Nightmare Magazine Issue 16
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TABLE OF CONTENTS Issue 16, January 2014 FROM THE EDITOR Editorial, January 2014 FICTION The Mad Butcher of Plainfield’s Chariot of Death by Adam Howe Walled by Lucy Taylor Ghostreaper, or, Life after Revenge by Tim Pratt Whistlin’ Past the Graveyard by Jonathan Maberry NOVEL EXCERPTS Hoad’s Grim by Jack Kincaid NONFICTION The H Word: Horror Needs New Monsters by Kate Jonez Artist Gallery: Mike Worrall Artist Spotlight: Mike Worrall Interview: Christopher Golden AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS Author Spotlight: Adam Howe Author Spotlight: Lucy Taylor Author Spotlight: Tim Pratt Author Spotlight: Jonathan Maberry MISCELLANY Coming Attractions Stay Connected Subscriptions & Ebooks About the Editor © 2014 Nightmare Magazine Cover Art by Mike Worrall www.nightmare-magazine.com FROM THE EDITOR Editorial, January 2014 John Joseph Adams Happy New Year, and welcome to issue sixteen of Nightmare! Before we get to our stories, just a reminder that over in the Nightmare ebookstore (nightmare- magazine.com/store), I wanted to point out that we currently have the following ebook bundles available: Nightmare (Issues 1-6) - $14.99 Nightmare (Issues 7-12) - $14.99 Nightmare (Year One: Issues 1-12) - $24.99 Buying a Bundle gets you a copy of every issue published during the named period. Buying either of the half-year Bundles saves you $3 (so you’re basically getting one issue for free), or if you spring for the Year One Bundle, you’ll save $11 off the cover price. So if you need to catch up on Nightmare, that’s a great way to do so. Of course, if you don’t want to buy a Bundle, you can also just purchase an individual ebook issue, or if you’d like to subscribe directly from us, you can do that too. All purchases from the Nightmare store are provided in both epub and mobi format. Visit nightmare- magazine.com/subscribe to learn more about all of our subscription options. * * * * With our announcements out of the way, here’s what we’ve got on tap this month: We have original fiction from Adam Howe (“The Mad Butcher of Plainfield’s Chariot of Death”) and Tim Pratt (“Ghostreaper, or, Life After Revenge”), along with reprints by Jonathan Maberry (“Whistlin’ Past the Graveyard”) and Lucy Taylor (“Walled”). We also have the latest installment of our column on horror, “The H Word,” plus author spotlights with our authors, a showcase on our cover artist, and a feature interview with bestselling author Christopher Golden. And, finally, as a bonus for our ebook readers, we have an excerpt from the novel Hoad’s Grim by author (and Nightmare podcast host) Jack Kincaid. That’s about all I have for you this month. Thanks for reading! John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publisher and editor of Nightmare (and its sister magazine, Lightspeed), is the bestselling editor of many anthologies, such as The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Oz Reimagined, Epic: Legends of Fantasy, Other Worlds Than These, Armored, Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, The Living Dead, The Living Dead 2, By Blood We Live, Federations, The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and The Way of the Wizard. He is a six-time finalist for the Hugo Award and a five-time finalist for the World Fantasy Award. He is also the co-host of Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams. FICTION The Mad Butcher of Plainfield’s Chariot of Death Adam Howe Gibbons swigged from his hipflask, driving one- handed as he followed the caravan of carny vehicles barreling along the interstate toward tonight’s show. As the booze burned through him, he bared his teeth, glaring in the rearview at the tarp-shrouded shape of the car hooked to his truck. The damned car was supposed to make his fortune. He’d sunk every last penny into buying it. 1960 should’ve been his year. He should’ve been sunning himself down in Florida by now; instead he was barely eking a living, working the off-season circuit with this third-rate carny. What the hell went wrong? He couldn’t understand it. He’d always prided himself as having, if not his fingers on the pulse of America, then his hand in her guts. People wanted to see this kind of thing, he’d been sure of it. Psycho had opened big; people had flocked to see it like the stars of Hitch’s next picture —but why settle for a movie when you could see the real thing? The Butcher of Plainfield, Eddie Gein’s car: a bona fide relic of Hitchcock’s Psycho killer. It burned