fire place.

"Nothing... I mean... well, it just fell in the fire."

"What fell in the fire?" she said turning to face him.

"The monster toy."

"And I suppose it was another accident."

"I swear... on your soul," he said with his usual impish grin.

"You can't swear on my soul, it's not yours to give."

17 "Fine, I swear on my own soul."

"Jordan, who are you talking to?" a voice called down the hallway. Jordan snapped around, facing the hall. It was his mother's voice. He spun back to the fireplace, brow furrowed, sheen of sweat glistening in the firelight. There was nobody there, just an oily, black mark where she had been standing. The warmth drained from his cheeks, his legs wobbling under the weight of his fear. He stumbled into one of the kitchen chairs.

"Jordan?"

"Nobody, mum," he croaked.

A huge shadow loomed up behind him, smothering him in darkness. He froze -- stiff as a rabbit on a taxidermist's shelf. Fetid, dog-like breath rasped in his ears, hanging on his nape, prickling the back of his neck. Eyes down, round as old copper pennies, sore because he dare not blink; every grain of every floorboard seemed to leap out at him in ferocious detail. He swallowed. Tendrils of oily, black liquid bled past the chair legs, oozing towards his feet. Jordan's heart thumped, his eyes fled from the horror, drawn up to the collectors card on the table. The final sentence on the card screaming out to him.

"When the shadow of the Akuma falls upon you, whatever you do, DON'T TURN AROUND!"

Connect with Author

Amazon

Goodreads

18 The Summoning

Alex Knudsen By Charlotte Zang and ​ The beams from three cell phones illuminated the otherwise pitch-black forest preserve, while the shuffling of leaves and cracking of twigs echoed through the crisp night air. Taylor was lagging behind her two best friends, fidgeted, her eyes darting nervously around. “I’m not sure about this. This isn’t what I was thinking...” Mandi whirled round on her frumpish friend, aiming the blinding light at her. “Don’t you want them to get a dose of their own medicine?” Taylor shielded her eyes and nodded. “Yeah, but...” “Do you like being called, ‘Tubby Taylor’?” “No.” Mandi swung her cell phone in the direction of Felicity. “And, do you enjoy still smelling your singed hair even after we cut it all off?” “I didn’t say anything,” Felicity protested, bringing her free hand to her chest and then readjusting the bag over her shoulder. Mandi held up the Ouija board. “Well, this is how we do it.” She also had a bag strapped across her torso. “We summon Vepar, we get them what they deserve.” With a huff she spun around and marched ahead. Felicity looked at Taylor and gave her a reassuring smile. “It’ll be fun.” She shrugged and moved on. Taylor sighed and followed after them. She didn’t actually believe they would be summoning anything, but was willing to try anything that might bring an end to the torment of life at school, especially with a whole other year to get through after this one. The three had been friends since the sixth grade, joining ranks as if together their awkwardness and pimpled faces would keep the teasing at bay. It hadn’t really, but at least they had each other. They had started holding séances and trying to contact spirits through the Ouija board in middle school, but somehow the fad had stuck strong with Mandi, and Felicity was always eager to go along with whatever she said. That favorite past time became an obsession to Mandi and she started amassing books about the occult at a startling pace. Taylor questioned her once about it and received enough of an earful that she had gone back to what she did best, keep quiet. After what seemed like an hour of trudging through the forest, Mandi came to a sudden stop, pulled the bag over her head and let it fall to the hard dirt with a deadened thump. She opened her arms as wide as the smile on her face. “This is it.” Taylor and Felicity shared a nervous glance as they took in their surroundings, realizing just how far away they were from their neighborhood.

