Del reviews ‘Undertone’

Image courtesy of A24.

“Undertone” Starring Nina Kiri as Evy, Michèle Duquet as Mama, and Adam DiMarco as Justin. Written and directed by Ian Tuason. 1 hour, 34 minutes. Rated R. Theatrical release.

Plot summary: A podcaster who is caring for her terminally ill mother begins to see parallels between her personal situation and a series of terrifying audio files.

Spoilers: No.

Del’s take

Mladen was unable to join me for “Undertone.” He was in Tennessee, hunting fossils. I’ve told him repeatedly if he wants to find an old stone he’s got my number, but he never listens.

His loss, because “Undertone” is quite a good movie. It eschews the modern approach to horror – jump scares, gore, full frontal monster – and relies on the viewer’s imagination to conjure the deepest scares, reminiscent of “The Innocents,” the Robert Wise production of “The Haunting of Hill House,” and Ridley Scott’s “Alien,” all masterpieces of horror. But where “Undertone” shines is its use of light and sound as a storytelling device.

The story is about Evy (Nina Kiri), a podcaster who is caring for her terminally ill mother (Michèle Duquet). She is living in her mother’s house, a small, claustrophobic relic from a bygone era. At odd hours of the morning Evy manages to squeeze in her paying job, that of a podcaster focusing on paranormal events. She is a skeptic; her creative partner, Justin (Adam DiMarco) is a believer, an obvious parallel to the relationship between Dana Scully and Fox Mulder of “The X-Files.”

Justin has received a collection of 10 audio files from an unknown contributor that are believed to prove the existence of a demon, Abyzou, a creature of European folklore who steals children because she cannot have a child of her own. As the audio files are played countdown-style over a period of days, Evy begins to realize they describe events taking place in her personal life, and her grasp on reality begins to slip.

“Undertone” is rife with subtext – religious guilt, familial guilt, and weightier issues such as Evy’s pregnancy, and whether she should keep the child or have an abortion, and her growing exhaustion in caring for her mother. But “Undertone” is as much a vibe as it is a story. The spooky atmospherics operate like a fourth character. Tuason directs the eye to a darkened doorway behind Evy, as if we should expect to see something there. The house is perpetually cloaked in shadow, just as Evy’s life is at the moment. Sounds reverberate throughout – a clock ticking loudly, the refrigerator cycling on – but there are other sounds heard by Evy – a crying baby, a nursery rhyme played backward that may contain a summons. Are they real? We don’t know. When Evy puts on her headphones, all sound ceases and the silence becomes monolithic. These elements enhance the suffocating milieu of Evy’s predicament and amplify the themes of guilt and isolation.

Nina Kiri is excellent as Evy – she appears in virtually every scene – while Adam DiMarco’s Justin, who appears only as a voice on the phone, is the rational appositive to what may be Evy’s descent into madness. Or is it possession? Again, we don’t know. Michèle Duquet’s Mama rarely moves, but when she does, be prepared for the unexpected.

“Undertone” is Tuason’s first movie and cost about half a million dollars to make. Expect more from this talented writer and director. I appreciated the dearth of modern horror movie tropes and the ingenious use of light and sound to convey dread.

“Undertone” rates a B+, maybe an A.

Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and writer.

Image courtesy of StockVault.

INTRODUCTION

This story is about a hypocrite.

A particular kind of hypocrite. The Republican kind of hypocrite.

Full disclosure: For most of my life I was registered as a Republican. The Republican Party was the party of reason. It was the party of moderation. It was the only responsible political choice for people like me – decent, simple, hard-working individuals who believed in living within their means and delaying gratification.

The Democratic Party represented a wholly different set of values. The Democratic Party was about taking your money and hard work and giving them to somebody else, usually somebody who was unwilling to work hard or delay gratification. The Democrats were about welfare, and socialism, and a new set of values that eschewed the traditional strengths of American culture.

So I remained a registered Republican for most of my adult life. But along the way, the Republican Party changed.

This change began in the 1980s, during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Christian conservatives, through instruments like the Moral Majority, began to organize and seize control of the Republican Party. Over the years this lingering conservativism, masquerading as religionism, held on and festered until it found a new champion in Donald J. Trump.

Trump was, in my estimation, the worst president in the history of the United States. I won’t belabor his sins, but suffice it to say he wrecked the country AND he divided it. Maybe you don’t share that opinion. Maybe you’re wrong.

The end result is a group of people who not only don’t mind if their leaders lie, cheat and steal, but a generation of Americans who believe lying, cheating and stealing are normalized.

What an astonishing departure from everything I’ve known over my lifetime. To think, these folks believe lying, cheating and stealing aren’t so bad because everybody does it, including the president!

Worse, they lie to themselves, and that’s what “The Fire People” is about.

Here we have a woman who outwardly presents as a religious, conservative, moral person. But look beneath the veneer and you find somebody who isn’t what they seem, somebody who aspires to a different kind of life, one that they outwardly condemn when it’s somebody else but secretly embrace for themselves.

Fate has a way of tripping up people like that, and that’s exactly what happens to the protagonist of “The Fire People.”

She gets what she thinks those other people deserve.

