Horror library volume 6, p.1
Horror Library, Volume 6, page 1
PRAISE FOR
+HORROR LIBRARY+
“Excellent stories of the highest caliber.”
—Dread Central
“Impactful tales that throw the rules of both reality and genre fiction out the window.”
—Fearnet (Chiller TV)
“Uniformly well-crafted and original.”
—Rue Morgue Magazine
“A range of material that produces extraordinary results.”
—British Fantasy Society
“ . . . A mixture of surprising treats: Stark, livid, engaging.”
—SFRreader.com
“You can’t read just one.”
—Monster Librarian
“ . . . perfect representation of how truly horrifying and intelligent horror fiction can be.”
—Horror Underground
“+Horror Library+ is a welcome addition to horror fans’ collections.”
—Dark Scribe Magazine
“+Horror Library+ sets a standard by which modern horror collections are measured.”
—Shroud Magazine
“A diabolical delight.”
—Hellnotes
“A snapshot of modern literary horror fiction . . . imbued with literary energy and purpose.”
—Daily Dead
“Nicely varied all-original stories.”
—Baen Books
“The stories that make horror what it really is.”
—HorrorNews.net
“Keeping the traditional horror genre alive and well.”
—Bookgasm
“Outstanding . . . extremely dark stories.”
—Horror World
“Well-deserved repute for literate horror penned by talented authors.”
—The Haunted Reading Room
VOLUME 6
EDITED BY ERIC J. GUIGNARD
DARK MOON BOOKS
Los Angeles, California
This anthology is dedicated as always, and with love, to my family—Jeannette, Julian, and baby Devin.
Thank you, also, to all authors who contributed such dark and marvelous tales. Your imaginations are a wonder and an inspiration to readers the world over.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
by Eric J. Guignard
I’VE FINALLY FOUND YOU
by Garrett Quinn
CARTAGENA HOTEL
by Jackson Kuhl
THE NIGHT TRUCK
by Stephanie Bedwell-Grime
IL MOSTRO
by Connor de Bruler
OLDSTONE GARDENS
by Tom Johnstone
THE PLUMBER
by Bentley Little
THE CREEK KEEPERS’ LODGE
by Kathryn E. McGee
SNOWFATHER
by Josh Rountree
FIVE POINTED SPELL
by Jeffrey Ford
THE RED-EYE TO BOSTON
by John M. Floyd
ELSA AND I
by Raymond Little
MOTHER’S MOUTH, FULL OF DIRT
by Rebecca J. Allred
D.U.I.
by Darren O. Godfrey
PREDESTINATION’S A BITCH
by Sean Eads
CASUALTY OF PEACE
by David Tallerman
THE STARRY CROWN
by Marc E. Fitch
INSTANT MESSAGING
by Vitor Abdala
THE H TRAIN
by JG Faherty
THE GAFF
by Dean H. Wild
KALU KUMARAYA
by Jayani C. Senanayake
WE WERE MONSTERS
by Lucas Pederson
THE NIGHT CRIER
by C. Michael Cook
WAITING FOR MRS. HEMLEY
by Thomas P. Balázs
THE RIDE
by Jay Caselberg
OLD HAG
by Ahna Wayne Aposhian
HEAR THE EAGLE SCREAM
by Edward M. Erdelac
BETTER YOU BELIEVE
by Carole Johnstone
EDITOR’S REQUEST
ABOUT THE EDITOR
INTRODUCTION
by Eric J. Guignard
* * *
GREETINGS, MOST ESTEEMED READER, AND please come on in. Welcome to the sixth volume of the +Horror Library+ series!
Although ongoing since 2006, this is the first series volume that I have edited, taking over from former editor and co-founder, R.J. Cavender, who’d helmed all previous books. Having been a contributor myself (Volume 5 and Best Of), it was certainly an honor to be asked unexpectedly to step in as the new editor based on my previous editing and publishing work on other anthologies.