19 Mandi squatted down and started pulling candles out of her bag. Felicity joined her, unloading even more from hers, all blood red with symbols and words carved into them. They had worked on them the night before, when Felicity slept over, and at the time it had seemed really cool. But out here, in the middle of the woods, Felicity started to wonder if this was such a good idea. “What if someone sees us?” she asked of Mandi, dumping the candles out. Mandi scoffed. “Who? We’re like, miles away from anybody.” She handed Felicity a lighter. “Here, start lighting them. I’ll do the placements.” Taylor watched on, trying not to let the fear growing inside overtake her. With each new candle, the small clearing brightened and the need for the flashlights on their cell phones became unnecessary. “Come into the circle you goof,” Mandi playfully teased Taylor, who was still standing, hesitant, on the outskirts. Taylor shuffled in and helped hand candles off to Mandi. With all the candles lit, Mandi took a small hunting knife and opened it up. “You were serious?” Taylor asked, her eyebrows rising on her forehead. “You think we came all the way out here, carved all these candles, just as joke?” Mandi let out a huff and looked to Felicity, shaking her head in disbelief. “It’s the only way it’ll work, Taylor,” Felicity said, backing up the leader of their merry triangle. Mandi took in a deep breath and bit down on her bottom lip as she cut her palm. She then made a fist and let the blood drip down onto the blade. She stuck the tip of the knife into the cold earth and carved a large circle in front of herself, an intricate series of symbols were the final touches to the now sacred ground. “That probably isn’t sanitary,” Taylor joked, her lip half upturned. Mandi let out a little laugh at their goody-two-shoes friend. “Okay,” finally, she placed the Ouija board down on top of the circle of symbols and on top of that placed the planchette, “Taylor, you’re the scribe.” Mandi handed Taylor a pad of paper and a pen. “The planchette will move fast so I need you to pay close attention.” “Got it,” Taylor nodded dutifully, taking her place on the ground cross-legged, before the board. Mandi was sitting with her knees under her. Felicity sat cross-legged in front of the board, placing her first two fingers onto the planchette, also not believing they’d truly summon anything. Mandi smiled, the candlelight cast wicked flickers around the trees and their faces, and placed her fingers on the planchette as well, then closed her eyes. The forest seemed too still, as the three teenage girls paused in that moment. “I seek thee, Vepar. I invoke thee, Vepar. I seek thee, Vepar. I invoke thee, Vepar.” Mandi opened her eyes, 20 looking quickly to Felicity. Recalling herself, Felicity shook her head and began mimicking the words of her friend. Eventually Taylor joined in, realizing what they were supposed to be doing. A perfectly timed gust of wind blew through the trees, making Taylor shut her mouth. The other two fell silent a moment later as well, the candles flickering, but inexplicably staying lit through the strong blast. Mandi licked her lips as it died down and smiled at her two friends. “Are you with us, Vepar?” The planchette moved and the girls all took in a sharp breath. Taylor, hand shaking with a mix of excitement and fear, fumbled with the pen and held it, hovering in wait above the pad of paper in her lap. It moved slowly to the ‘Yes’. Felicity let out a girlish giggle. “Are you guys moving it...” Taylor asked. “Shh!” Mandi vehemently admonished her. “Show us yourself, for we are willing servants and masters both.” “What?” Taylor whispered, her eyebrows knitting together. Mandi cast her a look that Taylor had never seen before on her friends face. It was violent and coarse, and she recoiled from it. The planchette started moving. D-O-N-T-L-O-O-K “Don’t look,” Taylor read out to them, in case they had missed it. “Close your eyes,” Mandi ordered, quickly shutting hers. “How are we...?” “Shut up, Taylor, and close your eyes!” Mandi hoarsely whispered. Taylor closed her eyes and felt the most unsettling sensation she had ever felt. Something crawled up her back, like someone using their fingernails to mimic a spider crawling up it, and settled on her shoulders. Felicity was shaking, the shivers building, as fear took a hold. She had felt the same sensation up her back, but it was when a voice began to intone inside her head that she froze in terror at it. The voice was quickly whispering careful instructions. She gathered the words, as if they had been supplanted in her memory and the spilled out her mouth in gargled Latin, “No matter the horrors you see in front of you, do not dare to turn around. Should your will be great enough to see you thru, my unearthly talents will astound.” As the fingers dug into her shoulders, and damp breath clouded along the skin of her neck, Taylor shook her head. “Stop it you guys!” She flung her eyes open, but the other girls were still seated in front of her, eyes closed, their mouths slack and dropping open. “I told you not to look,” a wicked voice whispered inside Taylor’s head. She spun around to the noise that must have been behind her and let out a blood-curdling scream. The two other girls jolted out of their catatonia, and watched in shock as their friend Taylor’s body contorted and bent, like a paper doll being stashed away, her knees and legs and 21 shoulders, all her joints folding incorrectly into a compact size. Felicity was the first to let out a scream, as she witness her friend become balled into something not at all human, bones snapping, blood spilling from the flesh where the broken bones had cracked through. Mandi fell across the board, scrambling to control Felicity, pressing her hand to her mouth. “Stop! Stop, Felicity, stop!” Felicity struggled, twisting. “Don’t look behind you!” This last shout reminded Felicity of something and she became eerily still. The voice in her head had told her not to look, no matter what was happening in front of her, do not look over your shoulder, do not turn. If she didn’t turn, she would be fine. Taylor’s screams of pain were suddenly silenced, her eyes falling slack and all life draining from them. She fell from the place she had been suspended in the air with a disgusting slopping sound, the blood splattering from the impact onto her friends’ faces. Felicity let out a terrified groan, trying to swallow down the saliva and the salty tears that streamed down her face, now mixed with blood. Mandi was trying to remain calm, though her eyes were brimming with tears and her body shook like she had just stepped out of a deep freeze. Her teeth chattered inside her skull, no matter how hard she clenched her jaw shut. Mandi slowly lifted her head from the ground near Taylor; she couldn’t bring herself to fully look at the compact mass of torn flesh, broken bones and protruding intestines. She slowly turned and took in Felicity’s shoes, her legs, up to her torso and neck and face. And then she saw the shadow lurking at the edge of the candlelight. She involuntarily let out a hint of a sob, clawing her hands over her mouth to keep it from escaping. Felicity bent over, crying into the dirt at her feet. The putrid fumes from her mangled friend sent a race of vomit out of her mouth. The bile and chain store burrito splattered onto the Ouija board. When she looked up at Mandi, she saw her eyes were not on her, but looking just over her shoulder. Felicity had to physically dig her hands into the dirt to keep from turning. She stared into the horrified eyes of her friend, before they suddenly locked in on the unholy thing just over Mandi’s shoulder, turning her chest to stone. The ghoulish creature had arms that were too long, and sickly dark skin that shone in the candlelight. “What?” Mandi asked of her, suddenly noticing that Felicity wasn’t looking at her, but past her. “What is it?” Felicity still could not find breath. The creature had no face, or at least not one she could see, as it slowly tipped it’s long torso over the candles and into the circle, castling a tangled shadow. Mandi’s eyes caught once more on the figure behind Felicity, as it floated closer to the ring of candles. She could now make out how incredibly tall it was, the hair was long and dark, hanging down the shoulders. Mandi tipped to the side, looking around Felicity to the ground 22 where it walked, she could hear the slithering slide and saw the reflection of fish-like scales that glinted in the warm light. The figure had a strong serpent like tail, except that a flash of a fin caught and reflected and then was gone. “Do you see it, Felicity?” Felicity let out the tiniest of gurgles, as breath sucked into her mouth and down into her lungs. She did not; she only saw a disgusting creature, the skin mottled and shining with the oozing puss and scabs of blood, as it crawled on long legs and hands toward her friend. “Felicity!” Mandi whispered harshly. “Do you see it?” She tried to get Felicity’s attention, weaving her head back and forth in front of her friends face. Terrified, wide eyes finally registered Mandi, and they locked on her face. “Do you see it?” Mandi took a moment to look up at the figure behind Felicity, watching it now step, with human legs, over the candles and into the circle. Its skin was tattooed in patterns of scars and tar, hair hung over its face, but there was a glisten of the lips, curved ever so slightly, almost unnaturally, upward at the corners. Mandi looked once more at her friend. Felicity’s eyes looked up over her head now, up at the creature with the melted face with sunken eyes and putrefying flesh. A long thin tongue, the color of white mushrooms, hung from the slack mouth, which was too wide for the face, and inside the glint of jagged, broken teeth. She wanted to scream, she was about to scream when Mandi tilted her head up and back. “You looked,” the crazy, unhinged mouth of the creature said, spilling thick saliva down on Mandi’s face. The saliva transformed into worms that dug under her flesh, causing Mandi to shriek and flail and stand up from the dirt. She clawed at her face, brushing them to the earth, but they kept multiplying and digging under her skin. Mounds of white formed on her skin and burst with pus, as maggots came out, crawling over her face. She flailed, kicking at the candles, knocking them asunder and blinking them out. Felicity felt a bony hand come down on her shoulder and hot, rancid breath brush at her hair. She scrambled forward, rushing to her feet, slipping through her own vomit on the Ouija board and took off into the woods. Her panting breath came fast and loud, her heart thudding inside her ears, making up a kind of white noise that filled the air around her. She heard no cracks of footsteps behind her, but she ran, and ran. She fell, righted herself, pushing on, knowing she was going the wrong way, but also knowing she simply had to get away. Reaching out, she grabbed a hold of a tree, swung herself around and fell to the ground. Her breath pushed in and out, far too loud, but she could not control it. She clung to the tree, pressing her cheek into rigid bark, trying to stop her raging, burning lungs from needing air. She held it, paused, listening to the woods around her. The silence was deafening, and her eyes spread wide and wider still, until it seemed they would pop out of her skull. She could feel him, behind her the shadow figure of Vepar loomed.

23 Connect with Authors Charlotte Zang Amazon Charlotte Zang Goodreads Alex J. Knudsen Facebook Alex J. Knudsen Website

24 Vampire’s Delight By Caroline Peckham “The so-called 'vampire attacks' have escalated as Halloween approaches with more than ​ three people already hospitalised,” the newsreader's voice blared through the room. I was ironing a shirt. Scrap that. A hundred shirts. I'd offered to do it for little, old Mrs Havering in flat three after she'd fallen and broken her leg. My mother's words rang in my head. “You're a people pleaser, Elsie. One day, you'll ​ have nothing left to give of yourself.” The camera switched to a balding reporter, wrapped up in a heavy coat against the frosty night air. Beneath him were the words, Live from Druids Hollow. ​ My attention was sharply grabbed. Druids Hollow was only a few streets away from here. I'd played there as a kid. The road passed through an old, creepy woodland, winding through it like a viper. The reporter pointed to a bloody patch on the ground beyond a line of police tape. “Last night, the most vicious attack of all was reported. But after last year, when kids dressed up as clowns to scare people all around England, the 'vampire' sightings weren't taken seriously enough. What was once thought to be a prank, has escalated to violent attacks which are being termed 'barbaric' and 'animal-like.” My gut twisted uncomfortably. What kind of sicko dressed up as a vampire and went around biting people? One victim had reportedly lost a pint of blood. A whole pint! ​ ​ The iron hissed loudly as steam poured from it. My heart leapt toward my throat at the sound. Calm down, Elsie. My mobile phone rang making me jump again. What was the matter with me today? I sighed, taking it out of my jeans' pocket and finding Mrs Havering calling. Impatient much? I answered it, suppressing my frustration. “They're not done yet, Mrs Havering, I'll need another hour or so.” “Oh no, it's not that dear.” Her voice quavered a little and I immediately tensed. “What's wrong?” “I really don't want to cause a fuss, but there's a man outside my door. He's been trying to get in for some time, but when I called out to him, he didn't answer.”

25 My throat dried up. “Have you called the police?” “Yes, but the number was engaged. It's the strangest thing...” Static crackled in my ear and I turned my attention to the TV, frowning at the black and white message written across it, We are currently experiencing technical difficulties. Please ​ stand by. ​ “Have you tried, Eric?” I asked. He lived across the hall from me. I wasn't exactly the intimidating type with my 5'2 frame and skinny legs. And my light pink hair didn't help either. Eric was the obvious person to deal with this situation. “He's not picking up either,” Mrs Havering said. A loud bang sounded in the background and I heard the thump echo through my apartment. Her flat was directly below mine. One flight down. I swallowed hard as Mrs Havering released a whimper of fear. “Alright,” I sighed. “I'll see if I can do something.” “Thank you, Elsie. Really.” People pleaser! my mother's voice sang in my head. ​ Yeah, yeah. Remember to put that on my gravestone. I headed toward the door, my trainers thumping across the floorboards. At the last moment, I pivoted, heading for my small kitchen and rifling through the cutlery drawer for a knife. It might have been dramatic and totally illegal in England, but my Daddy had always told me, 'I'd rather you were in prison than dead, sweetheart'. ​ ​ I tucked the knife into my back pocket, feeling a little foolish as I headed for the door again. It's probably just the postman. Mrs Havering is always over-cautious. I crept into the hallway, not wanting to alert the man to my presence. Glancing at Eric's flat across the moonlit hallway, I made a decision. Hurrying to his door, I raised my knuckles and tapped softly. An inhuman screech sounded from downstairs and every hair on my body stood to attention. What the hell was that? I took out my phone, dialling Eric's number, my heart thumping in my ears. Come on, answer the phone you lazy, good-for-nothing, gym freak. “Yello?” he answered like a tool, sounding sleepy.