I wrote this story in the late ’90s but sadly, it’s more relevant today than it was back then. I guess it’s true that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Del Stone Jr., July 18, 2024

—

THE FIRE PEOPLE

… and if I die before I wake,

I pray the lord my soul will take …

It was the smoke alarm that hauled Gabby out of a dream-filled sleep, a barb of sound hooking through her left ear, through the center of her brain, piercing muzzy, subconscious images of guilt and sin and virginity.

She did not know what was happening, and staggered out of bed to answer the telephone or thumb the buzzer on the alarm clock or remove the clothes from the dryer. But after a moment of eye-rubbing she recognized the shriek, and her skin seemed to shrink around her bones. Oh my, she gasped to herself, and she almost said it. She almost spoke the sacrilege:

Oh my God.

She reached for the doorknob without thinking and – too late now – it was hot, hotter than the little travel iron set on “cotton,” and the door swung open as she jerked her hand away, a surprised gasp whistling through her lips. A wave of twisting heat and light rolled into the bedroom, as if she had just popped the door on the oven after baking a tray of dinner rolls.

Fire – fire – fire –

Flames blew up the stairwell with a roar, chewing along the pebbled ceiling and gnawing at the banister and reaching for the register at the top of the landing. The air was filled with the cauterizing stench of chemicals and woodsmoke, and Gabby could think only stupid thoughts: How did this happen? What did I do to deserve this?

And then she was crawling for the sliding glass door at the other end of the bedroom, which opened to the fourth-floor balcony – never mind what she would do then; all that mattered was escape. And as a part of her brain tallied the losses – her clothes and furniture, the photographs of her Sunday school students and her great-grandmother’s Bible and the gold-plated crucifix pendant given to her by the Reverend Thomas Miller for her years of service to the Antioch Baptist Church – another part of her glanced back resentfully at the advancing flames, and that was when she saw them. Sinister movement amid the ugly glare.

The fire people.

Her muscles froze, and the breath eased out of her so that her belly grazed the furry nap of the carpet. Although she knew she must get out now or die, she could not tear herself from the sight of them.

People, in the fire. Of the fire.

People with huge, swaying breasts that seemed filled with jellied gasoline, and bulbous penises that twitched and sprayed bright arcing gobbets of lava. Copulating. Fornicating.

People fucking.

They raced across the ceiling in a kind of frantic insectile glee to roll against the draperies so that the fabric exploded in flames, or shoved impossibly long, bright, arms into the air register so that it fumed inky smoke, or rolled across the bubbling carpet toward her, shimmying under the bed where she kept her magazine photos of naked men … Oh no, don’t find them, I didn’t put them there, not mine … and then the closet doors jumped open and the fire people swept napthic penises and breasts down the breadth of her wardrobe, and the other things in there, the little box of sex things, the gels and straps and mechanical devices, so that the contents erupted in a righteous blaze that flanked her, a gallery of jittering, undulating shapes rising between her and the balcony.

Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the lord my soul will keep … the children’s catechism sprang perversely to her mind, and as the fire people circled her and drew closer, reaching out with the promise of an embrace that would boil the meat from her bones, the next verse of that simple prayer hovered at the back of her thoughts, and she knew exactly what she had done to deserve this, and which lord had come to take her away … and keep her. …

About the author:

Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”

Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.

As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .

Image courtesy of Amazon-MGM.

“Project Hail Mary” Starring Ryan Gosling as an insufficiently curious xenobiologist Ryland Grace; James Oritz as (eventually) the voice of Rocky the alien; Sandra Huller as the stone‑cold yet bewilderingly attractive Project Hail Mary program manager Eva Stratt; and others. Directed by the duo of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Runtime a too-long 2 hours, 36 minutes. Rated PG-13. Theatrical release.

Plot summary: The Sun is threatened by a species of microorganism (Grace calls them “astrophages”) that consumes stars, which puts Earth in danger. If the sun dims too much, photosynthesis will decline and everything, including civilization, will go the way of democracy. The planet’s governments come together (yeah, right) to send an expedition to a star light years away that has somehow beaten back the astrophages eating everything else in our neck of the galactic woods using fusion to produce light and heat. Things go wrong. Our hero encounters an alien – his/hers/their planet is in trouble, too, because their sun is on the menu – and the two of them cooperate to find a way to defeat the star eaters.

Spoilers: Not if you read the book.

Mladen’s take

I can think of a couple of very good movies featuring humans and space aliens becoming buddies, “Enemy Mine” (1985) and “Alien Nation” (1988). The Star Treks and Kirk and Spock. More recently, there’s “Predator: Badlands.” Yes, yes, there are technically no humans in Badlands but synthetics Thia and Tessa are close enough.

In that regard, “Project Hail Mary” misses the mark. It isn’t Gosling’s fault as Grace or Oritz’s depiction of Rocky that made their friendship in the movie seem, ah, inert. The trouble is seeing Rocky for what the alien is, rock‑like. I’m used to placing rocks in my aquarium without worrying that I’m drowning a living being. Also, to me, anyway, rocks are repositories of past life – fossils – rather than sentient, self-aware creatures alive today who multiply by what, sexual sedimentation or crack fissuring.

The problem with “Project Hail Mary” is that it came in book form first and I read the book. Though I can’t recall the details in the book, I can recall that my imagination allowed me to interpret Rocky as some sort of fauna rock, an animal that was also vegetable and mineral. No such luck in the film. The Eridian – that’s the name of Rocky’s species – was there for me to “see” with my eyes.