So, needless to say, I hope you’ll find I’ve done my part in carrying on the grand tradition of placing before you unique and high-quality horror tales. The process was both a labor and a love, and a much greater undertaking than I ever expected.
Between May and November of 2016, I logged, read, and notated nearly 1,100 original submissions (1,095 to be exact) from authors around the world, and at every level of publishing or career success, whether an unpublished novice or a New York Times bestselling professional.
From that massive slush mountain, I whittled away and selected the enclosed twenty-seven tales. Some are darker than others, stranger than others, more literary, exciting, or impactful than others, but each is a unique voice with a damned good story to share, and together the assembled cross the broad spectrum of horror short fiction.
Whether containing monsters of war-ravaged winter, vengeful ghosts of the dead, murderers lurking in your shadow, or supernatural rites of diabolism, these stories were compiled to evoke emotion, share wonder, incite inspiration, and provoke more than a few grins and gasps. In that, I hope I’ve succeeded.
And I hope you’ll come back for more.
Midnight cheers,
Eric J. Guignard
Chino Hills, California
December 20, 2016
I’VE FINALLY FOUND YOU
by Garrett Quinn
* * *
CHILDHOOD GHOSTS HAVE a way of coming back, perhaps sooner rather than later, or perhaps they never leave at all, but linger, hovering in the background of life, in our memories, in our choices. Con knows this, is dealing with it, even when it doesn’t fit into the Stages of Grief as taught by his therapist; for his mother is dead, but she’s not entirely gone either. I’ve Finally Found You is a coming-to-terms tale, though we wonder, exactly, who has found who?
This is also Garrett Quinn’s first published horror story, and if he continues churning out tales as gritty and affecting as the one following, we’re sure to be seeing a lot more of him very soon.
—EDITORIAL NOTES, ERIC J. GUIGNARD
* * *
CON HATES HIS MOTHER FOR dying—always has. He hates her because she was drunk, because she’d steered her
eighteen-wheeler through the guardrail and off the cliff, excising herself from his life swiftly and efficiently. He hates her because he has recurring nightmares where he watches the headlights float through the night, watches the underbelly of the cab, watches the tires sag as the suspension gives.
He tightens his grip on the sledgehammer, stares up four stories to his old bedroom. It’s night, late summer. He thinks surely his therapist would have something to say about this, some far-fetched analysis. Con could see it now: the Stages of Grief chart, the one with the man climbing the rock face, raising his arms triumphantly at the top, could see the letters etched into the stone near the bottom, A-N-G-E-R.
“You think anyone’s inside?” he says to Frankie. “Hobos? Addicts?”
The windows of the apartment building are boarded over, the bricks faded to the red of dry blood.
Frankie’s clove crackles. She tilts her head back, exhales blue smoke toward the streetlight. “Looks like the kind of place you’d find a dead body to me.”
Con thinks how she hasn’t changed much over the past ten years. Only now her skin is etched with ink. She’d shown him the ocean scene covering her back when they met earlier, had simply disrobed as if Con were an old lover rather than a childhood friend. Con had gone hot in the face, looked away.
He shoulders the sledgehammer and marches into the overgrown weeds, and a torrent of memories washes over him: his CB radio, the sound of his father sobbing in the living room, the taste of ham slices dipped in mustard. He is honest: “I’m scared.”
“You’re not supposed to say things like that—according to the good book,” she says from behind. He knows she’s referring to The Atheist’s Guide to Spirituality rather than the Bible.
“I don’t mean for squatters. I mean—” he pauses, unsure of how honest he can be—should be—with her. He would’ve told her anything back then, but he might never see her again after tonight, after he closes this chapter of his life. He wants to say, I’m scared of everything coming back, of reliving it—of seeing her all over again.
“Well?” Frankie says.
He shrugs. “I don’t know.”