26 “Hey, let me in. I'm outside your flat,” I whispered. “Holy crap, is it finally happening? Are you here for a booty call?” Despite my rampant heart, I rolled my eyes. “Open the god-damn door,” I snarled through my teeth. “Easy baby. You need to put that anger to good use. Don't waste it.” The door wrenched open and he appeared in nothing but navy boxers, his chiselled chest taking up my entire view. I shoved him hard, stepping into his flat without asking. He smirked, coiling an arm around me. “Take it easy on me from the waist down, it was leg day today.” “Shut up,” I snarled. “Mrs Havering's in trouble. Someone's trying to break into her flat.” His sparkling, spearmint eyes dimmed in a flash. Eric was a fireman. And even if he was a cocky bastard most of the time, he was damn good at his job. His hand slid down to my butt, halting on the knife wedged half-way into my pocket. His brows raised. “Jesus, Elsie. What the hell are you doing carrying that around?” I shook him off, taking the knife out and keeping hold of it. “I thought I'd have to go down there alone.” “Well now you don't.” He snatched a black t-shirt discarded on the back of his sofa. As he pulled it on, I noticed the words Weights Before Dates stamped across the chest. ​ ​ Idiot. His place was OCD clean. Nothing like my apartment. He headed toward the door, pushing a hand through his dark brown locks and marching into the hallway. I followed, keeping the knife in my grip, feeling only a little foolish. But from the loud banging coming from downstairs, there was no way I was letting go of it. A thunderous crack announced Mrs Havering's door breaking and footsteps pounded into her flat. Eric shot me a concerned frown as we tore down the stairs two at a time. Mrs Havering screamed like a banshee. My heart slammed against my ribcage, over and over. I kept close to Eric, his body like a muscular wall which I was more than willing to hide behind. We fled across the landing and I spotted Mrs Havering's door wide open with a massive crack in the middle of it.

27 We stepped into her apartment which was freakishly silent. “Mrs Havering?” I whispered, much too quiet for her to hear. It was stupid, but I didn't want the intruder to hear me either. Eric shook his head at me, moving through the lounge full of chintzy pink furniture. He glanced into the kitchen and jerked backwards, grabbing hold of my arm and dragging me toward the closet. “Wh-” I tried to question him, but he slammed a hand to my mouth and pulled me into the cupboard. I was facing fur coats, pressed into them by Eric so Mrs Havering's cheap perfume consumed me. “Keep quiet,” Eric whispered. I was pressed so close to him in the small space. His back to mine. “What's going on?” I breathed, my palms growing slick around the knife now clamped in both of my hands. A snarling, growling noise sounded from the lounge and I shuddered, the hairs on the back of my neck prickling to attention. Eric remained silent, pressing me further back into the coats. I couldn't breathe, suddenly suffocated as he wedged me in place. I jabbed him in the ribs, trying to signal him to move back, but he didn't. A vile, sniffing sound carried from beyond the door. Oh god. Oh no. What's happening? My vision darkened as I couldn't draw breath. “Eric,” I begged, growing desperate, flailing against him. The door flew open and I stumbled back, gasping down air as Eric was hauled out of the closet. I turned, taking in the emaciated man holding Eric by the throat, then slamming him to the floor. Despite being half Eric's build, the guy was freakishly strong. Eric cried out, throwing heavy punches at the man as he fell atop him, drooling, baring fangs. Real life fangs. I screamed, darting forward to help, my legs willing me on. People pleaser! The attacker dug his fangs into Eric's neck and he wailed in pain, trying to throw him off.

28 But it was no good. His eyes locked with mine over the guy's shoulder. And all I could think was the word, vampire. ​ ​ “Eric!” I cried, diving forward, landing on the man's back, trying to wrestle him off. I still had the knife, but couldn't find the courage to use it. I can't stab someone! The 'vampire' jerked backwards, throwing me off of him. I stumbled, falling and hitting my head on the coffee table. My vision swam with stars as a dark shadow approached me. I'd dropped the blade. It was two feet away. I scrambled toward it but the vampire fell atop me, weighing me down. I reached desperately toward it, my nails scraping across the floorboards. Eric cried out in fury and something slammed into the vampire, the force resounding through my body. Blood leaked over the back of my neck. My blood? As it dripped to floorboards, I saw it was blackish-red and viscous. Not mine. It's not mine. The weight eased from me and I was dragged to my feet by Eric, gazing down at the dead vampire at our feet. Eric steadied me, his hands on me reassuring me I was still alive, still breathing. But the thing before us wasn't, the knife wedged between his shoulder blades, oozing black blood. “Whatever you do, don't turn around,” Eric breathed in my ear. But curiosity got the better of me and I couldn't help throwing a glance over my shoulder, giving me a direct view into the blue-tiled kitchen. Mrs Havering was on the floor, her head dismembered from her body. I screamed, pressing back into Eric's shoulder, horror writhing through my veins. The vampire groaned and my eyes snapped back to it in alarm. “It's not dead,” I gasped as Eric moved forward to finish the job. Before he got there, the vampire leapt to its feet, wrenching the blade from its own back. In moments, the wound was gone, healing over as if it had never been there. Not possible. Eric paused, his shoulders tensing. “Holy crap – run!” He took my hand, dragging me back into the hallway. Footsteps pursued us and a horrible shriek dug into my eardrums.

29 We were halfway up the stairs before fingers snatched my ankle. I cried out, almost falling, but Eric hauled me upright, practically carrying me as we fled back into his apartment and slammed the door. Eric hurried to his sofa, pushing it up against the door with a heavy thud. The vampire collided with the door on the other side with a grunt of fury. I was shaking from head to toe, unable to banish the image of Mrs Havering's mangled body from my mind. Shock was taking hold of me. Eric cupped my cheek, his mint-green eyes meeting mine. “It's alright, Elsie. Breathe.” I did as he said, taking a shaky breath, my mind kicking back into gear. “Come on, we have to climb out the window.” Eric moved across the room, wrenching up the window and holding out a hand to me. I took it and he helped me onto the landing of a small, metal fire escape. I froze, standing next to him, the icy wind whipping around us. The whole street was screaming. Bodies were strewn across the ground. Vampires were bent over corpses, feasting on their bodies. Eric's hand locked around mine as my heart beat out of tune. A loud bang sounded as the front door nearly gave in from the vampire's weight. “What do we do?” I gazed up at Eric, my mouth as dry as paper. He shut the window behind us, gazing up at the shining moon. “My car's parked down on the street. See it?” He pointed to a black Land Rover outside the block of flats, four floors down and a twenty foot run away. I nodded and he gazed back into his flat. “I have to get my keys.” He turned, bending low as he hauled the window back up and stepped inside. I watched, my hands balled into fists with anxiety as he fled across the room, back to the door where a row of keys were hanging on hooks beside it. He snatched a bunch and the sofa flew forward as the door gave in. The vampire sped into the room, but Eric was already sprinting back toward me. I cried out for him to hurry and he bent low, diving awkwardly through the window. The vampire caught his ankles, dragging him back. I snatched the keys from Eric's hands and he gave me a wide-eyed look of horror. I pressed the keys between my fingers, wielding them like knuckle dusters as I slammed them into the vampire's head. It screeched, falling back and I helped Eric through the window, slamming it shut behind him, my pulse pounding through my skull.

30 I dropped onto the first rung of the ladder, hurrying down it as fast as I could and Eric promptly followed. The window smashed, showering shards of glass over us. I quickened my pace, my feet meeting tarmac. Vampires lifted their heads from the surrounding corpses, their bloodshot eyes narrowing on us. I ran toward the car with Eric hot on my heels, pressing the button on the keys to unlock it. I climbed into the driver's side, pushing the key into the ignition as Eric jumped into the passenger seat. “Go!” he roared as a vampire collided with his door. The engine roared to life and I pressed my foot to the accelerator, slamming the stick into gear. I wound through the bodies, trying to avoid them, even though they were beyond help. Eric gazed at me and I glanced at him with a frown, questioning his expression. “I thought you were gonna leave me,” he choked out. I blew out a breath, taking a sharp turn onto the next street, the street lamps flickering. “I guess I'm a people pleaser.” He leant toward me, pressing his warm mouth to my cheek, holding my head in place. “Well thank god for that.”