Rocky is constructed of short columns of jointed hard material that made fingers and limbs, which articulated, and a thorax holding it all together. What held him together, allowed him to move? A pliant crystalline matrix like fiber-optic cabling? Ammonia‑soluble tendons that deformed whenever Rocky’s iron ore other‑than‑nervous system rusted on command? How the hell could the Eridian chitter like an insect? Golly, and this is terrible, I had the urge to vivisect Rocky to see what made him tick.

B+ “Project Hail Mary” is worth the time to see in a movie theater. There is enough action, even if that action is, in part, dependent on an implausibly maneuverable space ship, to justify dropping extra change for a Dolby theater seat. The scene where Grace and Rocky trawl the upper atmosphere of a planet to collect astrophages and something else is darned good.

I looked forward to scenes with Huller as Stratt. It was the precision of her diction when speaking English. It was her unapologetic focus on saving humanity, though it required sacrificing individuals who belong to that humanity. It was her humorous severeness and knack for taking a line of reasoning or an excuse to avoid doing this or that to the end of the line. Something like, “Grace, you say you want to stay on Earth to teach children. Well, if you stay, there will be no children to teach.” What a guilt trip. And, I must say, I loved Grace for ignoring it.

Del’s take

Mladen is too generous with his review of “Project Hail Mary.” I didn’t fall asleep once during the movie, but not because it was exciting. The theater was freezing and I’d left my hoodie in the car. I thought “Hail Mary” was boring – B-O-R-I-N-G. And it was stupid – this, from a guy who not only grew up reading science fiction but wrote a few SF stories of his own.

I wish Amazon had taken some of the $$$ it spent on “Melania” and used it to make “Hail Mary” better, maybe a little more scientifically plausible, maybe a little less slapsticky. As it stands, the movie is structurally too complicated, is inconsistent in tone, is way too long, and it failed to convince me to suspend my disbelief.

According to Mladen, “Hail Mary” is 2 hours and 36 minutes. It felt like 2 days and 36 hours. It was a two-bathroom-visits movie for me. To paraphrase a British critic who reviewed one of my books, it could have benefitted from a savage pruning of excess beats. As Mladen pointed out, the movie was not about teaching English to an alien; it was about figuring out how to kill the little bastards eating our sun, so the whole teaching-the-alien bit could have been left on the cutting room floor. And other parts should have qualified for a savage pruning. I’ll get to those in a minute.

Is “Hail Mary” a comedy? At times I thought it was. There were moments of physical comedy – actual slapstick – and the script was mostly a series of jokes and verbal pratfalls that at first were cute but soon became irritating and distracting. It was impossible to take anything I was seeing on the screen very seriously because the movie did not take itself very seriously. That may sound like a good thing but trust me, a movie about the end of the world should not be funny. Satirical? Maybe. “Don’t Look Up” and “Doctor Strangelove” come to mind. But comedic? Hardly.

The story is told through a series of flashbacks woven through a current-time narrative, and that proved to be difficult to follow, especially at the beginning when Grace awakens aboard the spacecraft with no memory of how he got there. Again, I would ask: Is that what this movie is about? No? Then why waste the audience’s time telling them things that have no bearing on the outcome of the story?

In films from the Star Trek and Star Wars universes I can accept scientific implausibilities – hyperlight, the Force, teleportation. Those movies are more fantasy than science fiction. But in a movie like “Hail Mary,” which grounds itself in science, the implausibilities become much more glaring and harder to forgive. Gosling’s character awakens after four years of zero-G induced coma. His bones should have looked like a plastic McDonald’s straw. Yet he’s able to bound around and grab hurtling spaceship parts as if he were Thor. No effing way is that gonna happen. And again, as Mladen pointed out, the spaceship maneuvering was just impossible – comedically impossible. And there were others – Rocky’s seemingly endless supply of food and air, and Grace’s endless supply of crap that would never be allowed on a starship having to contend with mass constraints. Deus ex machine was Grace’s co-pilot.

A plus was Gosling’s performance, which I thought was superb. And Mladen was right about Huller. She was spectacular. In fact, of all the characters in “Hail Mary” she was the only one I could relate to in any human sense.

“Hail Mary” is cleaning up at the box office and moviegoers are giving it Rotten Tomato scores in the 90s. Amazon needs the movie to pull in around $400 million to break even, and that will probably happen. All said, that makes me look like a cranky, impossible-to-please old fart. Maybe so. But judging by all the movies I’ve given A scores to over the years, I’d say that’s not true. I just want my movies to be really, really good, and for all the reasons I’ve listed here, I don’t think “Project Hail Mary” meets that description. Feel free to go see it and judge for yourself.

I’m giving it a score of a B-, and I think that’s generous. Maybe a C+.

Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and writer.

Oh my God, I just made the mistake of looking at my IRA.

It’s down $35,000 over the past month.

That’s more money than I make in a year. That money is part of my life’s savings.

I know it can come back, but that won’t happen any time soon. We’re just now beginning to see the negative impacts of Donald Trump’s “excursion” into Iran. Gas prices are up locally over a dollar a gallon, and when the price of fuel increases, so does the price of everything else. Inflation rose again last month, and that’s not including any of the price increases caused by this new forever war.