He mounts the front concrete steps, places his hand against the warped plywood covering the glass doors. The musty scent of the lobby returns to him. From far away comes something that sounds like a gunshot. His home city, Manchester, New Hampshire, has gone all to hell over the past decade. It’s inundated with drugs now, and everything that comes with them. The blocks surrounding his childhood apartment are vacant, covered in trash, the skeletons of old cars. He feels uneasy here, unwelcome, imagines having to
use the sledgehammer in a way it wasn’t intended.
“You know, if you weren’t such a pussy, you might have a girlfriend now—maybe even a wife,” Frankie says.
Con opens his mouth to speak, to mention her tattoos, her black lipstick—anything. But it hurts. It hurts because he lives alone, trapped in the past. It hurts because he works at the dump, dismantling electronics, a twisted purgatory for his tech-obsessed childhood. He raises the hammer, takes a breath—smells the crisp October night, the sweet hint of clove—and brings it down. Wood cracks, splinters, opening a black hole that inhales him, brings him back to summer, 1998.
***
AN OFFICER BROUGHT the CB radio to their apartment shortly after the wake. Con had watched the conversation from his bedroom doorway, his father stiff, nervous, the officer hunched. “I thought it’d make a good gift for a thirteen-year-old,” he’d said, holding the radio out as an offering. He glanced at Con, and quietly added, “It was in her truck that night.”
More for his father than for himself, Con smiled and took the radio into his bedroom. He placed it on the floor. It was the size and shape of a shoebox, clunky and primitive compared to his Game Boy. But when he powered it on and the front panel glowed green, he knew he’d found an escape. It didn’t have to be hers anymore, he told himself. He even talked to the counselor about the radio this way—as if it’d simply been his all along.
He didn’t know at first—wouldn’t admit—he was searching for his mother’s voice. Each night, after his father left for work, picking locks around Manchester for helpless people, Con locked himself in his bedroom with the CB, sat cross-legged on the carpet, and scanned each frequency, waiting to hear what he unconsciously wanted to hear.
At the beginning of summer vacation, the summer before Con and Frankie began high school, Con told her about the radio. They were sitting behind the gas station, throwing rocks at empty bottles.
“You know, I heard a story about a guy in Wyoming, a hiker. His wife got lost in the woods, never found, blah-blah-blah,” Frankie said and turned, waved her hand, as if the details were inconsequential. “Anyway, he’d wake up at night hearing something.” She paused, side-armed a pebble toward a bottle. It exploded. “So, one night, he searched through his house, found one of their two walkie-talkies, turned it up. It was her voice coming through. What I’m saying is, you should be careful. With the CB, I mean.”
That night, with a notepad and pen, Con checked every frequency on the radio. He skipped over the few channels where voices came through—truckers talking about diners, a woman giving traffic alerts, a boy, maybe his age, droning on about the Red Sox to seemingly no one—and zeroed in on the areas of white noise. He thought of them as the in-between frequencies, the white needle hovering between faded digits. He imagined other worlds in there, or in-between worlds, or worlds that held people like the hiker’s wife, people like his mother.
A week later, well past midnight, he heard the knocking, faint, hidden beneath a layer of fuzz. He jotted down the frequency in his notepad: 13.3 . . . knocking. He turned the volume up, cocked his head. The noise was sporadic like the rattling of a wind chime. He switched frequencies, leaned back, and let the buzz wash over him. The moon cut a swath of white across his ceiling.
Then it came again, louder. He leaned up, bit his lip, looked at the display: 17.5. He tuned it lower, to single digits, wondered if the radio was broken, some piece inside cracked or unhinged from the crash. The image came to him then, suddenly, flashing through his mind, frightening him—his mom tuning the radio, oblivious of the guardrail glinting in the headlights. He bit his lower lip, powered the radio down, and looked across the street to the neighboring apartment building, at Frankie’s bedroom window. It was black.
He stood, flicked his own bedroom light on-off, on-off, trying to get her attention. They communicated this way—Morse code—after Con had given her a sheet with the letters and corresponding dots and dashes. She had thought it was interesting, fun, like solving some riddle.