Connect with Author Amazon Goodreads

31

32 Spider Spider By Bea Cannon

The black and yellow orb weaver chose the spot to build her web by instinct. It was secluded and away from wind and weather, and there were plenty of small flying creatures nearby, so it was a good location. She laid her eggs, ensconced them within silk and attached the egg sac near the center of her web, and then settled comfortably in. It was growing late in the year, fall had arrived and she would spend the rest of her short life hanging upside down in her web, capturing insects for food and guarding her eggs as long as she could. It was all the mothering her young would get, as she would die with the first hard frost, leaving her egg sac to fate. At least that was the way it was supposed to go. The morning after the spider built her home across the sidelight and partially on the front door of the house in the curve of the street, the door opened ripping the web apart, and a woman stepped out. “Ah crap!” she cried as the ends of the broken web stuck to her face and caught in her hair. She waved her hands in front of her, sputtering and pulling at the gossamer strands. The woman caught a movement out the corner of her eye and turned around, spotting the large spider as she swung down from what was left of the web on a strand of silk. The woman let loose a loud shriek and hopped down from the porch. She grabbed up her garden hose from its container, turned on the water full blast and let loose at the hapless spider. The orb weaver skittered around, unsuccessfully trying to avoid the hard blast. The water washed parts of her broken web and her egg sac from the porch, and knocked the spider onto the ground behind the boxwood bush beside the front steps. Spotting the egg sac where it landed on the bottom step, the woman crushed it under her foot and kicked it off into the shrubbery. She watched the spider to see if it was going to move, and when she saw one of its legs twitch, she tore into the house and came back out with a spray can, which she used to thoroughly drench the spot where the spider went down. Then she glanced at her watch and muttered a curse upon seeing she was running late. She hastily shoved the spray can behind a porch column, jumped into her car and took off for work. Two minutes after the woman left, leaves at the edge of the bush stirred, and the orb weaver pulled herself out from where she had hidden underneath the bush, inching over the poisoned soil. She crawled laboriously up the red brick beside the steps, and onto the porch, coming to rest next to the spray can, where she sat recovering. She should have died beneath the boxwood because the woman had soaked the branches,

33 and the spray poured down on her. However, this orb weaver had a unique genetic make-up, part of which kicked in back in the spring when she was tiny and just out of the egg sac. At that time, the woman sprayed her garden, and a tiny droplet of the same type of spray landed on her. It hurt but not only had she survived, she’d also gained a certain amount of immunity. After that incident, being a denizen of the garden subjected her to a variety of chemicals, including insecticides and fertilizers. The insecticides only caused her some momentary respiratory issues, and she’d gotten over them. The fertilizers hadn’t been a problem at all, as she had crawled away without any ill effects. It all served to toughen her. Still, she would have died with the first frost like any ordinary orb weaver if it hadn’t been for this last, more pervasive spraying. She felt pain in one pair of her legs and her abdomen but it gradually dissipated, and again, she did not die. Instead, the ingredients worked into her body and the rest of her singular genes activated, and she became more than a simple creature of instincts. She became cognizant - and much more. She gazed down at her ruined web and broken egg sac. Her hard work and preparations for the next generation lay crushed on the ground. She could rebuild her web but it was at the end of the season and there was no more time for mating and procuring fertilized eggs. Under ordinary conditions, such a disaster as this would terminate the lineage of this particular spider because while orb weavers usually procreated twice during their time, she had gotten a late start so this was her first - and only - batch of eggs. She would die at first frost without progeny. Except her new changes negated that scenario. She looked within herself, getting an understanding of what it meant, how she could retain the existence that she wanted to continue. Ordinarily, the orb weaver was a peaceful creature who went about her way avoiding conflict. She generally ran from danger, hiding until such disruptions went away. And she was not a hunter as she waited for food to fly into her web. But, this behavior no longer applied to her. She made her plans. First, she went down to the ground where her egg sac lay and carefully chewed the soggy, mud covered silk open. She examined the unhatched young within and discovered six eggs had survived. Upon further assessment, she determined three - one male and two females - were the same as she was. The others, all females, were ordinary orb weavers. These three she ate. The others she attached to herself with her spinnerets and crawled back up. Her entire life had been lived within the yard and garden surrounding the place where she’d built her web, and only now did she understand that the structure to which she had attached her web was the abode of the gigantic being who crushed her egg sac. Until today, it would never have struck her to go inside. Indeed, until today, she didn’t know it was an abode. Now, she ​ searched the porch until she found a place over the door that was just large enough to accommodate her body and the three tiny eggs attached. She went through the crack and into the house.

34 She surveyed the place from atop the doorsill, and then crawled down the wall and climbed into a large potted plant that stood near the door. Her old instincts tried to lead her into making a web within the spiky leaves but she ignored this. She didn’t sense any danger or that the house had any occupants at the moment so she carefully wrapped her three eggs into a new sac and attached it on the underside of a lower leaf of the plant. Then, she went exploring throughout the house. She found the scent of the woman everywhere she went but it was heaviest in one particular place so she crawled up on a soft surface, the one with the strongest scent, and spent some time in there making her preparations. Hungry once she finished, she went looking to see what food might be available. She caught seven beetles and two house spiders, which she killed. She ate the spiders and two of the beetles and folded the rest into webbing and took them back to the flowerpot for later consumption. Then she dug a burrow and waited. A few hours later, the woman returned. She went about her normal routine upon getting home from work, and after cooking and eating her dinner, she sat at her computer for a while chatting with friends on social media, and playing a game, then she went to her bedroom where she undressed, went into her bathroom and showered. Then she got into bed and as was her habit, propped herself up with pillows and switched on the bedroom TV. Tonight, the bed was unusually comfortable, and a few minutes later, she dozed off. A while later she snapped awake. She felt constricted and figured she had wound herself up in her bedding. She could hear the TV still going but when she tried pull her arms out and reach for the remote to turn it off, she couldn’t move. She tried to sit up and couldn’t. Fear seeped into her brain. Had she had a stroke? She tried to call out but there was something over her mouth hampering her voice. Then she felt the web the spider had spent the morning and afternoon carefully spinning to resemble her bedding. It had slowly contracted around her as she slept. The only things not covered were her eyes and nose. The woman rolled her eyes downward and in the flickering light from the TV set, saw part of the gossamer strands that encased her. Her eyes frantically darted around and caught a motion above her. The large orb weaver swung down from above and onto her chest where it sat and stared at her. She was still trying to scream as the spider rushed forward. It scrambled up one of her nostrils, and into her brain. The next morning, the spider, having learned everything she needed to know from consuming certain areas of the woman’s brain, kept the body alive and used it and its voice to call in and resign the woman’s job. In two weeks, the orb weaver’s eggs hatched. The hatchlings were not quite as astute as their mother, but the ones that didn’t die improved when she used the spider spray on them. She spent the winter educating them in the ways of humans. She used the shell of the woman effectively, handling everything on line and turning 35 away visitors, and by early spring, the thousands of her children and grandchildren that inherited her genetics, went forth into the world. In due course, humans learned they were no longer the top predator.

About Bea Cannon

Bea lives in Charlotte, NC.

In addition to writing science fiction and fantasy (and a smidgen of horror) she enjoys a good read, working crossword puzzles, walking, drawing, and painting.

She is a retired electronics technician and admits to having worked at a variety of other jobs during her life, including being a dishwasher, a busgirl, a house maid, a motel/hotel maid, working in a fast-food joint, a telephone operator, and a store clerk. There have been other, not-so-glamorous jobs, including picking cotton.

She also daydreams a lot.