The cost of Trump’s “excursion” is running about a billion dollars a day. So far, it’s cost Americans $23 billion. Keep in mind the U.S. debt just crossed the $39 TRILLION mark. One of the planks to Trump’s campaign platform, if it can be called that, was to start paying down the debt. Not one penny has been committed to paying down the debt. Instead, he’s made it worse.

Iran isn’t fighting the American military. It’s fighting the global economy, and so far, with disruptions to shipping, increases in insurance costs and damage to infrastructure, it’s winning. And the disruptions won’t end any time soon, so hair-brained memes by Republicans of “short-term pain for long-term gain” hold no water. This will be a long, drawn-out conflict that could plunge the world into recession.

But just as Trump was unconcerned about the possibility of American servicemen being killed in his ill-considered venture – 13 and counting so far – and just as he was unconcerned about the prospect of American civilians being killed in terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, he’s also unconcerned about Americans who were already struggling financially now being clobbered with astronomical prices on food, fuel and housing.

Virtually none of the election promises Trump made have come to pass – quite the opposite – yet the MAGAt orcs continue to blindly defend and follow Herr Trump. There’s a word for that.

C-U-L-T.

About the author:

Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”

Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.

As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .

Image by Pexels.

Introduction to “The Garage”

Craig Terry gave me the idea for this story. He didn’t own a garage.

I met Craig in the 1990s. I was working at a newspaper, editing copy, putting together sections, and Craig was hired as a staff artist. He was also a talented political cartoonist but I worked with him on illustrations for my feature sections. Through our interactions we came to be friends. I didn’t find out later that he and his wife were friends with my mom. Small world.

At one point Craig expressed an interest in getting into comics. I had dipped a toe into that world, thanks to my friendship with Dave Dorman and Lurene Haines, and it also happened that I was working on a project called “13 Seconds,” a collection of 13 very short horror stories – all under 1,000 words – that I was hoping to sell to Joe Pruett at Negative Burn. I asked Craig if he wanted to illustrate them and he said yes.

In talking with Craig about “13 Seconds” I mentioned I was scrounging for another idea for a story. That’s when he told me his idea about a messy garage. I can’t remember the details but what emerged from that conversation was this story, “The Garage,” about a man with perhaps the world’s messiest garage – and oldest stash of hoarded goods – in the world.

We sent a couple of sample stories to Joe and he passed on the project, but as luck would have it Stefan Dziemianowicz was editing a collection of very short horror stories for Barnes & Noble, “Horrors! 365 Scary Stories.” I submitted all 13 of my super-shorts and seven made the cut, including “The Garage.”

So there you have it, a story about a man whose garage is packed with junk The farther back you go, the older the junk gets, until it gets really old.

Who knows what else might be lurking in the musty confines of that storage space?

—

THE GARAGE

By Del Stone Jr. and C.M. Terry

“It’s a beauty, ain’t it?” Parker glowed, his voice equal parts admiration and pride, the voice of a man who had just shit the world’s biggest turd – and would now sell his story to Ripley’s Believe It or Not.

But Samuelson had to admit: It did have a certain grandeur, the way train derailments or airplane disasters unfold with strange beauty, layered within the horror.

The messiest garage he’d ever seen.

“Come on; let’s take a look,” Parker insisted, speaking in a reverent whisper.

Parker’s garage was a disaster, the chintzy bastard. Didn’t he every throw anything away? Samuelson’s gaze traveled over the Escher-like arrangement of junk: bicycle parts, wheel rims, sacks of aluminum cans, lampshades, a seamstress’s dummy, wire mesh crab traps, leaning towers of newspapers – oh God, the eye refused to take it all in. It gathered in drifts at the corners, rode the walls and scrunched against the ceiling, a critical mass approaching some terrible implosion.

“I’ve got a ’67 Eldorado somewhere under all this stuff,” Parker grinned. “But the best part is back here.”

He led Samuelson down a narrow path to the back of the garage. There, he wedged his shoulder against a door Samuelson hadn’t noticed and pushed. The door groaned and gave way. Parker flipped on a light.

It was another room … filled with junk. Old ice boxes, ironclad electric ranges, fans, Life magazines, wooden crates filled with empty Coke bottles. …

“The previous owners left this stuff here,” Parker beamed. “Lots of antiques. I’m gonna make a fortune.”

Samuelson could see the dollar signs glowing in Parker’s eyes. He gazed across the room, where he saw another door. “What’s back there?”

Parker frowned. “I dunno. Never noticed it before.” He tiptoed through the clutter and forced open the door.

Another room. Filled with junk. Crockery chamberpots and blackened andirons and dusty bottles and wooden boxes. Parker had his hands on his hips. “Jesus! I didn’t know this stuff was here, but God, look at it! Ain’t it great?”

But Samuelson was staring at the opposite wall. Another door. Parker noticed, and his jaw dropped. “Holy shit! That’s impossible! The house doesn’t go back that far!”

The room was filled with spears and quivers and hairy mounds of animal skins. The walls were covered with charcoal scrawlings of bears and lions and mammoth-like creatures.

Parker’s voice was filled with wonder. “I don’t understand it,” he said, spreading his arms to take in the room, “but it’s – it’s – terrific! Stone Age junk! Can you guess what this stuff would sell for? Can you? Millions, I’d bet!”