Gibbons’s ass to see that fat, Limey prick hog the limelight that should’ve been his. Fucking movie. Apart from Janet Leigh’s tits, he couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. Gibbons took another belt from his flask and then capped it. Best save some for later, give him some pep for The Show tonight. He glared in the rearview again. A corner of the tarp had peeled loose from the car and was flapping like a giant batwing. He considered pulling over, tying the tarp back down over the hood. The buckled grille glinted like rusted teeth, as if the car wanted to bite a chunk out of him. But he knew if he stopped, the carny wouldn’t wait for him. Management was already looking for an excuse to shitcan him. At the last town they played, when the cops shut him down, before Gibbons could even pitch his tent, the operator had warned him he was on his last chance. He’d put on a brave face. “All publicity’s good publicity, right?” Wrong. Dead wrong. And if his luck didn’t change soon, if the car didn’t start showing a profit, Gibbons was out on his ass. The thought terrified him. The Show was all he knew. * * * * He’d joined the carny as a kid, running away from home and a tyrannical mother who, the more he read about the Gein case, the more she reminded him of Eddie’s own hellfire-and-brimstone-spouting mother. The similarities ended there, Gibbons was relieved to know. Unlike Gein, Bonaparte “Bunny” Gibbons was no mama’s boy, far from it. And for all his kinks—just ask the gals in the cootch-tent—he’d never felt the urge to pay tribute to Ma by robbing graves and wearing the skins of the dead. He was a natural carny. He served his apprenticeship hawking a mouse circus, before graduating—gravitating, you might say—to the freak show. He climbed quickly through the ranks. Wasn’t long before he was working up front of the tent, hustling the rubes with empty promises of the wonders and oddities to be jeered at inside. His goatee, top hat, cloak, and cane lent him the rakish appearance of a debauched Colonel Sanders. No carny alive could part a fool from his money like Bunny Gibbons. The freak show was good to him. Those were happy days. But after the war—first the Big One, then Korea— Gibbons sensed the freak show’s days were numbered. Too many husbands, fathers, and sons had returned from “Over There” missing arms, legs, and even faces. The freak show had come home to America, and suddenly no one wanted to pay admission to see it. Not a man to rest on his laurels, Gibbons ditched the freaks without a backward glance and started looking around for his next meal ticket. And then, about the same time Eddie Gein was caught hanging some broad by a butcher’s hook in his woodshed, Ma kicked the bucket and left him a small inheritance. Gibbons couldn’t believe his luck; her timing was perfect. When the Gein story exploded across the press, splattering the front pages with grave-robbing and cannibalism and flayed-flesh women-suits, Hitchcock wasn’t the only guy who smelled a buck. * * * * Gein’s estate went to auction to pay for his trial; Gibbons moved quick and hit the road. Arriving in Plainfield, Wisconsin—that aptly-named hicktown in the asshole of nowhere—he checked into a motel under an a/k/a. Kept a low profile, dressed down, not his usual snazzy duds. The grieving families of Gein’s victims weren’t his worry, didn’t even enter his thoughts; no, he was afraid some other showman might have the same bright idea and beat him to the punch. Because it was inspired: he was going to use Ma’s inheritance to buy Ed Gein’s house of horrors, open America’s greatest spookhouse. Disneyland from hell. The freak show wasn’t dead. Gibbons only had to see the rubberneckers at a road wreck, or the looky-loos at a suicide leap, to know it. People’s tastes don’t change, especially their prurient interests; they just become more refined. Day before the auction, the Gein house burned to the ground. Electrical fault, the fire chief said. Funny, Gibbons thought, considering the place didn’t have electricity; he knew a torch-job when he saw one. Ignorant fucking hayseeds. There went his spookhouse, up in flames, along with Bunny’s dreams. But the auction went ahead anyway, and he stuck around. There were still acres of farmland to sell; tools, junk farming equipment . And Ed Gein’s car. A beat-to-hell ’49 Ford sedan. When the auctioneers rolled her out, Gibbons thought that the car—splintered left headlamp, right side of the grille twisted up in a smirk—seemed to ape the fool’s grin and droopy eye of its owner.