Read her interview Here

Connect with Author

Amazon Facebook Goodreads Twitter

36 Premonition By Kayla Krantz As a young woman, I’ve come to understand that there are universal truths that all girls follow. They’re not spoken out loud, not all the time, but once in a while I’ll hear the warnings: try not to walk outside once it’s dark, don’t walk alone, don’t walk anywhere isolating. They’re all the classic horror movie mantras, but life happens and who has time to read the warning labels? Not me. I’m rushing—as I usually am—to get to class after getting out of work. My second job to be precise. Being a college student in the Big Apple is a lot more tiring than all the happy-ending movies I’ve ever seen have made it seem. I work two jobs and go to school in between. I don’t sleep. It’s been so long that I’ve almost forgotten that it exists as a daily part of some people’s routine. The last time I’ve been in my bed was three days ago. There are bags under my eyes that even the best concealer can’t hide, but it doesn’t bother me. I gave up on being beautiful around the same time that I stopped sleeping. In a way, I move through life like a zombie—virtually dead on the inside, pursed onward by only one goal. No. My goal is not brains, it’s something much harder to possess—success—and I’ll avoid sleeping for years if it means I actually achieve it. So, when I make the clumsy mistake of turning down an alley well after sunset, I don’t think twice about the choice I’ve made until it becomes clear that it’s the wrong one. Even though I know it’s in my mind, the air around me suddenly feels as if it’s ten degrees colder. I wrap my arms across my chest and shuffle just a bit faster, but it doesn’t seem as if I’ve moved. The end of the alley looks to be as far away now as it had been a moment before. I pause and glance over my shoulder, at the light from the main road I had exited a minute before. I stand there, contemplating my options. I try to think of what a girl in a horror movie would do, knowing that a smart girl would do the opposite. The horror girl would go down the alley, possibly calling out “hello” along the way. I smile and turn back toward the light, laughing at my own foolish decision. But, when I take a step, I do not move forward. It’s like I’m glued to the spot, trapped between the darkness of the alley and the light of freedom. I move my foot again, convinced that I’m so tired I never tried to move to begin with, but the results are the same. I’m still here, trapped in the watery light in the alley. I open my mouth, ready to scream from fear or frustration—I really can’t tell at this point—when an icy breeze ghosts across the side of my face and a voice whispers in my ear “Whatever you do, don’t turn around.” I freeze instantly, somewhat from surprise, but mostly because I have the sinking feeling in my stomach that I’m not alone. There’s someone, something, here with me, and whatever it is, ​ ​ it isn’t human. Icy fingers snake over my shoulder, up the side of my neck, and cup my jaw, but I

37 still don’t move. I think about attempting to run, to bolt down the dark half of the alley, and moving on with the rest of my night, but my heart is racing, the blood pumping too furiously in my ears. For most people, adrenaline boosts them. For me, it turns out it makes me complacent. “You want to be free, don’t you?” the eerie voice whispers in my ear. Very slowly, I bob my head up and down, tendrils of black hair spilling out of my messy bun. The fingers move again, trailing in the opposite direction they had first traveled. “Then you must listen to me and not look back. Only forward.” All I can think about is how much I want to get out of the alley, but I’m still too petrified to do much besides blink and wait for the creature to speak again. “Move toward the light. Stay in the light. Hurry home and never look back,” the voice ​ whispers, and the fingers disappear, but I have the feeling that the creature is still lurking behind me, watching me. I’m too afraid to look back and see. What would happen if I did look back? If I saw the ​ ​ ​ ​ icy creature beside me? I am absolutely insane, I think and raise a shaking hand to my forehead. ​ ​ I just need sleep is all. The skin on my face is ice cold. ​ “Go now!” the voice urges, desperation hardening the raspy tone. I don’t need to be told a third time. My foot lifts and moves away from the spot I had been frozen too. Trotting at first, it’s not long before I’m full blow running out of the mouth of the alley, gaining the looks of everyone around me. I hardly notice. I’m tempted to look over my shoulder, to see what I left behind, but there’s a niggling in the pit of my stomach that warns against it. I bump into a man just as I begin to slow my run and turn toward him slightly. “I’m sorry!” He looks at me, shrugs his shoulders, and continues onward without a word. When I realize he’s headed toward the alley I just ran from, I reach out, my fingers grasping into the rough fabric of his jacket over his elbow, and he stops, looking at me through eyes narrowed in suspicion. I pull my hand away quickly as I say, “I’m sorry again, but don’t…” I stop, trying to gather myself. What can I tell this man? Don’t go in the alley because there’s a ghost in there? He’ll laugh in my face. The man smiles for a second, and I think Here it comes but he doesn’t speak. The smile is ​ ​ one of genuine irritation. He scoffs after a minute of silence and continues walking onward, set on his path. I take in a breath, feeling as if I’m drowning without water, and consider going after him, but I don’t want to even risk a glance in the direction of the alley. ​ ​ So, I do the only thing I can do. I walk away. A second later, I hear the blast of a gun, the sound echoing down the blackness of the alley, and I hold a hand over my heart, knowing something I shouldn’t.

38 The creature in the alley had saved my life.

About Kayla Krantz

Proud author responsible for Dead by Morning and The Council, fascinated by the dark and macabre. Stephen King is her all time inspiration mixed in with a little bit of Eminem and some faint remnants of the works of Edgar Allen Poe. When she began writing, she started in horror but it somehow drifted into thriller. She loves the 1988 movie Heathers. She was born and raised in Michigan but traveled across the country to where she currently resides in Texas.

She has ideas for books in many genres that she hopes to write and publish in the future.

Read her interview Here

Connect with Author

Amazon Facebook Goodreads Twitter Website

39 The Black Queen By Olga Werby

I'm a seed. Plant me.

All night it called. A rat came by to investigate. It sniffed the small smooth sphere, but the object didn't smell like a seed or food of any kind. The rat scurried away.

I'm a seed. Plant me.

The cat passed by without even a glance.

A family of raccoons stopped by. Poked. Left.

The sun came up.

A fractional mind crawled over. It tasted and touched, walked about and left a pheromone trail for others to follow. Soon dozens of fractional minds surrounded the sphere. By this time, the object grew to the size of a very large marble.

I'm a seed. Plant me. It kept repeating to them, flaunting itself for them. And they ​ gathered in greater and greater numbers to roll the sphere underground.

Just about the time small sinuous lines started to appear of its surface, a big black bird flapped over.

I'm a seed. Plant me. The sphere called to the raven. ​

The bird prodded the object, which was now the size of a tennis ball, with its beak. It wasn't food, like it claimed. And it wasn't one of those shiny, sparkly objects that the bird liked so much. It was dull. The bird gave it another peck and left the sphere for the ants— it wasn't worth the trouble.

The ants worked hard, but the sphere kept growing, making transport to the colony's underground nest difficult. The creatures possessed intelligence, but they were not the ones. Their selfishness was too distributed. The sphere swelled farther. But the ants didn't care—once they made the decision to acquire the object, they simply increased the labor resource to accomplish the task, accommodating the extra bulk.

40 I'm a seed. Plant me. The sphere sung. ​

Other minds came. The sphere inflated to the size of softball, covering its surface with intricate patterns, vaunting complexity.

***

"What's that?" Missy said pointing to a beautiful black ball under a bush. Her babysitter always told her not to pick up strange objects on the playground. Sometimes, bad people left needles and broken bottles under the benches or hid pipes for smoking drugs in the roots of the plants growing around the fence. Missy was very aware of those bad things, there were always a few in the dark corners of the playground, especially after the weekend. But this thing didn't look bad. It looked beautiful.

"What?" Daisy asked, running over to her friend. The girls crouched at the back side of the sand box and looked. The pretty ball was swarming with ants.

"I think they are trying to take it," Missy said.

"The ants? Why would they want it?"

"I think it is a seed and they are trying to plant it," Missy said. She was very sure that this is what it was.

As the girls looked, the sphere grew larger and new, deeper lines appeared on its surface right in front of their eyes.

"It is so beautiful," Daisy said. "How do we get the ants off?" The girls made the decision to keep the ball as soon as they saw it. It wanted them to keep it, it called to them.

"We can pour water on it," Missy suggested.

They took one of their sand buckets and filled it up at the water fountain. Together, they carried it over to the bushes and spilled it all over the ants.

"There are still ants on it," Daisy said. She didn't really like things that crawled.

"We can use more water," Missy said and ran to refill their bucket. The girls worked hard to wash away all of the ants from the sphere. When they deemed it clear of insects, they brought

41 the sphere over to the sand castle they were building earlier and played with it. It was the queen of their magical kingdom. They built it a big tower in which it wanted to live. It liked it deep in the sand.

By the time Missy's babysitter called for her to go home, the sphere grew to be the size of a basketball. It was still black with thousands of intersecting lines making the most lovely patterns, but it weighed the same as when the girls first found it. Missy dug it out and put it her Little Princess backpack to take home. She promised Daisy that they would play with the Black Queen tomorrow and went home.

***

All over the Solar System, the spheres settled onto the surface of solid bodies orbiting an average sized star. They called over and over again to the minds of the receptive natives:

I'm a seed. Plant me.