Samuelson grabbed Parker’s arm and began to haul him back. There, at the back of the chamber, was another door, an opening, really, blocked by a fall of stones. Behind the stones Samuelson could hear a scritching sound, and a basso rumbling, as if something very large waited on the other side. A cool finger of dread began to work its way up the knobs of Samuelson’s spine.

“C’mon,” Parker hissed, jerking away and stumbling off-balance across the room. “Let’s check it out.”

“No, goddammit,” Samuelson whispered. “Can’t you hear it? Can’t you hear it?”

But Parker was already shoving rocks out of the way and shouting over his shoulder, “C’mon, man! This is my lottery ticket! This is my ship coming in!”

Then the rocks at the top of the opening tumbled loose, and something – Samuelson could not say what – reached through and yanked Parker off his feet and into the gap so that Samuelson saw only Parker’s boots vanish into the darkness, trailed only by a snapped-off scream. …

And as Samuelson turned and sprinted for the door, a sickening image arose in his mind, an image of the lock somehow ratcheting into place behind them as they’d entered the chamber, because from the opening rocks were being hurled out of the way, and something with a growl that sounded a million years old was trying to break free.

About the author:

Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”

Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.

As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .

Introduction to “The Hole”

I wrote this story as part of a project I called “13 Seconds,” a collection of one-page horror stories, each with an accompanying full-page illustration. Alas, that project never saw the light of day.

But the stories did. I sold seven to the Barnes & Noble anthology “Horrors! 365 Scary Stories.” The others found homes across a wide spectrum of publications. This story, for instance, was published in Dark Raptor.

What I tried to accomplish with “The Hole” was to glimpse the inner thoughts of a sexually repressed misogynist. In this case, he’s using the telescope sight on a rifle to spy on his sexy neighbor, who’s exercising and won’t sit still. Anybody who’s ever used a telescope sight knows movement will carry the targeted image out of the sight instantly, so it’s imperative they remain still.

In his zeal to get the woman to stay still so he can ogle her, the man gets carried away and … well, something unfortunate happens.

And yes, the word “hole,” as used in this story, has more than one meaning. The protagonist is a misogynist.

—

THE HOLE

Bobby blinked and strained to focus on the wobbling image in the binocular’s eyepiece.

He wanted to see if she had the hole.

But he couldn’t see. Peering from the sliding glass door that let out of his apartment bedroom onto the narrow, vestigial balcony … peeking through the slats of aluminum vertical blinds stained with cigarette smoke and the sharp exhalation of pent-up breath … the bedroom lights off so that if she glanced his way, across the apartment complex commons, a stray look that might snag on the glint of a reflection or his black shape superimposed against the lighter wall. …

But she didn’t look, and he couldn’t see … if she had the hole – the hole that all women who hated him had.

He cursed the binoculars. He tossed them onto the bed, where they bounced like a dead trampolinist. He needed magnification. He needed power.

He needed the scope on the Enfield.

He pulled the rifle from the closet and slid off the protective covering on the sight. He used the barrel to force aside – just barely – one of the blinds so he could peek through. The building facade jerked across his field of view, then a dizzying blur of patios, until he found her patio, at first unfamiliar because of its closeness. But he recognized her potted geraniums, her director’s chair, her faux copper wind chimes swaying from the crossbeam that traversed the patio.

And then he saw her.

Bouncing in the bedroom, an exercise video playing on the TV. Smooth and long-limbed and elegant – not pretty, not beautiful, but … sexy, the way some women transcend those overheated adjectives men use when they are together and talking dirty. She was wrapped in a skimpy pink lycra body suit, like some rare, imported confection, and her dark, dark hair was bound up into a pony tail that was tied off with a bandana, and she was bouncing and swaying and kicking in a way most men would have found sexy.

But Bobby wanted her to sit still.

Because he couldn’t see if she had the hole.

He twisted the focal adjustment screw and tried to zoom in on her, but she was moving so fast, her legs kicking out behind her. And then she was bending, up and down, up and down.

Bobby closed his eyes and swore under his breath. If she would just sit still for a moment. A moment was all he would need.

He slid open the sliding glass door. Now, with only a thin screen blocking his view, he might see better.

But she was doing the deep-knee bend thing, up and down, up and down, and he could not see – he couldn’t see, dammit.

“Sit still, bitch,” he muttered, and slapped the screen door open. It slammed against the frame and made a loud, clattering sound. His heart jumped and he yanked the rifle snout out of the blinds, afraid she might have heard and turned this way.

But no. She had her hands above her head and was bending at the waist, first to the left, then to the right, first to the left –

“Sit still, you fucking bitch,” he seethed and yanked the rifle against his shoulder to squint harder through the scope.

She was bouncing, bouncing, the exercise video seeming to bounce with her –

“Sit still, goddammit – “

Bouncing, bouncing –

“Goddammit – “ he couldn’t see, he couldn’t see –

 – bouncing –

He squeezed the trigger and the gun kicked and for a moment he could hear nothing but an eerie, feverish ringing. He squinted through the scope, and finally he saw her. …

Slumped over the television, her arms dangling, as if she had exercised herself to death.

But she was still, at last, and he saw it. The hole. The hole that all women had who hated him or ignored him or could care less if he even existed. What was this now? The tenth? The eleventh woman he had found with the hole? Someday, all the women with holes would be gone, and only women who cared about him would be left. He would see to that. He would make sure. They would be gone if they had the hole.