The knocking came again, still louder, and now almost a substantial thing, like somebody rapping at a door several rooms away. Con glanced at the dim radio. He flicked his bedroom light on. Dad? he thought. No, why would he knock? He opened his bedroom door and heard another knock, louder, closer. A wedge of light spilled into the living room. The ceiling fan beat dead air, the pull-string gently vacillating.
“Hello?” he said. Again, the knock, and now the front door actually seemed to quiver, bending inward. He cleared his throat. “Yeah?”
For a long minute, there was nothing. Then, as if in slow motion, he watched the doorknob twist, jangle, the door bulge in and out. He could hear the deadbolt, the one his father had installed, clacking against the wood. Only the first line of defense, he’d said, smiling. His father’s lips had been tight, his eyes focused, like when he told him about the accident, like he was scared of losing Con, too.
Con tried to swallow, but his throat was dry. He glanced back out his window toward Frankie’s apartment—still black—and thought of the stories he’d seen on the news: Girl, aged fourteen, never returned home from school, or Boy, twelve, taken from bedroom at night. He clenched his fists and tiptoed through the dark living room. The peephole on the door flashed. His stomach turned, and he wanted nothing more than for his father to be sitting at the kitchen table, toying with an old doorknob and a lock pick.
He placed his palms against the door as if feeling for something on the other side and whispered, “Hello?”
He leaned up, peered through the hole, saw nothing but the brown carpet, the wallpaper, peeling like dead skin—everything warped and flattened in the fish-eye glass. But he waited, because he sensed someone there, someone who’d been looking back.
Finally, he turned, jogged back to his bedroom, slammed the door behind him. His skin was sticky with sweat. Across the street, Frankie’s light was on, illuminating her silhouette. He put together the fewest possible words in his mind and signaled: C-B, then a long pause, K-N-O-C-K, pause, A-T, pause, D-O-O-R.
Con waited, sucked on his lower lip. What could she do? he realized, hopelessly. Her light flashed: M-O-M.
His finger rested on the light switch, unsure of how to respond, unsure if she were asking him or telling. Because he didn’t know what else to do, he reached for his pills on his bookcase, popped the top off, swallowed one dry. They’d been one of those adult decisions Con didn’t have any say in. He took several deep breaths, calmed himself. N-O, he signaled back, wanting to believe. Logically, he put things together in his mind, thought about telling his father, but realized what would happen. The radio would be taken, boxed, hidden in the closet with his mother’s other things that his father couldn’t bear to throw away. Maybe it was a neighbor, a wrong door. He turned the bottle over in his hand. Maybe it was another side effect of the pills, one the counselor rattled off without him understanding—the scientific word for hearing things tucked between dizziness and dry mouth.
He slid the radio under his bed.
***
CON WEDGES THE butt of the sledgehammer into the opening and pries the entire sheet of wood from the door. The building exhales, loosing mold, musk, the stench of living things. He clicks on his pocket light and passes the yellow beam over the wet carpet and the black mouth of the elevator.
“Welcome home, I guess,” Frankie says.
Con laughs, ducks through the door. Glass crunches beneath his boots. “Not really how I remember it,” he says. He pieces it all back together in his mind, as if looking through old photographs: the color of the carpet, the red glow of the Coke machine, the clanking hum of the elevator. “This way,” he says, stepping over puddles. With the toe of his boot, he pushes open the door to the stairwell.
After he helps Frankie through, he watches the flashlight beam shrink as the door closes, clicks shut. The hairs on his arms raise, and something inside him tells him not to go farther. Then Frankie’s voice echoes through the stairwell. “What did you think of me? Back then?”
With the light, Con checks each corner, each cluster of shadows. “I thought you were the epitome of cool,” he says, both sarcastic and truthful. He climbs three stairs, cranes his neck over the railing, and looks up.