...and waited.

***

"What do you have there?" Missy's dad, Terry, saw her daughter playing with a large black ball. The girl was unusually quiet, sitting, mattering to herself in the corner of the kitchen.

"The Black Queen," the girl said, rolling the sphere on her lap. "It thinks it's just a seed, but it is the Queen of All Seeds. And it is black and beautiful," Missy explained.

Terry came over. The object on his daughter's lap was impressive. It was covered with designs— some looked like convoluted decorations engraved on its surface, some appeared more like hieroglyphic writing. The material was black and highly polished, but not shiny— jet black.

"Can I see?" he asked his daughter and took the sphere from her.

"Dear? Did you see this sphere Missy is playing with?" he called to his wife. But she was busy somewhere and didn't hear him. "Where did you get this thing, Missy?"

"Daisy and I found on it on the playground," the girl said.

Terry took the sphere closer to a light. It was an amazing thing, exquisite it its detail, a

42 work of a master artist, a technical wonder.

"Someone must have lost it," Terry said. "No one would throw a thing like this away. We have to find who this object belongs to and give it back," he told Missy.

"It's mine!" The girl cried and jumped up to try and grab it out of her dad's hands. "It said it was mine. It told me to plant it."

"Missy, this is a very valuable object."

"I know. That's why it is the Black Queen," the girl said.

"We have to give it back, honey. We can't keep it. The person who lost it must be looking for it right now. If you lost your Sleepy Bear," Terri tried to reason with his daughter, "wouldn't you want a person who found it to give it back?"

Sleepy Bear lived on Missy's bed. He never left home, even to go to grandma's. There was no way for him to get lost, but Missy still didn't like the idea. She ran to her bedroom to check that Sleepy Bear was still where he was supposed to be.

Terry took the sphere to his desk and shone the table lamp on it. It looked like it was absorbing the light. It was hard and yet velvety to the touch. He tried to smell it, it had no scent. Terry wasn't sure if it was art or some historical artifact from a museum. Or perhaps it was stolen form some science fiction movie set? He considered calling the police, but it was late and Terry didn't want to have to deal with all of the questions and paperwork that would be involved this evening. He'd do it tomorrow. Now he just wanted to take his time and examine the artifact, photograph it with his cell phone, share the images with a few of his buddies online. It was such an extraordinary object.

He ran his fingers along one of the prominent lines on its surface. It felt like the sphere was vibrating lightly under his touch. And Terry could swear that there was a sparkle or internal glow that flashed along some of the designs once in a while, always when he was looking away.

For the next hour or so, until he had to put Missy to bed, Terry played with the Black Queen. Missy sat by him and quietly observed his experiments. Terry measured the sphere's diameter with tape several times, each time getting a different result. Then he weighed it on a kitchen scale. At least that measurement remained constant. He took lots of pictures. Each time he thought he completed documenting the surface area design, he noticed another feature that he missed and had to start over.

43

"So it was just lying in the bushes?" he asked his daughter. He would have to give details of the find to the police tomorrow, but it seemed unreasonable to give the artifact to the police. Terry was perfectly capable of holding on to the sphere until...if the proper ownership was established...without a doubt. He decided to take a few hours from work and go first thing to the local station.

"It was covered by ants, but Daisy and I washed it," Missy said.

"You got this thing wet?" Terry was horrified. "What else did you do with it?"

"We buried it in the sand and played with it. Don't worry, Daddy," Missy said when she saw the expression on her dad's face. "It wants to be buried deep in the ground. It told us so."

"I see." Terry rotated the sphere to see if there was any damage from the rough play that he might have missed in his examination. The sphere seemed to be in perfect condition, no scratches, no dings. The girls didn't hurt it. That was a relief. He didn't want to be responsible for any damage. This thing must be priceless. Surely there would be a reward for recovering it. He promised himself to do a bit of online research before going to bed. They could put the money into Missy's college fund...if they ever found the true owner. The sphere felt so good, so natural in his hands.

"Can I kiss the Black Queen goodnight before bed?" Missy asked.

"Uh?"

"Kiss it goodnight," Missy said again. Her dad seemed distracted. "It wants to sleep in the ground."

"What? No, no. We will keep it right here on the desk. It is safe here until tomorrow morning." Terry stood up and secured the sphere on the table, placing books and a stapler around its sides to keep it from rolling off. Just in case. "Come, honey. It's time to get you ready for ​ bed."

He picked up his daughter and took her to get a bath and then changed for bed. Sleepy Bear was happily dangling from his daughter's hand.

***

44 In the dark, another mind approached. It liked playing with balls. It was curious and friendly. It belonged to the pack of other minds that lived in this dwelling.

I'm a seed. Plant me. The sphere demanded. ​

It sniffed and licked it. The sphere grew in size and complexity again. It was ready to be planted. It called to the mind again.

Spike, the family dog, didn't like the ball resting on his master's desk. It didn't smell and it didn't taste of anything. Anything at all. It was blank. But it wanted something. It wanted to be put away outside. Spike didn't like it in the house.

The dog nudged the sphere from the table and it rolled down onto the carpet below. It was a size of a beach ball. It didn't bounce, but did land lightly, making hardly a sound.

Spike rolled the ball towards its doggie door to the garden. But try as he might, the thing didn't fit.

Missy woke up.

I'm a seed. Plant me. The sphere ordered the girl. ​

She tiptoed downstairs. Spike licked her when she came into the kitchen. Missy didn't like when he didn't that.

"Bad dog, Spike. Bad dog," she chided him in a whisper. Spike nuzzled her again in an apology. "Okay, okay. I forgive you." Missy wiped the doggy spit off her face. Yak.

She went to investigate the Black Queen. She had grown to be big and even more beautiful.

I'm a seed. Plant me.

"You got too fat to fit through Spike's door," complained Missy.

I'm a seed. Plant me. The Black Queen was so bossy. ​

"Okay. I will open the people's door. But only for a second," Missy said. She pulled a stepping stool over to the kitchen door and climbed up. The lock was easy to open, Missy did it

45 before. Just turn and click. She moved the stool back and cracked open the door to the garden. Spike ran outside.

"Come back and help me get the Black Queen out," Missy called after him.

Together, they rolled the ball towards the back of the garden, where Missy's mom planted tomatoes, and where the ground was soft and easy to dig.

"I'm going back to bed now," Missy told the Black Queen and Spike. "You have to do the rest yourselves." She turned and went back to the house and her bed. Sleepy Bear somehow managed to get left behind in the garden.

I'm a seed. Plant me.

Spike started to dig. He worked hard. The sphere was very big now and the hole needed to be large.

When he was done, Spike went back into the house. He felt he needed to guard the house extra hard this night, but he didn’t want to look back at that thing. Now that it was done, there was no need to turn around…ever.

***

In the ground, the sphere rotated. Faster and faster. Soon it was deep enough to sprout. The payload worked swiftly, killing off all the minds that found the sphere too strong to resist and yet too curious to leave alone.

By morning, its mission was complete. The planet was disinfected, making way for the next intelligence to awake and hear its call. Perhaps the next one…

***

I'm a seed. Plant me.

I'm a seed. Plant me.

Spheres called and called, their distant masters waiting and hoping.

And on one of the Jupiter's moon, a mind answered. It felt for the sphere through a thick

46 blanket of ice. The sphere waited, calling to the mind occasionally, keeping it interested and curious, reminding it of its existence. Soon, oh so soon, the mind will find it and this sphere will be able to complete its mission…one way or another.

About Olga Werby

I'm interested in humanistic science fiction. What makes us human? How do we learn empathy for others who are very different from us? How do we explore ideas of social justice and human rights in an inspiring and emotionally powerful way? How can science and science fiction about the near and far future inform our decisions today? How can we use stories to help us understand cognitive differences -- autism, schizophrenia, genius, sensory impairment, body differences, social and psychological isolation?

Read her Interview Here

Connect with Author

Amazon Facebook Goodreads Twitter Website

47 Remember! By Colin Anders Brodd

You awaken in the dark. Where are you? How did you get here? You don't remember. Why don't you remember? You must try to think! Remember!

There is a throbbing in your temples, your eyes hurt as if you have had them open too long in dim light – but nay, did you not just awaken? In truth, your whole head hurts. Why? Did you hit your head? Is that why you were unconscious? Why you cannot remember? What is that smell?