The cratered, steamy hole surrounded by a splash of blood.

The hole.

About the author:

Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”

Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.

As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .

By now you must be thinking, “Del threatens to stop posting on social media when he feels the need for attention.”

That’s not true (although I do like attention. Feel free to give me all the attention you want).

When I threaten to stop posting on social media it’s because I genuinely don’t want to do it anymore – at least at that moment.

I have a problem with social media – I think it’s a poison. On the list of bad ideas it ranks up there with television and atomic bombs. I prefer my mass media to be vetted by gatekeepers who winnow out the stupidity and ignorance. Social media allow any moron with a keyboard to speak on an equal footing with professionals who’ve earned advanced degrees and spent their lives developing unmatched expertise.

The idea that “every voice is equal” is bullshit. Some people should never be heard. I say that as a person who lives and dies by the First Amendment – some people should NEVER be heard.

Yet if I want to communicate with my fellow Americans – and that’s something I’ve been doing for so long it’s baked into my identity – I’m forced to use social media. That’s where people are, so that’s where I am.

That comes at a price. The criticism is relentless. I’m attacked for my age, the fact that I’m gay, my political beliefs, even my appearance. It’s childish and I shouldn’t let it get to me, but it does.

Also, I don’t want to be part of the problem. A friend told me that’s exactly what I am – part of the problem. He said that without ever having seen any of my videos, so I’m not sure how much credence I should give his opinion. I mean, I hope I’m not part of the problem. I try hard to be fair and accurate.

I’m always surprised to hear that people find value in what I say. I’m not well educated, I’m not smart, and I’m sure as hell not good-looking. But I do care, and I care deeply, about what’s happening in this country. I hate what that asshole in the White House and his supporters are doing to America. I hate knowing he will probably get away with it.

I’ve been talking to large groups of people for going on five decades. Between my old Tennis Time column, my weekly newspaper column, my fiction, and now my social media posts, I’ve acquired a very big mouth – and the need to deploy that mouth. It’s my habit to say what’s on my mind.

Yes, the negativity and attacks get me down sometimes and I have to step away, AND tell people I’m stepping away, because that’s what I do – talk to large groups of people. But I always come back because as I said, that’s what I do – talk to large groups of people.

Please indulge me my snits. With what’s happening in this country, the need is critical and the time is now for everybody to speak up.

About the author:

Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”

Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.

As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .

Image by Oakley Originals of Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/oakleyoriginals/

Introduction to “The Thing in the Dark”

I’ve always been afraid of the dark. To this day, I’m hesitant to go outside at night. We live in a dark neighborhood. I don’t care how many streetlights they install, it still looks dark dark dark at night.

You never know what’s hiding out there.

I remember one night – I must have been about 14 – Mom ordered me to take out the garbage. Our garbage cans were up next to the fence on the side of the house. Next door the house was vacant. It had been empty for awhile and leaves had piled up in the yard and weeds were getting tall.

I carried the paper grocery bag full of trash through the carport and out to the garbage cans. As I lifted the metal lid from the can, I heard the telltale crunch, crunch, crunch of somebody walking through leaves. The people on the next street over had their backyard porchlight on. I could see, in the glare of that light, an eclipse moving toward me, a human-shaped shadow approaching out of the dark.

The hair on my arms stood on end. My skin froze. I think my heart stopped.

Then suddenly, I was free. I dropped the garbage and the lid and sprinted for the front door. I burst inside the house, slammed the door and locked it.

Mom asked me what was wrong. I told her, “Somebody’s out there!”

I had a shotgun, an old 20-guage bolt action, hanging from a wall rack in my bedroom. She told me to go get it. I did. It wasn’t loaded, but that didn’t matter.

Together, we went back outside, Mom hefting that ridiculous shotgun.

“All right, you son-of-a-bitch! I’m gonna blow your goddamned brains out!”

Silence.

“I’ll blow your brains out!” she shouted again.

I picked up the bag of garbage where I’d dropped it, hurled it into the can and slammed the lid closed. Both of us hightailed it back to the house.

Months later, we found out that somebody had been living in the crawlspace under the vacant house. They had a mattress and a flashlight set up under there. The idea that somebody was there, watching us come and go, still creeps me out. And that’s what prompted me to write “The Thing in the Dark.”

It was one of 13 under-a-thousand-words stories I created for a project called “13 Seconds” I hoped to sell to a comic book publisher. My friend C.M. Terry planned to illustrate each one.

Alas, that project didn’t sell, but along came “365 Scary Stories” from Barnes & Noble. I submitted all 13 stories and they bought seven, including this one.

The others are the following:

“And Baby Makes 13”

“Crisis Line”

“Mall of the Dead”

“The Garage”

“In the Wilds of the Suburbs”

“The Tooth Fairy”

“The Thing in the Dark”

—

THE THING IN THE DARK

Danny scrunched his eyes shut and pulled the covers over his head, entombing himself in darkness and silence.

On this night he would see nothing. He would hear nothing. He would spend the night in his bedroom without once screaming for his mother, his voice climbing the panicky octaves until even the sound of his own shouts frightened him.