You feel around in the darkness, and feel that you are still wearing your chainmail byrnie, still have your sword belted on, still have your lindenwood shield near your left arm. Were you wearing a helm? You cannot remember. You do not even really remember the arms and armor you bear, except in a blurry, instinctive way – your hand reached for the hilt of your sword almost without thought, as if it were a movement made so many times as to be habit. You must be a warrior of some sort, but you just cannot remember!

As your eyes adjust, you see that it is not completely dark where you are. You're in a cave. A natural tunnel of some kind. It is neither cold nor warm in this place. As you slowly climb to your feet, you realize that there is a dim glow, a very mild greenish and purple phosphorescent light, which seems to be emitted by some of the fungal growths that cover every surface in sight. There is a thick, heavy smell in the air. Earthy, but not pleasant, not clean. A smell of rot and decay. A fungal odor. The smell of a cave, you suppose.

A cave? What are you doing in a cave? You must remember!

You take a step forward, stumble, recover. Your boots crunch in the gravelly debris of the cave's floor, and the sound seems unnaturally loud in the stillness and the darkness. You still feel a little dizzy. Lightheaded. Aye. The fungal stench does not help matters, either.

Another step. Crunch. Deeper into the cave. Or are you going out? You do not remember whether this direction leads out of the cave or not. You are lost.

You are lost, your head hurts, the air stinks, and you cannot remember anything. This makes you angry, frightened, nervous . . . your grip on your sword and shield tighten. In truth, your sword is gripped in a white-knuckled grasp of terror and rage. But you are well-armed. You are not hungry or thirsty, but can not remember when you last ate or drank anything, or if there are more provisions nearby.

48

Sword and shield? Arms and armor? Are you here to fight someone . . . or more likely, something? Mayhaps some terrible monster inhabits this cave, and you have come to slay the ​ beast! A troll? A dragon? Whatever it is, did it do something to your mind? To your memory?

You will not find out just standing here. You have to move. So you begin to walk forward again, slowly, carefully, through the dim phosphorescence. The crunch of your boots on the debris-littered floor of the tunnel seems loud, but the sharpness of the sound is dulled by the thick moss and fungus covering everything, as though the abhorrent growths absorb and devour the sounds you make.

What is this place? ​ ​

You walk carefully along, almost creeping, sword and shield at the ready. You wish there were a breeze, a breath of air, that might tell you whether or not you were going the right way. A breeze to clear some of the stink from your nostrils. You must be ready for anything. Anything! ​ If only your head did not hurt so much. If only you could remember.

If anything lies in wait to ambush you in the darkness, it must surely know that you are here. Every step crunches. You look down at the floor of the cavern. There is moss and fungus growing there, too, but the growth is not thick enough to muffle the sound of your steps. But what is that horrid crunching sound you hear? Something white gleams in the dim ​ ​ phosphorescent light.

Is that . . .? Could that be . . .? Is it bone? Old, rotted bones, breaking and crunching ​ ​ ​ ​ under your ruthless tread? Surely, not . . . not human, though? But it is. You can see it clearly ​ ​ now. You are walking on rotted, decayed human bones that burst under your boots as you progress through this strange underworld. What killed them? . . . And is it going to kill you, too?

You continue forward through the gloom. What other choice do you have, really? It looks like the tunnel opens up into a larger cavern up ahead, but you see no sign of sunlight, no sign that this is the way out. How long will you be trapped down here?

As you approach the larger cavern, you hear something. Faint at first, but growing louder as you come closer to the source. A wet sound, water trickling over rock. There is water ahead! At least you will not die of thirst! Although, strangely, you still do not feel any thirst . . . ​ ​

You emerge into the larger chamber. It is roughly circular, and only about forty or fifty feet across. There is better illumination here than in the tunnels from which you have come, but

49 it takes you a long time to realize why it is so much easier to see. There is a pool of water here, fed by little streams that trickle down the walls of the cavern. The water has something growing ​ ​ in it, some algae-like substance, and it causes the water to sparkle and glow. More phosphorescence. Also, the larger open space means more room for the fungal growths that emit dim light to spread out, shedding weird illumination everywhere. And it grows over several large, strangely shaped boulders that litter the floor of this cavern, causing disturbingly suggestive patterns of shape and shadow . . .

You look away from the strange boulders, all around the walls here. There are more tunnels branching off from this chamber, so you do not really have any better idea of how to find a way out than you did before. If anything, your head hurts worse than before, and you cannot shake the sudden conviction that you are being watched, or at least that you are not alone. Not alone . . .

Suddenly, your gaze is pulled back to the strange, misshapen, moss-covered boulders. They are not rocks, you realize. They are people. Or they were. With growing horror, you realize that what you first thought were strange rocks are corpses in varying states of decay, covered over with moss and lichen and fungus. Your eyes did not want to see the leering skulls at first, the faces contorted in agony, but even buried under hideous growth, the play of phosphorescent light and shadow reveals their true nature.

Many people have died here. Right here. In this chamber. Suddenly, your eyes flick to the tunnels, searching for any sign of movement, of ambush. Nothing moves, except the trickling water.

Feeling dizzier than before, you slump down to sit by the pool of water for a moment, carefully avoiding disturbing the corpses. Just for a moment, you tell yourself. Need to keep ​ ​ ​ moving. Got to get back up and keep moving. Got to find a way out. Your motion dislodged a ​ pebble; you watch it roll into the water and send glowing rippled through the sparking pool.

You wonder if the water is safe to drink. Maybe there is a poison in it. Maybe that is what killed all theee people before you. Something in the water . . .

You lean over and look into the rippling water. Every ripple sparkles with phosphorescent light. You can see your reflection, distorted, in the flowing surface. Your face is dirty. Your hair is filthy. In fact, it looks like you've got some of this mossy stuff stuck in your hair. You reach up to scrub it out of your hair, and it mists the air with a thick green and purple cloud of dust and spores. Ugh! That was in your hair! What is that gunk? ​ ​ ​ ​

50 Looking around at the corpses that surround you, you realize that it is the same with each of them. The green and purple fungus grows thick on the heads, on the skulls. The cold horror that seethes under your skin awakens strange thoughts. Memories. Oh gods. Oh gods. You ​ remember something! A warning. Someone tried to warn you about a green and purple moss like this once.

What did they say? What did they call it? You can almost remember . . . almost . . . .

Minna-mosi. That's what they called it. Memory-moss. It looks like simple moss and ​ ​ ​ fungus, but it is nothing simple at all. It can enchant anyone who gets too close to it, and begins to drain the mind, starting with the memory. The spores get on you, get inside you, and begin to ​ ​ grow, and pretty soon you have an organism growing on your body, feeding off your body, while feeding on your mind as well.

Minna-mosi. You have been breathing the spores for some time. How long? How long ​ were you unconscious? The panic is making you breathe hard, you are panting, and the realization that every lungfull of air you gulp down is filled with more of those spores makes you feel ill. You want to vomit, you even wretch, but nothing comes out. Your stomach is empty, Has been all along. Why do you feel no hunger? No thirst?

The minna-mosi has been working on you for some time. As it grows on you, grows in ​ ​ ​ you, it negates feelings of hunger, of thirst. The host simply stops eating, stops drinking, eventually stops moving, and then dies. Then the minna-mosi consumes the body, draining the ​ ​ minds and infecting the bodies and brains of any living things that come near.

You are in a cave full of those corpses.

How long were you unconscious before you woke up? How did you get there? You must ​ ​ have already been infected, then. That is why you woke up with the headache. That is why you woke up with no memories. The minna-mosi has been draining your mind. ​ ​

But some part of you remembers! Some part of you is resisting! You must resist! You ​ ​ MUST! You need to get out of this place now.

You struggle to get to your feet. Every movement feels slow, sluggish. You wonder how long it has been since you ate anything. The pain and pressure in your head has increased sharply; they say that the minna-mosi is sentient, aware, and it must psychically sense that you ​ are fighting it. It must be fighting back. Waves of pain and nausea roll through your body. Another wretch, another dry heave, another stab of pain in your skull.

51

You must get out! NOW! You stumble a few more steps, and stop. The pain is unbearable! You can feel it draining everything from you, everything . . .

You stumble again, trip, fall. Your landing is softened by the carpet of minna-mosi ​ growing on the floor of the cavern, but kicks up as massive cloud of spores. You cannot breathe, you are coughing, you feel as if your head were spinning . . . .

It all goes black.