Nothing would breathe beneath his bed. Nothing would growl behind the closet door. Nothing would scratch the window behind the curtains. It was all in his imagination, he told himself, reciting the mantra that had been drilled into him by his exasperated mother. How many nights had she staggered into his bedroom, her breath sickly sweet with bourbon, to dump herself on the edge of the mattress and yank back the covers and blabber at him drunkenly about his foolish, childish fear of the dark? How many times had she come into the room angry, then seen the look of stark terror in his eyes and try to salve her anger with sloppy kisses and stern but gentle insistences that he look under the bed, or in the closet, or through the part in the curtains?

 Always, he had checked. And always, nothing was there.

But it was the light that chased them away, he told her, and then her anger would return and she’d stalk from the room, slamming the door behind her, and he’d try to sleep with the light on until sometime later when she’d snatch the door open – a loud rasping that always sent his heart jumping into his throat – and flick it off.

The terror would begin anew.

But tonight he would put it out of his mind. That scrabbling sound beneath the bed – that was the floorboards vibrating from a passing truck. The shudder from the closet door – it was not the furtive movement of the runner within the track as a clawed hand slowly drew the door ajar. And he did not hear a soft thumping at the window, as something out there tested the glass for a way to get inside. These things were all perfectly normal occurrences that the darkness transformed into mysteries, things that would go totally unnoticed in the blessed light of day. In fact, if he peeked at the closet door he would see it was shut, as he’d left it. If he yanked back the covers and hung his head over the edge of the mattress, he would see a jumble of toys beneath the bed and nothing more. From the window, he would see the soft glow of lights brightening the neighborhood windows.

If he peeked – if he peeked – he would see that it was all in his imagination, and that he had nothing to be afraid of. If he peeked.

He slitted an eye and eased the covers back.

The closet door was open.

The mattress shimmied ever so slightly, and the pressure of the bedspread on his legs decreased as something lifted the corner and began to probe softly for something to – something to grab and haul beneath the bed, an ankle, a calf, the arm of a trembling 9-year-old boy –

Bobby hurled himself from the bed and hit the light switch.

Nothing there. Closet door, closed. Toys beneath the bed.

And then he heard it. A tapping at the window.

He tiptoed across the carpet and paused at the curtains, knowing with dread certainty that if he dared look out, something horrible would look in –

“Bobby! Let me in!” the whisper snaked through the glass.

It sounded like his mother.

“Bobby? Are you there? Let me in! I heard a noise outside. I went to check and – and I locked myself out! Let me in!”

It really did sound like his mother. But Bobby hesitated.

“Let me in, dammit,” the voice whispered. “I think there’s someone out here!”

What if it weren’t his mother?

Bobby, there’s someone out here – I hear them!”

What if it were something using his mother’s voice to trick him into opening the window?

“Open the goddamn window!” the voice said, louder this time, a tremble of fear wiggling through the words. “Bobby, please!”

And if he opened the window, it would reach in with its claws and grab him around the throat –

“Bobby – oh, Bobby – ” the voice wailed.

– and the blood would splatter the walls and the bedspread and the closet door –

He heard a scream and a low-throated growl, and then a thrashing sound, as if some kind of struggle were being waged outside.

He stepped away from the curtains. He padded back to the bed and slipped beneath the covers. He could hear his heart pounding. It might have been a monster’s heart pounding.

But he would get through this night without calling his mother. Because it was all in his imagination.

About the author:

Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”

Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.

As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .

Image courtesy of Tubi.

“Lowlifes” Starring Amanda Fix as Amy, Matthew MacCaull as Keith, Brenna Llewellyn as Savannah, Elese Levesque as Kathleen, Josh Zaharia as Jeffrey, and Richard Harmon as Vern. Directed by Tesh Guttikonda and Mitch Oliver. 1 hour, 30 minutes. Rated TV-MA. Streaming on Tubi.

Plot summary: A family borrows grandpa’s RV for a vacation in the country. They encounter a couple of hillbilly locals. Terror ensues.

Spoilers: None

If you’ve been avoiding Tubi TV because you don’t like movies being interrupted by commercials, you should (a) sign up for commercial-free premium Tubi or (b) get used to it, because you’re missing some damn good streaming entertainment, especially if you’re a horror fan.

One example is “Lowlifes,” a nasty little frolic from Al Kaplan, author of other comedy-horror projects like “Zombeavers,” “The Drone,” and “Critters: A New Binge.” “Lowlifes” is a Tubi-original film, part of the streamer’s attempt to fatten its horror lineup.

In “Lowlifes” a Southern California family borrows Grandpa’s broken-down RV for a trip to the country. There, they encounter a couple of local hicks who are looking for trouble. Events predictably proceed downhill from there.

I won’t say anything about what happens next because the movie serves up a “Sixth Sense”-style plot twist that will blow your mind. Suffice it to say you’ll laugh, you’ll puke, you’ll forget about this movie 10 minutes after watching it. But what a fun hour and a half of entertainment until then!

Grade B.

Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and writer.

Image courtesy of Raw Pixel.

Introduction to “The Tooth Fairy”

This story was based on an actual experience, though I didn’t run into any Freddy Krueger-style monsters from dreamland.

We had a grocery store in town at the time – Food World – which was my go-to destination for cheap beer and cigs. Yes, I smoked back then – this would have been in the ’90s, and you could still get a carton of cigarettes for about $10. They put them in display cases that were accessible to the public. It was a much more trusting time.