You awaken in the dark. Where are you? How did you get here? You don't remember. Why don't you remember? You must try to think! Remember!

There is a throbbing in your temples, your eyes hurt as if you have had them open too long in dim light – but nay, did you not just awaken? In truth, your whole head hurts. Why? Did you hit your head? Is that why you were unconscious? Why you cannot remember? What is that smell?

Why can you not remember? You must! Why? You cannot remember that, either! But it was important! You must remember! You MUST! REMEMBER!

About Colin Anders Brodd

Colin Brodd grew up in the great state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, but currently resides in Phoenix, Arizona. His business cards read "Gentleman Classicist Extraordinaire." He has held many different positions in his life, but his main professional calling has always been a teacher of Latin and Classical Humanities. In addition to Latin and Ancient Greek, he enjoys working with Old English and Old Norse and other old Germanic languages. His favorite genres of fiction are fantasy and science fiction, and he has a great love of RPGs (role-playing games). His favorite nonfiction books tend to be classical and military history or lingistics and languages (especially the aforementioned Greek and Latin).

Read his interview Here

52 Connect with Author

Amazon Facebook Goodreads Twitter Website

53 Reflections By Phil Farina

Carmine woke, or at least tried to, after a hard night of partying. It was the morning after All Hallows’ Eve. Carmine and a group of friends spent the long night drinking and carousing at Jennifer’s house, trying to scare the hell out of each other. There were costumes a plenty, from fairies and witches to the more grotesque, blood-dripping creatures from popular horror movies. There were finger foods, shaped like actual fingers, a cake in the form of a severed head, a dish of “eyeballs” and a variety of drinks made to look like blood. These were served by a hired maid that had a strange resemblance to the bride of Frankenstein. The host installed several smoke machines to add to the ambiance. To top off the evening, Jen hired a Gypsy and her crystal ball to tell everyone’s future. It was a blast.

Unfortunately, the next morning was a week day and Carmine had to go to work. It was a little after 5:30 when the alarm went off, sending a resounding bolt of lightning through Carmine’s head. Reaching out blindly to stop the incessant blaring of the alarm, Carmine knocked it off the table and sent it crashing to the floor.

Lying as still as possible in bed for a moment, trying to keep the room from spinning, Carmine tried to recall the words of the Gypsy fortune teller. He remembered sitting down at the table with a goblet of “blood” in his hand, as the Gypsy gazed into the crystal ball. Gazing intently, she whorled her hands around the globe - for show he assumed - when suddenly she stopped and sat back, her eyes dilated as if in shock. She looked at Carmine, and in an ominous whisper said, “Don’t turn around.”

Looking back, Carmine remembered laughing and saying, “Okay, I won’t.” He finished his drink and left the table, so the next victim could sit down.

For the rest of the evening Carmine had this niggling feeling that there was something behind him. He blamed the drink, and a little pot, as the cause but he couldn’t shake the sensation. In fact, he swore that he caught something just out of the corner of his eye that was there, then wasn’t. It started to bring him down and, since the next day was a work day, he called it quits around midnight and headed home. Now he had to pay the piper.

Carmine slowly tossed back the covers and turned over to get out of bed when the room suddenly and vigorously started to spin again. As he fell back down onto his pillow, Carmine caught a glimpse of something in the room as it spun around. It was just a shadow, or a shadow of a shadow. Undefined, yet unmistakably there. Carmine chalked it up to his hangover. Suddenly the ominous voice of the Gypsy came into his head, “Don’t turn around.”

Making a second attempt to leave the bed, Carmine was able to get his feet firmly onto the floor. He buried his toes in the deep piled carpet and felt its soothing softness. Ever so

54 slowly, he rose into a standing position, trying not to move quickly so as not to lose his balance. Succes! He was standing, a little wobbly, but erect.

Shuffling his feet in the carpet, Carmine slowly made his way toward the bathroom. Choosing not to turn on the lights for fear of awakening the hangover demon, Carmine negotiated his way toward the shower using the morning light coming from the small bathroom window. He glanced around the well-appointed bathroom and caught sight of his reflection in the mirror over the sink.

He looked like hell. His hair was disheveled, his pallor was drained, and his eyes were large and seemed out of proportion to his head. “Coffee, I need coffee and a shower,” he thought as he reached into the shower stall and turned on the cold-water full blast.

He dropped his boxers and prepared to step into the shower, when out of the corner of his eye he caught movement in the bathroom mirror. Stopping in mid step, he looked into the mirror at his own reflection. Shaking his head at the mess that was him, he stepped into the shower and reeled back from the blast of cold water.

“This is going to be one hell of a bad day,” he thought as he stepped into the cold-water stream. The water cascaded down over his entire body, causing him to shake from head to toe. He stayed there, under the cold blast, for a full five minutes as his body continued to shake. Once he was fully awake, he turned on the hot water and continued his morning ablation.

Now fully awake, and somewhat revived by the shower, Carmine stepped out and drew the extra soft terry towel off the hook and began to dry himself. Heading toward the sink to shave, he reached out to wipe the mirror with his hand, which had steamed up from the hot shower. There, staring back at him, was a face familiar but different.

His eyes were larger, his face a little rounder, and his color…his color was… off. Carmine couldn’t put his finger on it. The reflection was wrong somehow as if someone else was staring back at him.

“I must be really messed up,” he thought as he lathered his face to shave. He reached for the razor sitting on the sink and drew it down his right cheek. The reflection followed suit, but it was delayed. It was as if the reflection was mimicking his moves, not reflecting them. It seemed the reflection was a microsecond behind his actions. It was weird.

Shaking his head in confusion, Carmine finished shaving and looked again into the mirror. His reflection stared back at him, just as it always did, but there was this inescapable dread that he was not looking at his reflection at all. It was something, or some one else. “Impossible,” he thought to himself. “The hangover and the damn Gypsy last night are to blame.”

55 Continuing his morning ritual, Carmine brushed his teeth, then combed his hair when he thought he saw his reflection smile back at him. “What the hell,” he said out loud. Knowing he didn’t smile, how could his reflection smile? “Impossible”, he thought and once again blamed it on the fog in his head playing tricks on him.

Staring at his reflection, he caught some movement in the mirror behind him and to his right. He stood there frozen in place. He was afraid to move, let alone turn around. Once again, the Gypsy’s warning resonated in his head: “Don’t turn around.” He didn’t.

Carmine leaned forward and put both hands on the sink as if to steady himself. Looking directly at his reflection he said out loud, “Okay, big guy, get your shit together. There’s nothing there. You are alone in your bathroom. You have a hangover and the Gypsy was fake, entertainment for the party. Now, buck up and move on.”

Carmine, however, did not move. He stood there, hands on the sink, staring at himself when it happened again! His reflection smiled! Knowing that there was no way he smiled, he became frightened. Okay, downright scared shitless was a better description. His knees buckled; the only thing that kept him from falling was his firm grip on the bathroom sink.

Shaking, his grip tightening on the sides of the sink, Carmine closed his eyes refusing to look at the “reflection” in the mirror. He stood there a moment, then two, breathing heavily, shaking a little from fear. Fear? Confusion? What?

Slowly, Carmine raised his head, his eyes still closed, afraid to confront whatever was in the mirror. Standing fully erect, his breathing slowed to normal, he opened first one eye then the other. The mirror was completely fogged; there was no reflection to be seen.

Exhaling a slight sigh of relief, Carmine reached out with his right hand to wipe away the fog. As he made contact with the mirror, his hand suddenly went through the glass and the rest of his body followed as if he had turned to smoke and the smoke was pulled by a vacuum into the mirror.

At the exact instant Carmine disappeared into the mirror, there was a flash from above the sink and, out of the ether, materialized a reflection of Carmine. It looked like him, but different. His eyes were a little bigger, his face a little rounder and his color… well, it was …off.

Carmine’s reflection looked at his own reflection and smiled a sardonic smile, “This is going to be fun.” He turned and left the room.

56

About Phil Farina

Phil Farina was born in New York City and grew up in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn.He grew up in a very close Italian family that shares a deep religious belief as well as a deep respect for the spirit world. He attended Rutgers University and earned his Bachelor’s degree in Biology and a Master’s Degree in Microbiology. He also earned an MBA in Chemical Marketing. He is currently a water treatment professional working on developing technologies to improve our clean water supplies. He lives with his wife Cathy in Toledo, Ohio and writes books for the love of the story.

Read his interview Here

Connect with Author

Amazon

Facebook

Goodreads

57