One night I headed over to Food World for something – I forget what. I don’t think it was cigarettes, but it might have been. Food World stayed open until 9 p.m.; otherwise, I would have had to do my cigarette shopping at a convenience store.

I remember walking into the store and thinking: This is strange. Something about the bright fluorescent lights overhead throwing everything into stark, electric contrast, made me feel as if I were walking through a Dennis Etchison short story. Not only that but the store was ghostly quiet. Hardly anybody was shopping. You could hear every creak and groan of the building.

As I said, strange.

I got whatever I was looking for and went to the cash registers. Only one was open, and there was a person ahead of me. I remember seeing all those packages of meat rolling down the conveyor belt to be scanned and bagged. Why would somebody come to a grocery store late at night to buy lots and lots of meat?

All kinds of thoughts sprang to mind, thoughts that only a writer of scary stories would consider, all of them involving caged beasts back at the house, or something with a taste for blood, or maybe an evil presence in one’s dreams, foreshadowing the awful things it had planned for you once you fell asleep.

Unless you were already asleep and this was part of your nightmare.

Is the Jimmy of “The Tooth Fairy” asleep and dreaming these events? Has the nightmare invaded his waking hours? I’m not sure. I will say I’m not a fan of ambiguity in horror stories, but in this case I think it works.

One more thing: When you were a kid and your mom and dad told you about the tooth fairy who comes at night and finds that tooth under your pillow and gives you money for it, did they ever say why the tooth fairy wants your tooth?

Did they ever tell you what the tooth fairy does with that tooth?

I didn’t think so.

And I’m not sure I want to consider the possibilities.

—

THE TOOTH FAIRY

A pack of cigarettes. That’s all Jimmy wanted. A pack of cigarettes, and the safety of his townhouse, and sleep.

 But sleep brought the Tooth Fairy, and that was no good. The Tooth Fairy … a monstrous vision of teeth clicking and snapping at him from his nightmares, set within a face as pale as moonlight on dead flesh, surrounded by a field of black, as if Jimmy’s fear of the world had taken on a predatory life of its own.

 So Jimmy couldn’t sleep, and after reaching for the pack of Marlboros on the nightstand and coming up empty, he’d climbed into his blue jeans and sweatshirt and had driven to the 24-hour Food World across town, a careful visit to the grocery store, a  foray into a realm he tried to avoid. The world was full of horrors, yes: murderers and thieves and liars. But it was the little deaths that nibbled at his soul: the petty indifferences and incessant sales pitches and the all-consuming, voracious demand for his attention that warped him and transformed him into something unnatural, so that his time away from home became a gauntlet of senseless noise and chaos, and his time at home took on the quality of a siege. What lay between had become one thing:

 The Tooth Fairy.

 But if he remained awake all night he might eventually collapse into that merciful land of exhausted unconsciousness that lay beneath fearful dreams. So.

 The supermarket was electric and weird this time of night, the lights as bright and the aisles as quiet as an oncology ward. They kept the cigarettes up front where the store manager could watch for shoplifters. But nobody was there. Jimmy yanked a pack from the kiosk and walked straight to the express lane.

 Another customer was already there, dressed in a broad, gray duster that brushed the linoleum floor. He was unloading groceries onto the moving belt in front of the register, and the teen-aged cashier was running them across the scanner. Big cuts of meat, bloody and shiny in the preternatural light.

Jimmy sighed and scanned the racks of tabloids. Famous actor is really a vampire. Woman gives birth to 17 babies. Rendering of Mr. Spock found in Egyptian tomb. Jimmy shook his head. Nothing shocked or amazed him anymore. It was all a blizzard of images and sounds.

 The scanner beeped. Steaks and flanks trimmed in opaque fat. The man certainly liked his meat, Jimmy thought, watching him stoop over the shopping cart and extract packages and set them down on the belt. The girl whipped them across the scanner and as Jimmy studied her, he noticed she would not look up, not even once. A fellow sojourner, he decided. Probably waiting to start her weekend.

 The man slapped down dripping packages. Jimmy peered around the sweep of the man’s duster and saw heaps of meat still in the cart, cuts of meat he’d never seen before. The man dropped a shrink-wrapped package on the belt and the scanner bleated. The girl waved it across the laser three more times, and each time the scanner refused to ring up the price. She gazed at the bar code with an exasperated look. Then her face went white.

 She dropped the package. She snatched her fingers away and wiped them on her apron. She glanced up at the man, then, and her lips trembled, as if a scream were forming behind them but refused to come out.

 The package contained an assortment of jawbones.

 Jawbones studded with perfectly normal incisors and canines and molars. One of them had a gold filling.

 Jimmy felt a part of his brain go numb, like a pot roast that had thawed on the outside but remained frozen on the inside, and a tiny gasp escaped him so that the man turned and looked down at him, and Jimmy recognized the bloodless pallor of that face and the picket fence of teeth that sank into his sleep, and he knew this time he would not awaken in his bed, the sheets drenched with sweat, to wonder how he might keep the world at bay another day.

 “Hurry home,” the man whispered in a tissue-soft, dreamlike voice. “Hurry home and go to sleep. I’m hungry.”

 The cigarettes slipped from Jimmy’s fingers and went bumping down the belt, where they joined the man’s other possessions.

As the world sank its teeth in, and would not let go.

About the author:

Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”

Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.

As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .