Mladen and Del review ‘Evil Dead Burn’

Warner Bros.

“Evil Dead Burn” starring Souheila Yacoub as I’ve‑Had‑Enough Alice; Hunter Doohan as weakling and coward Joseph; Luciane Buchanan as Up‑Yours Thya; Erroll Shand as bitter, mean, angry, and resentful Edgar; Tandi Wright as Gotta‑Keep‑Everything‑Together Susan; Maude Davey as funny, Alzheimer’s-addled grandma Polly; and others. Directed by Sébastien Vanicek. Score Composer Double Danger (Xavier Caux and Douglas Cavanna). Script Writers Florent Bernard, Sam Raimi, and Sébastien Vanicek. One hour, 50 minutes. Rated R. Theatrical release.

Plot summary: What happens when members of a dysfunctional family get possessed, one by one, by demons trying to keep themselves from getting kicked back to Hell? The family’s dysfunctions get amplified to 11 as they corral, at times, the demons to settle long festering, or newly minted, grudges to even the score.    

Spoilers: Ah, yeah.

Mladen’s take

The Horror is all around me in real life.

The high-end apartment complex going up across from my office that only military personnel will be able to afford because they’re BAH‑ed. I can no longer access my favorite fishing spots on the beach because the Air Force has made them No Trespass land. Northwest Florida has become one giant parking lot, day or night. Oh, poser Florida Gov. De‑Insane‑tis paid tens of millions of dollars to a campaign contributor to buy worthless Norriego Point in Destin. It’ll blow away when the next hurricane hits the area and so will the tax dollars, your tax dollars, that Fahrenheit 451 Ron used to pay off one of his besties for the spit of sand. The Gulf Stream is starting to not stream as much. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is getting greater by the minute. The Sixth Mass Extinction is well on its way to playing out. The Fabulous Five Fascists – Xi, Putin, Erdogan, Netanyahu, and Trump – still have tens of millions of supplicants enabling their “Animal Farm” ways. The Horror.

So, I groaned when Del invited me to see pretend horror in the form of “Evil Dead Burn.”

What can I say about that except this, thank you, Del, the on‑screen horror was pretty darned good. And less grotesque than what’s actually going on around us.

“Evil Dead Burn” gets a B+ from me and that’s just because of the dropped dagger thing.

Know that “Evil Dead Burn” is only mildly scary. What drives this mature bit of horror filmmaking is a solid script, good acting, and its sincere commitment to old‑style graphic violence. It’s “The Exorcist” melded with “The Omen” (the original films) with tints of “Hellraiser.” Don’t get me wrong. “Evil Dead Burn” is not as good as those classics but, tell you what, it ain’t bad.

The movie cuts to the chase really fast. First couple of minutes set up the story, so, no, you need not watch the preceding five Evil Deads to understand what’s about to happen.

Also, “Evil Dead Burn” does a good job of weaving a plot – family dynamics gone awry – with a lot, and I mean a lot, of top‑notch, true-blue and red and purple and mushy and stringy and oozing and spraying and pulpy body mutilation. Heck, a couple of scenes meandered into disgusting. Wait ’til you see how Thya infects Polly with demon seed. Yuck. Times 1,000. Can’t decide, though, which was more bonkers gross, the Polly‑Thya moment or the Susan‑Edgar make out scene. Wait, I’ve decided. It’s Thya mercilessly infecting the demented grandmother.

More than anything, though, I give “Evil Dead Burn” a nod for recognizing that events happening in the background are critical to good storytelling on the Big Screen. Pay attention toward the middle of the movie to what’s erupting behind and around our lovely and unpossessed Alice as she tries to escape the demons. Loved it. The Alice moment was a beautiful reminder of the best slaughter ever captured on cellulose. The film is “Let the Right One In” (Swedish, 2008). The set is a pool and the bloodletting distant as Oskar, being held under water, is getting bullied.    

Visually, “Evil Dead Burn” sets the mood with dreary weather, a dreary landscape, and a dilapidating house. Aurally, the soundtrack does the film a solid by propelling the story without overwhelming it as happened, for example, with 2025’s “Tron: Ares.”

“Evil Dead Burn” is worth seeing in a theater. Drop the change to help make it a success. I’d like to see what comes out of the two teasers that come at the end of the movie.

Del’s take

Is an Evil Dead movie really an Evil Dead movie without the presence of Bruce Campbell? Take comfort, Deadheads. Campbell is an executive producer of this sixth installment of Sam Raimi’s low-budget horror series that began at a remote cabin in the woods way back in 1981. All the Evil Dead tropes have been lovingly preserved – the goopy, nausea-inducing gore; the cackling, maniacal demons; and the weird, leaf blower-level POV of approaching evil. What “Evil Dead Burn” offers that the first two films didn’t – “Evil Dead” and 1987’s “Evil Dead 2” – is an actual plot, and an interesting plot at that, though not wholly realistic.

The movie begins innocently enough, with a birthday celebration for Joseph Price (Hunter Doohan) at his brother Will’s club (George Pullar). Joseph’s girlfriend Thya (Luciane Buchanan) is present, along with Will’s wife, Alice (Yacoub). Will and Alice argue – it’s suggested a history of domestic violence exists between the two – and Will storms off in a drunken huff. Joseph tries to keep him from driving but Will, the older of the two, asserts himself and leaves, after which he promptly runs over a demon-possessed Jessica (Greta Van Den Brink), who causes Will to crash, and then passes the demon to him as he burns to death in the wreckage of his car.

Later, the family gathers at a crematorium for Will’s service, and in a nice bit of claustrophobic horror Will’s father, Edgar (Erroll Shand) is attacked by a reanimated Will who is pounding on the casket about to be fed to the flames. Edgar now becomes the carrier and proceeds to infect the others as they gather at the old family house, now crumbling into ruin under Joseph’s neglect, for a tense, miserable wake. Will’s mother, Susan (Tandi Wright) and Edgar blame Alice for Will’s death. And they resent that it was Joseph who lived and not Will because Will was making something of himself while Joseph seemed weak and directionless.

As each family member is infected by the demon, all pretenses of civilized behavior go out the window as the possession victims find new and inventive ways to attack, and those defending themselves find new and inventive ways to fend off those attacks. There are knives involved, plus guns, plus shards of glass, plus toilet bowls, plus gasoline-powered edgers, plus chainsaws, plus a collection of pointy-tipped utensils – sharp side up, of course – arranged in a dishwasher basket. The havoc and ruin these instruments produce is displayed as graphically as current camera and computer technology allows. That bucket of popcorn you bought before entering the theater will sit untouched, and if it didn’t, the bucket will serve as a handy barf bag.

For a possible B-level horror movie, the actors in “Evil Dead Burn” do a remarkably good job. Will’s mother Susan is given a brittle grip on sanity by Wright that I found totally relatable, while Shand’s depiction of father Edgar and his seething, demon-exacerbated dementia seemed entirely appropriate to the moment. Van Den Brink is terrifying as Jessica, who kicks off the massacre mayhem by murdering two friends out for an innocent day of fishing and beer-drinking. I wasn’t as impressed with Yacoub’s Alice, who inexplicably stuck around despite having her ass kicked by her husband, and then his parents treating her like a mudroom throw-rug. The one character I actively disliked was Doohan’s Joseph, who was weak, indecisive, and failed spectacular in a moment where he might have redeemed himself.

Another aspect of the movie I found remarkable was the cinematography, which was often spectacular. As Will’s car is rolling down an embankment we’re given a look at the chaos taking place inside the car – debris hovers in midair as if gravity had been suspended. And the fight scene that takes place inside the car was the best I’ve ever seen. At one point a fire extinguisher explodes, filling the car with a cloud of white chemicals that momentarily masks the horror of who is doing what to whom.

What I think most folks won’t appreciate is the jaw-dropping violence and gore, which are on par with that notorious butcher scene from “Bone Tomahawk.” It might be the most gratuitously violent movie I’ve ever seen. “Evil Dead” and “Evil Dead 2” were both violent films, but the violence was leavened by comedy. While “Burn” has its comedic moments, the tone of the violence is deadly serious. I haven’t seen 2013’s “Evil Dead” or the 2023 “Evil Dead Rise” so I can’t compare.

I’m giving “Evil Dead Burn” a B. In ways it’s better than its predecessors, but the blood and guts were too much for me.

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

Image courtesy of Phillip Pessar by way of a Creative Commons license. https://www.flickr.com/people/25955895@N03

INTRODUCTION

I hate writing.

I really do.

I think my attitude toward writing is similar to that of my friend, Ray Aldridge, who once said (and I think he was quoting yet another writer), “I enjoy having written.”

That suits me. If I could forgo the teeth clenching, hair pulling, sick-in-the-gut stomach-wrenching AGONY of writing, and skip to the part where I look upon the finished work, knowing it is as good as I could make it, and feel the satisfaction that any new parent feels … well, life would be grand.

But life isn’t grand, at least so far as writing is concerned, and I try to avoid the painful bits as much as I can. Some people like to “talk about writing.” Not me. I hate talking about writing. Some people enjoy belonging to writers’ groups. Not me. Apart from the social aspect I think they’re a waste of time. And some people like writing about writing. Not me.

I take that back – mostly not about me.

This story is one of two exceptions.

The first, titled “Artist,” is also available as a Kindle e-book (minor sales pitch) and you can get yourself a copy here. Please buy it. I’m poor.

This is the second.

It’s a story about writing – more precisely, a story about submitting what you write.

That’s a neglected aspect of the writing conversation. You never hear people talk about the process of submitting their manuscripts for publication – it’s always about the artistic, as if they don’t want to acknowledge that a big part – maybe the biggest part – of writing is the business part. You know, the ugly, brass tacks part with editors and agents and lawyers and contracts, royalties and earn-back expenses and all the other crap that has absolutely nothing to do with lying in the clover and studying the clouds for inspiration but is absolutely essential for anyone who hopes to become a published writer.

When I finally stopped talking about writing and began actually writing and submitting my work for publication, the world was a different place. The earth’s mantle had just cooled and there were dinosaurs that stood between me and the mailbox, ferocious man-eaters who discouraged me from venturing into that bloody neighborhood. When I finally worked up the courage to go forth, a whole new subset of monsters emerged.

Those would be the monsters of impatience, and paranoia.

Back in those days there was no such thing as e-mail. You typed your manuscript on paper, inserted it into a large manila envelope, included a second manila envelope – self-addressed and with the return postage contained in a wax envelope of its own – and dispatched this package into the postal ethers. Hey, that’s what they told us to do.

I soon learned the error of their ways.

For instance, those little wax paper envelopes containing the return postage? They often did not find their way onto my self-addressed envelope. Instead, the envelope would arrive postage due. Ha ha, how could it be that the noble editor had somehow misplaced my valuable return postage, ha ha?

And those manuscripts I had laboriously typed? Sometimes they arrived folded in half. Sometimes stained with spaghetti sauce. Sometimes with sarcastic notations on the manuscript itself.

I soon learned to not submit the actual typed manuscript, but a photocopy. I explained to the editor that this was not a simultaneous submission, that I merely photocopied the original to protect the manuscript from damage incurred in the mail (ahem, yes … in the mail … right).

One part of this process I could not control was the length of time between the moment I mailed the manuscript and the moment the editor’s response appeared in my mailbox. I think every freelance writer is familiar with that part of the writing – the Vigil at the Mailbox.

That might be the most painful obstacle to becoming a freelance writer – waiting for the editor to get back to you. You want your story to sell, and you want to hear the good news as soon as possible. Wouldn’t two weeks be sufficient time to hear a response?

Well, no. Turns out two weeks is the length of time it takes for an editor to receive your submission, instantly reject it, and drop it back in the mail. Two months is the more likely norm. Meanwhile, as this invisible drama is playing out, you, the writer, stand at your mailbox every day, eyeing the bundle of letters and parcels the mailman is carrying to your box. Any large manila envelopes in there?

Yes, the Vigil at the Mailbox.

“Post Office” was inspired by such a vigil. One stretch in the 1980s – I don’t remember the exact dates – most if not all of my manuscripts were suspiciously late getting back to me. I was accustomed to the longer-than-expected waiting period, but this was ridiculous. It seemed like eons since I’d last gotten a yea or nay (almost always nay). What the heck was going on?

The longer this drought continued, the more paranoid I became, until it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, something that did not meet the eye was going on. Something malevolent. I am, after all, a horror writer. It was not too much of a stretch to suspect an evil entity at the post office was holding my manuscripts hostage.

Batshit crazy, right? Of course it is, in the blessed light of hindsight. But before you go off thinking Uncle Del has wandered from the rose garden at the asylum, let me reiterate – I’m a horror writer, and horror writers experience these kinds of weird departures from rational thinking. That’s how we come up with story ideas. In fact, that’s how I came up with the idea for “Post Office.”

I passed off the story as a lighthearted confection, a joke, something not to be taken with the same weighty gravitas of a real horror story. I think that’s why Kris Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith accepted it for Pulphouse. They seemed to recognize it was written with the tongue firmly implanted within cheek.

I don’t remember what happened to all those stories. Maybe they came back. Maybe I queried the editors, received no response, and withdrew them from consideration.

But I do remember this:

I really did wonder if somebody at the post office was stealing my manuscripts.

Ha ha … you laugh. Try slipping a gift card into a your niece’s next birthday card and drop it in the mail.

See what happens.

—

POST OFFICE

David reached into the metal throat of the mailbox and pulled out a clutch of white envelopes. His face was already pinched into a scowl, and as he scanned the return addresses and dealt envelopes onto the sidewalk, the scowl tightened. When the last had fluttered from his fingers, he uttered a single, derisive snort.

A Visa bill. Two solicitations: one from Greenpeace (printed on the envelope in screaming blue characters was “This is the year of Antarctica!”) and the other an invitation to buy National Wildlife Federation Christmas cards … in August. An inquiry from J.C. Penney asking if he were satisfied with his recent purchase of an MCS stereo receiver. A letter from a cousin who would probably be wanting money.

No letters from editors today. And certainly no checks. No large manila envelopes, his address typed neatly on an adhesive label and taped to the envelope for good measure.

Seven months now, and no manuscripts. Not a single one had come back in the mail.

—

David studied his log sheets, as if the titles listed there would affirm he had ever written any stories.

The one about the two buddies arguing over the existence of monsters – that one had disappeared a couple of months ago. The lesbian magazine never answered his query about the love-murder story. Likewise with the cube-that-ate-personalities piece he’d submitted to that men’s magazine.

He flipped through the log sheets.

The monster-in-the-closet story was missing.

The walk-in-the-dark story was missing.

The insect-revolt story was missing.

The end-of-the-world story was missing.

The killer playground story. The ghost story. The zombies. Amok computers.

All of them.

Missing.

—

David was a horror writer. He wrote about monsters, both real and imagined. He wrote about things that go bump in the night.

But mostly he wrote about evil. Not evil with a capital E, the evil that is pronounced with the inflection on the second syllable, as it is pronounced in those Vincent Price movies. Not an ecclesiastical evil.

David had important theories about evil, theories he could express and test only within the confines of fiction. He had decided long ago that evil was not conscious or calculated.

Evil was not the rotted face of The Beast.

To the contrary, evil was simply a random breakdown in order. Evil chose its victims for no reason, inflicted undeserved torment on them, then inscrutably departed. Evil was a sort of anti-entropy.

To test his theories, he would take protagonists, everyday working Joes, and deposit them in execrable circumstances – for no reason at all – then have them try to wriggle their way out within the constraints of the story’s logic. Many – most – did not succeed, and that was fine with David. It validated his theories. If evil were random then there was no such thing as justice. And in a literary context, if justice were the hero riding off into the sunset, then David would have his heroes ride off into the sunset … in a hearse.

David had 15 horror stories “making the rounds” at publications as diverse as Playboy and one of those self-important literary magazines at the university upstate. Fifteen stories was a good body of work for a new writer hungry for his first sale, he thought. Fifteen stories. The time he had first picked up a pen, he hadn’t dreamed he would write 15 stories.

Fifteen stories about evil. And now they were gone.

—

If he could have believed each story was lying on an editor’s desk awaiting final approval for publication, he would have been patient … patient and goddamned jumped-out-of-his-socks ecstatic. Wasn’t it the editor of that back-to-nature magazine in California who told him having a story accepted was only a matter of it crossing the editor’s desk on the right day? Sure. She’d said that. She’d written it on a rejection slip.

But all 15 stories in seven months? Christ. Some of those losers had been “making the rounds” for two years. Editors didn’t like unhappy endings. Even if they validate important theories about evil. The possibility that all 15 stories had been accepted simultaneously was as improbable as all 15 being simultaneously swallowed up by the behemoth that is the United States Postal Service.

No. They were not lying on any editor’s desk.

—

Somebody was stealing his manuscripts.

Somebody who worked at the post office.

He was certain of it, as certain as he had ever been of anything. He deposited his manila envelopes in the same “out of town” slot used by other post office patrons, and he collected the mail as soon as the delivery man dropped it off. He wasn’t misboxing the manuscripts and they weren’t being filched from his mailbox. He had gone over the problem like an old woman worrying at a knot in her apron string, and the only unknown quantity that consistently emerged from his deliberations was the post office.

—

But why?

Why would somebody at the post office steal his manuscripts? Mail tampering was a federal crime; what kind of person would jeopardize an enviably secure civil service position to torment a two-bit horror writer, even if the two-bit horror writer had important theories about evil?

To David, the question began to assume a familiar and unsettling quality.

—

The problem, as David saw it, could be approached two ways.

There was the direct method. Make an appointment with the postmaster, explain to him what was happening and ask for his help. This had its advantages and disadvantages, the disadvantages seeming to outweigh the benefits. The postmaster would not take kindly to the suggestion that mail was being stolen from his office. And if, indeed, the manuscripts had simply been lost in the mail, David would not be able to show his face in the post office without feeling like a fool. That would be a disaster. What writer could practice his craft without using the post office?

There was the indirect approach. A threat, directed to the culprit himself. Through the mail. Very discreet, and no risk of exposure. And if it didn’t produce results, he still could meet with the postmaster, though God forbid it should come to that.

He feed a sheet of paper into his typewriter and began to type.

—

DEAR SIR OR MA’AM:

HAVE YOU ENJOYED YOURSELF? I IMAGINE YOU HAVE. WHAT BETTER WAY TO TORMENT A WRITER THAN TO STEAL HIS WORK. YES, I SUPPOSE YOU HAVE HAD A GOOD LAUGH OVER THIS. IT HAS TAKEN ME SEVEN MONTHS, BUT I AM FINALLY ONTO YOU. AND I INTEND TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

IF THIS NONSENSE DOESN’T STOP, I WILL CONTACT YOUR SUPERIORS. I WILL PRESS CHARGES. I WILL DO EVERYTHING IN MY ABILITY TO SEE THAT YOU DO NOT HAVE ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY TO HARASS ME.

I WILL GIVE YOU THIS CHANCE TO SQUARE THINGS WITH ME. DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT TAKING ANOTHER MANUSCRIPT, AND RETURN THE ONES YOU HAVE STOLEN. DO THIS AND WE’LL CALL IT EVEN. WE’LL LEAVE IT AT THAT.

SINCERELY,

DAVE

—

He hoped the thief was actually reading his manuscripts. It didn’t seem likely somebody would go to the trouble of stealing an envelope without at least taking a peek at what was inside.

And if the thief did read his note: Would he respond? David thought not. It was a bluff, plain and simple. What could David really do? Both of them knew the answer to that.

But threats seemed so much more forceful from the print aspect. Perhaps it would frighten the thief into returning his work. Perhaps he would leave David alone. And David would not have to make a fool of himself at the post office.

—

David paperclipped the note to a stack of blank pages to give it the feel of a “manuscript.” He inserted these into a manilla envelope. He included a rigid sheet of carboard, as he always did, so the “manuscript” would not be mutilated as it made its way through the mail. He even included a self-addressed, stamped envelope for the “manuscript’s” return.

He addressed it to himself.

There.

That afternoon, he drove to the post office. As he entered the foyer, he studied the faces of the postal employees ensconced behind their work stations. He watched to see if they watched him as he deposited the envelope in the “out-of-town” slot.

None did. But he knew that did not mean they hadn’t seen him.

—

He went over it again.

If the envelope did not return, somebody had stolen it. That was the agreed-upon conclusion.

If the envelope returned, either the thief had taken the day off, or David had beaten fantastic odds – either to his detriment or benefit.

He almost hoped it would not return.

—

Two days after mailing the “manuscript,” David opened his box to find a large manila envelope. His heart literally skipped a beat. It was addressed to him, the way he had typed it. The cancellation mark bore yesterday’s date. Everything was in order.

David stared at it, his emotions frozen somewhere between embarrassment and relief. The post office, it seemed, was blameless, which left no easy explanation for the disappearance of his manuscripts. Either they were lying in dead-letter files at 15 post offices scattered across the United States, or 15 editors were still weighing their decisions or simply hadn’t gotten around to breaking the good news to him. His breath hitched at that prospect, and he quickly corrected himself. You know that isn’t the answer. He would have heard something by now. A letter. A phone call … something. It didn’t take seven months for an editor to decide if a story was worth publishing.

Then what?

He considered it all that afternoon and into the night, and the more he denied the possibility that all 15 stories had sold, the more quickly his imagination seized on the idea. Could lightning strike 15 times? He thought it could be done, though it wasn’t likely. Poker players sometimes drew to a royal flush more than once in a night. Bowlers sometimes rolled 300 games twice in a row. Couldn’t a writer with important theories about evil enjoy a once-in-a-lifetime hammerstroke of good fortune? As the hours crawled by, that possibility evolved into a probability, and David began to feel better about himself.

Fifteen sales in a year. Christ! If it had happened – God, he hoped it had happened – he would burst upon the fiction field like no beginning writer before him. The synergy of those sales would lead to others, a novel, movie screenplays, a career as a full-time editor. …

Success. He spoke the word, tasting the syllables, and thought nothing had ever felt so good in his mouth in all his life.

The manila envelope was lying on the floor next to the file cabinet where he kept his log sheets. His gaze fell on it, and a tremor of guilt ran through him. Guilt, and embarrassment. The envelope seemed to eclipse everything else in the room, testimony to a faint heart, a small, suspicious mind, somebody who thought small and worked small and was small in shameful ways. Like believing their manuscripts had been stolen … and wrote threatening letters. He frowned and picked it up, not believing, for an instant, that he had done this shameful thing. He opened it. He would destroy the note. He would tear it into confetti, maybe burn the pieces when he was done, and nobody would ever know how bush league he had sunk.

He yanked out the contents, and in that moment, time stopped. It just stopped. His heart stopped. The tides of his blood ebbed, all at once. His surroundings, the room, the house, the world, ceased to exist. Everything but the note.

Scribbled beneath his typewritten text was: YOU WANT YOUR STORIES? COME DOWN TO THE POST OFFICE AND GET THEM.

He dropped the paper. It see-sawed through the air and tapped against the carpet. A glacier of breath was locked at the back of his throat, but he did not think to let it out.

He thought, How did he … and his mind frantically replayed the moment he had first opened the envelope. Had he noticed that it was already open? No. The flap had been glued to the envelope. The way it should have been. The way he’d done it.

It was impossible.

He looked up and in his mind’s eye he saw the image of a huge “out-of-town” slot floating dreamily. It seemed to be smiling; it seemed to be leering at him.

It seemed to whisper his name.

—

At 9:45 the morning after, David got into his car and drove to the post office. He took with the manila envelope. The note was still inside.

Impossible or not, he intended to have his questions answered.

—

A neat stack of manila envelopes was deposited in David’s mailbox the next day. If any had bothered to count them, they would have gotten to 15 before stopping.

But nobody counted them. Not the mailman, because the envelopes were heavy and he only wanted to be rid of the damn things.

And not David. Because for all his important theories about evil, he had not come back from the post office.

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 .

Photo courtesy of Nels Olsen by way of a Creative Commons license. https://www.flickr.com/people/7776581@N04

INTRODUCTION

The Rocket Slide exists!

It’s a real thing and I stole it directly from a creepy, hidden-away playground in my old neighborhood. Whether it can be used by a vengeful ex-husband to kidnap his children … that’s another matter.

But yes, I had lived in the neighborhood for years without knowing that just down the street, behind a grassy verge that separated two of the more splendid homes from the others, lay a secret park with a secret playground filled with death-dealing rides that would never pass muster on a modern playground.

It was as if the rides had been designed by somebody who wanted children to be hurt. It had all the standard 1960s features – swings, a merry-go-round (which, when spun sufficiently fast, could fling a kid off into another dimension), and a couple of non-standard features.

For instance, there was an odd slide that consisted of a gigantic wedge-shaped piece of metal. It was mounted at a steep angle and to make correct use of it you had to start at the tapered in and, using the edge as a handgrip, drag yourself up to the top, then let go.

During the summer its metal hide would cook the flesh off your bones, and to successfully slide one had to reduce its adhesion – we used very fine sand flung up to the top of the slide. It was one broken arm or leg away from being a helluva lot of fun.

And then there was the Rocket Slide.

I remember it as an enclosed, twisty tunnel of a slide, but it may very well have been a straight slide. The words “Rocket Slide” were emblazoned on the side of the tube, written in flaming italic characters, as if the ride were not stationary but shooting through the atmosphere at the speed of sound. Children would climb a ladder to the top, sit down, and slide through the tunnel to emerge from the bottom, like a screaming, laughing chunk of Pez freshly clicked from the dispenser.

As I watched kids playing on the slide I wondered: What would happen if one of them went into the slide but didn’t come out? And what if an anxious mom looked up the metal throat of the slide and saw nothing but clear air. Just exactly how – and why – would something like that come to pass?

You ever wonder where writers get their ideas? THAT is where writers get their ideas – from everyday life, viewed from a slightly askew angle.

Stephen King made laundry machines evil.

Dennis Etchison made ambulance drivers evil.

And now I, Del Stone Jr., am making playground equipment evil.

I remember working on this story over and over, trying to give it significance larger than the basic idea of a playground slide that ate little kids. The anxious mother and vengeful father came along after I had finished the first version and sent it around to a few places. It finally found a home with Jeffery Thomas’ The End.

Since writing “Rocket Slide” I have never looked at playground equipment the same way.

I mean, seriously. Who knows what’s really inside the Rocket Slide? When was the last time you were inside the Rocket Slide?

Do you have a spouse working on a top-secret government who you recently split up with?

Do yourself a favor.

Keep your kids out of the Rocket Slide.

—

ROCKET SLIDE

The playground did not move, the way a living thing sometimes will not move.

Children dashed along its flanks, butterfly motes of motion flitting across its grassy expanse, from jungles of monkey bars and nodding teeter-totters to the giddy merry-go-round and best of all best, rising above the rain-washed landscape like a metal tower, the Rocket Slide. Children laughed and cried out, whirling and swinging in the delight that is exclusive to children, while mothers filled benches and watched, satisfied in their own ways.

All but one.

Jenny sat, tense, at the edge of the wooden seat, its whitewashed boards resembling teeth that might snap at her if she settled more comfortably into its jaw, and when a certain little girl wandered too close to the swings, Jenny would stand and call, “Amanda! Not behind the swings!” Or if the girl dared to explore the jungle gym and climbed too high, Jenny would shout, “Come down honey! You might fall!”

And for perhaps the third time that afternoon, after they had come out from beneath the bright gazebo when the rain had finished, the mother’s friend reached to her, touched her lightly on the shoulder, as if flesh would convey what words could not, and whispered, “Jen, let her play.” A pause. “You worry too much.”

Jenny thought, No … that’s not true. If you had a child … and an ex-husband … you’d understand. She turned to her friend and said, “I don’t know, Angie. There’s – there’s something – I don’t know. Something different. …” And then she sat, and her unease settled around her like a heavy shroud, locking in a chill.

Angela chuckled. Her voice was light as mist. Her arm slid around Jenny’s shoulder.

“Oh come on, Jen. It’s the playground. You’ve been here a hundred times. What could possibly be different?”

Jenny closed her eyes, opened them. “I don’t know. I’m just worried, I guess.”

What she could not describe was the feeling of being surrounded by hidden, prying eyes, everywhere, eyes that watched her thoughts, the way she perched at the edge of the bench, the nervous intake of breath and her darting gaze, flicking birdlike as she followed her daughter’s movement from one troublesome park peril to the next. She felt a wrongness here. Call it a mother’s intuition. She did not like this park anymore. She’d come her against her better judgment, giving into Angela’s unshakeable insistence that they spend the afternoon here so that Amanda might play and Angela could share the minutia she’d accumulated since they’d last spent an afternoon together. But Jenny didn’t like the park anymore. She didn’t like the swings – swings from which a child might be tossed to the ground – nor did she trust the creaking teeter-totters or the jungle gym or the narcotic whirl of the merry-go-round. Least of all did she trust the Rocket Slide, a tall metal tube wrapped around the steep incline of a slide. They cylinder was painted metallic red and was adorned with rocket fins; the characters R-O-C-K-E-T S-L-I-D-E were exhaust-fire yellow along its sides, around which stars and crescent moons and ringed planets capered. It was too high, Jenny decided, remembering how her heart would crawl into her throat when Amanda used to play on it. A child might take a spill from there and hurt herself. A young girl of five, for instance, who was precious beyond price to a mother who might be watching from too far away.

A young girl she’d fought to keep.

Rocket Slide. Jenny spoke the words to herself. Her lip curled imperceptibly at the dank taste of the syllables.

She watched a boy clamber up the ladder, apelike, to the waiting mouth of the slide, fit himself against the shiny metal tongue and push into its throat, swallowed by moons and stars and yellow rocket flare. She looked away before he could emerge.

“It’s Roger, I’ll bet. You and Roger used to come here every Saturday afternoon – at least until he started the project. A person could set his watch by you and Roger going to the playground. You’re afraid he might show up, aren’t you?” Angela was saying. Jenny didn’t turn, didn’t flinch, and wondered if the lack of reaction was incriminating. Finally, she murmured a simple, “No.” Not Roger. Please, not Roger. Not after what the lawyer told her the last time Roger came, attorneys in tow, ready to claim what he still insisted belonged to him.

No. Well … maybe. A little.

She shook her head and gazed across the park to make sure Amanda was nowhere near the Rocket Slide. She felt watched. An older girl, Amanda’s size, was making her way up the slide, moving with a quickness that suggested expertise in climbing ladders and touching feet-to-clouds from swings and all manner of playground skills.

“So you had the cops on him because he was harassing you. I think any woman in your position would have done the same thing. If it hadn’t been for that Pentagon bigshot running interference, Roger might be in jail now.”

“Yeah,” Jenny mused. Her memories of that sorry episode were bundled into a tidy package she found herself mentally tripping over a hundred times a day.

Roger Clemmons, Phd. The physicist – ”quantum theory of gravity physicist,” he’d correct her, as if he were amplifying a misdelivered introduction. She’d met him at the Caltech admission office. She’d worked there as a clerk, entering schedules and adjustments to the office’s mainframe. He’d dropped in one afternoon to clear up an error in his class time schedule and it had been immediate infatuation … at least on his part, she thought at the time. She considered him old and a bit eccentric, but after three months of effusive, often embarrassing pursuit, she’d given in. They had nothing in common and he’d seemed to like that. But after seven years of marriage, the novelty had worn off. Only Amanda still seemed able to captivate him.

A year after they were married the university had granted his sabbatical. Roger had wheedled and connived – persistence was his other distinctive quality, aside from a quickness to anger – and had gotten himself a grubstake from the dwindling pool of SDI money to pursue an applied research project he’d been kicking around for years, a mysterious project that he would reveal to nobody except, presumably, the agencies that were underwriting the costs.

She knew its name.

Bootleg.

And she knew a little bit more.

Roger would’ve been furious. She never told him about the envelope, the one she found in his coat pocket as she was checking it before sending it off to the cleaners. The envelope was scribbled with hieroglyphics of formulae and notations – maybe he’d been working up a presentation or a report, or maybe he’d had a brainstorm while eating lunch at that greasy spoon he and his grad students inhabited almost every afternoon.

The notes were cryptic: “Effect is localized. Can be g-rated from our end to coordin (garbled) silo, war room. 1 man job. Stable apertures; loss rates acceptable.”

She’d read the notes and then returned the envelope to his pocket, and that night, after Roger came home, she mentioned she was taking his suit to the cleaners.

The next morning, the envelope was gone.

Bootleg.

And when Bootleg was going badly, if something hadn’t worked – she always knew when something hadn’t worked – Roger would rage, his anger inevitably focusing on her attempts to console him, then on her. She could not reveal what she knew about Bootleg – a security breach, as he’d warned her the times she’d asked about his work, could cost him the project and maybe land him in the federal stockade to boot. So she could offer him no encouragement, no solace, nothing beyond the meaningless assurances that he’d eventually discover a way around the problem, whatever it was. But that seemed only to aggravate him, as if he knew he’d never solve the riddle of Bootleg and resented her blind confidence he would.

Finally, she couldn’t stand it anymore. His stormy outbursts, his anger and browbeating. She filed for divorce. The project was going nowhere. Funding was dying on the vine. Roger was consumed by hate – for her, for Bootleg, for just everything.

“Jenny?” Angela asked.

Jenny shook her head. The girl mounted the Rocket Slide, and a silent claxon within Jenny began to gong, No! Don’t do that! Get down from there before – before –

The girl swooshed and disappeared.

“ – devil’s advocate, you know. You wouldn’t think that, would you?” Angela was saying, cautiously. She hesitated, the lines around her mouth tight with an effected frown, and stared deeply into Jenny’s eyes. “Earth to Jenny. Are you listening?”

Jenny blinked. She turned to Angela, blushing, and laughed nervously.

“No – I mean yes. Actually … no. I’m sorry.” She cleared her throat. “I guess I’m kind of out of it today. Something about the playground, something I can’t explain. It gives me the creeps, if you want to know the truth.” She held up an arm, turned it to the bright sun. “Look at me,” and she laughed again, a sound without humor. “I’ve got goosebumps.”

Angela sighed. “It’s just a park, Jen. What could be wrong with a park? It’s not as if there were muggers and perverts hiding in the bushes.”

Jenny smiled at the notion. “It’s nothing like that. I really couldn’t explain it, but I’ve got this feeling, you know, like something isn’t right.”

“I’d call it an overactive imagination.”

Jenny looked back at the slide. Another boy was slowly climbing the ladder. The slide loomed over the park, primeval in its hugeness, a symbol for some dimly remembered horror, making even the trees seem incidental. Light glittered forbiddingly from the firebolt lettering along its neck.

“I know one thing. I do not like that slide. I think it’s too tall; a child could break his neck if he fell off it.”

The boy hoisted himself onto the smooth metal.

Angela sniffed. “Oh come on, Jen. Amanda used to play on it all the time.”

“She could fall climbing – ”

Angela shook her head. “Roger used to help her up the slide. You know, you could do the same thing.”

“I don’t like it,” Jenny insisted. “I’ve been sitting here the past five minutes watching children throw themselves into that thing – like sacrifices to some – some god …” The idea had her trembling, as if her joints had quietly come unpinned. “I don’t like the damned thing – there’s something weird about it.”

“Oh Jenny!” Angela snorted. “You’re getting twitchy in your old age.”

“I mean it.”

The boy hesitated, acted as if he’d changed his mind. The slide sucked him down. Jenny watched, waiting, a sense of foreboding winding itself tightly along the cords in her neck. She closed her eyes and rubbed them, her thoughts again uncovering the stone of memory that was Roger. She shuddered as a familiar, sick fear slithered over her, shadowy and impossible to manage.

Roger. She hadn’t heard from him in a year. Then, something had happened. A breakthrough. Something. Not a word about it in the press, of course, but she knew something had happened. Roger was back, swaggering into her living room like an Errol Flynn gone to rot, all smugness and confidence, as if the secret half of his life had finally resolved itself and he could now devote all his energies to compensating her for the distraction of a divorce.

He wouldn’t hurt her, at least not physically. He was a Phd. There were ways to hurt a person – clever ways – that might suit a quantum theorist’s penchant for elegance.

He wanted Amanda.

After countless confrontations – one that required the intervention of police – they’d gone to court. And when the judge said no, she’d seen that smear of a smirk in Roger’s eyes, that malicious squint that said no damned piece of paper could change his mind, and maybe Jenny had better lock the doors at night and keep a sharp eye, oh, a very sharp eye on Amanda, because sometimes fathers took little girls away from their mothers, no matter what the judge said. Sometimes they did things like that.

She breathed deeply and tried to muster a facade of composure. The bastard. He’d better not try it.

She gazed back out over the park, imagined little eyes scuttling to hide, and whispered, “Maybe it is Roger. Maybe.”

Angela reached around her, pulled her close. She felt hot. “You see, that’s what’s got you so worked up, Jen. Roger.”

She turned Jenny’s face to hers. “And you’ve got to stop worrying about the little shit. There’s nothing he can do; nothing at all. Never again. That was all decided in court, remember? Roger is history. He’s under a permanent restraining order, OK? So forget about him.” She cocked her head, the set of her mouth softening into a smile.

Jenny managed a tepid smile herself and nodded – an almost imperceptible movement of her head – then with greater conviction. The little shit. Her fear began to evaporate, the space it had occupied filling with gratitude. Just a little shit.

She said, “You know what I’d like?”

“What?”

Jenny paused. “I think I’d like a cup of coffee. Or a drink.”

They burst into nervous titters and sank into the maw of the bench, at once comfortable again, the tension gone. Angela whewed and answered, “I think both can be arranged. You know, you really had me going there. All that talk about slide gods. I almost expected Rod Serling to jump out of the bushes at me.”

Jenny smiled sheepishly, started to thank her, stopped, the thought derailed and clicking – my God – the words were a glacier in her throat. A small figure was at the top of the Rocket Slide, its face slack with innocent wonder. My God? A Novocaine deadness settled into the square of Jenny’s back, then faded as she was overcome with dread.

Amanda –

A hammerstroke of horror, cold as lightning is hot, surged in stinging fingers along her nerves and set them to thrumming. At first, she could not move; then she was off the bench, running a cry strangled at the back of her throat. She ran automatically, her eyes locked to the figure atop the slide. And when the girl started to sit down, as if she too would give herself to that gleaming metal throat, Jenny did scream.

Amanda looked up, saw her mother and spoke words that were incomprehensible with the distance. Her face was a question mark, a Did-I-do-something-wrong? expression. Then she stared back down into the Rocket Slide.

Jenny’s heart lurched; she drew in a whistling breath and shouted, “NO! Amanda – NO! Get down from there now!”

She hurtled around the slide, the flaming letters R-O-C-K-E-T S-L arching above her, meteors snaking down from the metal ethers. She grabbed a handrail and put her foot on the first rung and the slide seemed to throb to life, as if secret engines had been fired and would launch it into outer space. Amanda looked down at her mother, looked back into the slide … her expression slowly melting into the immaculate terror that only a child can know.

She whispered huskily, “Mommee!”

Jenny scrambled for handholds, footholds, her foot slipping from the rungs and her body flattening against the unyielding steel. An agony of pain flared from her shin. She saw that Amanda had a death grip on the guardrails. Her face was pallid, as if the monsters in closets and beneath beds were suddenly alive and lurking within the slide. Her feet stretched toward its maw as if something were trying to pull her inside. Her eyes were locked in a fierce squint.

Jenny hauled herself up, up the ladder, shivering involuntarily as she climbed. For a splintered second she thought she heard voices. The metal began to tingle and burn – frozen the way it might freeze in the stratosphere.

“MOMMEE!”

The girl’s hand slipped from the guardrail and she flipped onto her side –

“MOMMEE! I CAN’T HOLD ONE!”

And the slide pulled at her, gulping swallows of gravity, friction and inertia unbound and gone wild. The girl tried to grab the rail with her free hand and a dark cloud of panic swelled within Jenny, obliterating all thought but ascent, everything with ascent as its motive –

“HELP ME – ”

– three rungs, she was three rungs away –

“MOMMEE! MOMMEEEEE!”

– two –

“HOLD ON, AMANDA! DON’T LET GO – ”

– it pulled –

– one rung –

– the girl’s fingers slipped, one, two, three four, from the rail –

– Jenny wailed and snatched –

And grabbed a small fist. She fought to pull her daughter to her against the capering insanity of the Rocket Slide, called strength from reservoirs she hadn’t known existed, pulling her daughter out of the tunnel. She wrapped an arm around the biting, sub-zero metal and grabbed the girl by her shoulder and pulled until the girl slammed against her and the Rocket Slide heaved like a thing denied breath. Only then did she dare to look, to see into its throat –

– and stared into the vast, star-painted belly of the universe. A spiral galaxy unwound, frozen alive in the slow progression of time; wizards’ eyes of stars dusted the tunnel, shining hard and unblinking as they might from space. A ringed planet, its equator tilted insanely against the plane, loomed to one side, and as Jenny watched, a small dot of light, at first inconspicuous among the other stars, began to dilate. White light burned through, in fierce contrast to the surrounding void. The dot enlarged until it eclipsed nearly everything else in the tunnel, and a face appeared within it, blurred and amorphous. Jenny thought she could see hands reaching from the light, and she heard words, distorted at first, but gaining in clarity, as the circle of light expanded.

She thought she heard, “Come to Daddy.” She thought she recognized the voice.

Her thoughts seized on a single word: Bootleg. And everything inside her stopped.

Then Angela’s had her by the shoulders and arms, pulling her back to the top of the ladder. She gave herself to Angela, limp, and slipped fitfully beneath the surface of consciousness.

She thought she heard Amanda sobbing.

—

At dusk: An ethereal light glittered from the Rocket Slide. A lone child sat at the top of the chute, staring into the light. “No,” she shook her head. “My name’s Susie. Not ‘Manda.” And no, she didn’t know where Amanda lived because she didn’t know any Amanda, and she wasn’t lying and No! she wouldn’t come closer so he could see her.

The girl clambered down the ladder. She ran home to tell her mother about the bad man. Somebody’s father.

In the slide.

And the playground, the Rocket Slide: They did not move.

Image courtesy of PickPic by way of a Creative Commons license.

INTRODUCTION

Does comedic horror exist?

The producers of the “Scream” movies would say so, I think. But in fact, is “Scream” funny?

Well, it is my studied opinion that within the context of horror, yes, it is funny. I would call it gallows humor. It is funny the same way that “American Werewolf in London” and even the “Evil Dead” movies are funny.

These movies, and their cousins in book form, don’t take themselves seriously, not like “The Exorcist” or “The Shining.” And you know what? That’s OK. There’s a place for black humor in horror. Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, would give that statement a thumbs up. I think.

When I sat down to write “Siren’s Song” I didn’t intend to produce a work of comedic horror. That’s just how it happened. I mean, c’mon. How could you write a story about a man who kills and dismembers his wife because of her relentless singing and now she haunts him from the faucets, toilet and shower drain where he disposed of her body, and it not be funny? That’s humorous, not in a literal, family relations kind of way. For horror, anyway.

So here you go. Meet Myron, long-suffering husband to Phyllis, who yodeled her way to an untimely demise. Myron carved her into small pieces and flushed her down the toilet or pushed her down the shower drain, and now she’s singing his … well, certainly not praises. More likely his negative attributes. And that’s where they exist at the moment of this writing, an uneasy, horror-stricken balance of power between murder and retribution.

And isn’t that the way it goes so many times in a marriage, two negatives holding each other in a kind of check – not mate, just check – that goes on and on until their collective life comes to and end. …

Or does it?

—

SIREN’S SONG

Myron heard his wife singing in the shower.

Only problem was, Myron was in the shower too. And Myron’s wife was dead.

“Not fair,” Myron said miserably, staring at the drain – your average, Norman Bates “Psycho” shower drain – from which his wife’s warbling song emanated. “Phyllis deserved to die.”

And it was true. Phyllis had deserved to die. A frustrated Ethel Merman – and only a person of Myron’s generation would have known who Ethel Merman was – Phyllis had sung to Myron and sung and sung and sung until one day, Myron had simply –

“MOOOOON RIVERRRRRR,” the drain squalled –

– snapped, like the proverbial rubber band wound too tight.

Myron left the water running but stepped out of the shower. He tiptoed across the icy tiles to the vanity and opened the cabinet. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror; “Oh God,” he shuddered and slammed the cabinet shut.

Every bit of 58 years. With tits like his grandmother’s and that poochy, old man’s gut between his navel and his dick. And gray chest hair, for God’s sake. Gray chest hair smeared in cold, slimy strands across his sagging, grandmotherly titties.

“Not fair,” he muttered and scuttled back to the shower. He remembered a day when he liked what he saw in the mirror, when he could run his hands over his flat chest and press his palms into taut skin and let his fingers wander to his crotch, imagining they were Sophia Loren’s fingers, or more forbiddenly, Mrs. Andrew Williamson’s fingers as she handed him a Coke while he throttled back the lawnmower. She’d wanted him all right. But he’d been too stupid to know it, a kid mowing lawns for spending money. But she’d wanted him.

“YOUUUU LIGHT UP MY LIFEEEEEE!” the drain yodeled. Myron sighed and stepped into the warm spray.

Then Phyllis had come along, and he’d settled for her, the operative word being “settled.” Thirty years he’d settled for her, their marriage no less than hell’s mortgage where you paid off the principal the first year and spent the rest of your life trying to overtake an interest load that only grew larger and larger, no matter how much money or attention you threw at it. The debts and the misery and the anger had piled so high Myron could see nothing else, and Phyllis had sung through it all no matter how many times he’d told her just to shut the hell up, her off-kilter contralto ever reminding Myron that he had been a fool for marrying her and a coward for not leaving her.

“THAT’S THE WAY – UH HUH UH HUH – I LIKE ITTTTT!” the drain tittered, and Myron rolled his eyes. Disco? Death did not become Phyllis. But then she had not died easily, Myron thought, remembering the afternoon when she had launched into a verse of “Ave Maria” and he had gone after her with a machete. She had fought him the good fight, screeching all the way, and he had liked the sound of her screams. But in the end he had cut her into tiny pieces, rinsing all the gooshy stuff down the bathtub drain; the bigger chunks he’d flushed. The last to go had been her tongue, still languidly waggling as he yanked the trap from the bathtub drain and forced it down the pipe with the handle of a plunger.

Then the singing had begun.

Petula Clark. The Cure. Threepenny Opera tunes. Diana Ross. Nursery rhymes. And Ethel Merman, god forbid, baaaaad Ethel Merman. It hooted from the drain pipes and gurgled from the toilets, and while Myron could not put a stop to it, he had one way of changing Phyllis’ tune.

“Just shut the hell up, Phyllis,” Myron whispered, squatting in the bathtub, his old man’s belly pooching out even farther. He uncapped the bottle of lye and poured it down the Norman Bates drain.

The song faltered, and became a hitching scream.

Now that, Myron said to himself, his knees creaking as he stood, was something he thought he could live with.

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 Paramount.

“Passenger” starring Lou Llobell as not-always-making-the-best-choice Maddie Brecker, Jacob Scipio as not-always-making-the-best-choice Tyler Genocchio, Melissa Leo as damn-I-didn’t know-that-a-neck-could-do-that Diana Larson, Miles Fowler as Lucas Tedesco and Alan Trong as Daniel, the onset victims, and others. Directed by André Øvredal. Score Composer Christopher Young. Script Writers Zachary Donohue and T.W. Burgess. One hour, 34 minutes. Rated R. In theaters.

Plot summary: Maddie and Tyler are yuppies tired of the grind. To shed their lives in Brooklyn, they buy a van camper to hit the road. And the road they hit when they make the mistake of stopping on a dark rural route somewhere out west to aid a car crash victim. Don’t look now, but there’s something in your rearview mirror and it’s inside your costly Benz.

Spoilers: Sure.

Mladen’s take

I start with a disclosure. There’s a small chance that I’m giving this satisfactory movie a lower grade than it deserves because it was made by Paramount Skydance Corp., which bribed the Imbecile Poser President to allow a merger with CBS by firing Stephen Colbert of The Late Show. What am I going to do now that the Trump‑loving, piece‑of‑shit entertainment company has bought venerable Warner Bros Discovery?

More important, how am I going tell our treasured Del that I ain’t seeing a movie from now on if it’s made by that piece‑of‑shit fascist‑adoring business? Huh?

“Passenger” features good acting, a fabulous score and soundtrack, and a top‑notch soundscape. Too bad it’s made by a piece‑of‑shit studio. Oh, I’ve said that already.

Llobell as Maddie is convincing as a young adult realizing there’s a malevolent supernatural something targeting her and her somewhat fiancé because … why? The vanpers stopped to help a car crash victim. Scipio’s Tyler is solid as a skeptic about what Maddie is telling him as they travel here and there living the life he wants.

Oddly, the most interesting part of “Passenger” is the way Maddie and Tyler evolve as a couple while trying to avoid getting killed. They highlight the subdued horror that often accompanies a relationship when one person is only doing something for the other person’s sake. Of course, Tyler recognizes the folly of his ways but it takes an evil force wearing the collar of a priest to help him come around.

That’s another decent, though clichéd, component in the film, the religiosity. It’s the whole good v. bad, God v. Satan thing running along at a clip that doesn’t overwhelm the moviegoer with sanctimonious tripe. The spirit of the movie is that our beloved couple is protected by the saint of travelers and hunted by a fraudulent monk who was once the saint’s sidekick. Good enough.

And, finally, there’s the movie’s atmosphere. The roads are tunnels formed by the canopy of towering trees or traverse a ceaseless brown dessert. No street lights on the highway to hell. “Passenger” does a nice job integrating Hobo lore as part of its story.

“Passenger” malfunctions in the usual way for horror movies or, for that matter, sci‑film films. People make stupid choices because they ain’t responding to the call of self‑preservation. Even if they’re just being curious, we all know what curiosity does to the cat. Yes?

Maddie, if you’re walking to your parked Benz van and it keeps moving farther from you by itself without the engine ever starting every time you look away because you heard a spooky noise, it’s time to return to the 24‑hour gym where your boy is working out.

Yes, Tyler, I discourage you from driving the van down a desolate, rutted gravel road into a foggy forest where no one can hear you scream, let alone get ghosted‑ed. Good God, man, can’t you see that your pseudo‑betrothed is shitting bricks from her nicely shaped ass because she’s afraid of the night?

“Passenger” is a C. I say that, in small part, because the Culture Wars demon has hardened my heart. I respect Llobell’s and Scipio’s acting, sure as hell loved the music and sound effects, but they did their good work for a studio driven by the inverted Pentagram or the Orange Blob with cankles and dementia. Take your pick. Either is bad. 

Del’s take

You’ve got to hand it to Mladen: Once he gets his rage on he’s like a Michigan snowbird closing in on a $10 breakfast buffet. You get in his way and you’ll be squashed flatter than a McDonald’s hamburger patty.

But he’s right. My opinion of Paramount – after its lily-livered culling of Stephen Colbert at the behest of President Harkonnen, and its castration of “60 Minutes” – ranks down there with being on the receiving end of a digital prostate exam administered by Freddy Kreuger. I have no problem abiding by Mladen’s boycott of Paramount “content” – I’ll add it to my ever-growing list of corporations that will never see one nickel of my meager assets – Chick-fil-A, Hobby Lobby and Target.

As for “Passenger,” what can I say? I haven’t been terrified by a horror movie since 2004 when Sarah Michelle Gellar watched a very pale, hairy Japanese ghost lady crawl across the ceiling in “The Grudge.” And who can forget the most ravishing woman in all of time, Naomi Watts, answer the most sinister spam call in all of time in 2002’s “The Ring”? That’s one she definitely should have let go to voicemail.

“Passenger” does have its moments.

It begins with a pre-title sequence, just like “The Mandalorian,” that actually scared me. Two young men are driving through a forested area – at night, of course – when they stop because one young man with the world’s tiniest bladder needs to pee. While Mr. Micro-Bladder is in the bushes doing his thing, strange sounds emerge from the forest. Then, the car horn blows continuously. At first, Mr. Micro-Bladder thinks it’s his buddy good-naturedly harassing him and returns to the car. But then he discovers the car is empty. …

From that point the movie follows a fairly predictable trajectory. Maddie and Tyler, the true viewpoint characters of the story, come across Mr. Micro-Bladder and his wrecked Honda and stop to help, and in that moment a transfer takes place where whatever had been stalking the two young men now latches on to our newly engaged couple. That’s why you should never stop and render aid at the scene of a car accident, the movie repeatedly warns. I’m sure law enforcement and medical authorities are thrilled with that message.

Running parallel to this surface plot is the conflict between Maddie and Tyler, who seem at odds over the direction their life together should take. Tyler loves the idea of working remotely and going wherever the road takes them. Maddie had too much of that vagabond existence in her childhood and wants the stability of a home base. This is where the movie becomes somewhat annoying because neither Tyler nor Maddie will actually sit down and have an adult conversation about their differences. For God’s sake, people. Talk!

Where “Passenger” shines is in its atmospherics. As Mladen correctly pointed out (for once), director Øvredal makes effective use of the absence of light, the glance askance, and the power of suggestion to generate his spooky tension. Cars driving through a densely forested region at night bore tunnels of light from the dark. Parking lot lights illuminate a small patch of asphalt but make the surrounding areas look oh so much darker. A quick glance in the rear-view mirror suggests somebody might be sitting behind you, but when you look directly, nobody is there.

For me, the most masterful use of light takes place when Maddie and Tyler are watching a movie at a forest camp site. Something comes out of the woods and attacks them. They use the movie projector as a kind of flashlight, creating a very eerie effect as Jimmy Stewart’s face is projected against trees, shrubs and other surfaces. Very creepy!

Øvredal hides his monster through about two-thirds of the movie but finally succumbs to the temptation of Showing Us What He Looks Like, which for me was a buzzkill. I’m an adherent of the Ridley Scott school of filmmaking, which requires the monster be hidden until the very end, if shown at all. Again, human imagination is usually the root of all fear.

“Passenger” touched on ideas presented in other movies. Itinerate workers living in their vans and RVs was the central theme of “Nomadland.” The modern Western road milieu, with the monsters who inhabit that realm, harkens back to movies like “The Hitcher” and “Near Dark.” And the idea of a thing relentlessly stalking an innocent passerby reminds me of one of my favorites, “It Follows.”

“Passenger” was better than most of the horror movies I’ve seen lately, but in the end it did not create a lasting impression – not like “The Ring.” For that reason I’m giving it a B. I won’t penalize it for being a Paramount project, though I wish another studio would buy the rights to “Star Trek” so I can watch some of the newer shows.

See “Passenger” in the theater, if for no other reason than to experience the superb sound.

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

Image courtesy of Neon.

“Hokum” Starring Adam Scott as tortured asswipe Ohm Bauman, Peter Coonan as bumbling bad guy Mal, Florence Ordesh as wispy but likeable Fiona, Brendan Conroy as decent Cob, and others. Directed by Damian McCarthy. 1 hour, 47 minutes. Rated R. Theatrical release.

Plot summary: Caustic Bauman is a successful novel writer with a past that haunts him. He heads for Ireland to disperse the ashes of his mother and father at the place where they honeymooned, a backwoods hotel. There, Bauman encounters a bundle of characters who lead him toward a reckoning filled with terror and regret and salvation.  

Spoilers: Gotta tell you something about the movie to make the review make sense. No?

Mladen’s take

If I had to guess, and I will, “Hokum” will probably make a little bit of money in the theaters before getting shoved into the capacious jaws of the beast of streaming. That’s too bad because this horror crime thriller of a film is pretty darned good on a couple of planes.

More than anything, the movie’s sound effects and score are superb.

Even at the old theater where Del and I saw the film, the speakers generated an immersive mood. Rain plinking gutters. Wind sweeping through the canopy of towering pines. The hotel creaking from age or moaning from its disused basement. It was all so crisp and satisfyingly phlegmatic. Loved it to no end.

The cinematography was real. No computer-generated imagery here. The narrow stone passageways, the ghostly honeymoon suite, the cramped dumbwaiter, all practical effects well used.

“Hokum” builds suspense, throws in a jump scare or two, and ends with a satisfying, if not dubious, lesson: The truly evil do get punished, at least at the Bilberry Woods Hotel.  

To top it all off, the movie offers nothing obscene. Blood doesn’t spray. Guts don’t spill. Heads aren’t separated from shoulders. There’s no nudity. Normally, the lack of any of those in a horror movie disappoints me. Not so in this case.

“Hokum” plays very nicely with lighting. Dimness is the film’s ally. And there’s no better way to create it but with the use of the plain and simple incandescent bulb. Their orange glow doesn’t travel far. It seemed that the “Hokum” set was designed to eat light. It barely reflected from any surface. It cast shadows that trifled with your imagination. Lovely, indeed.

What’s the consequence of masterful use of lighting in film. Is there a demon looking up at you from the dumbwaiter’s deep shaft? Maybe. What’s that circling you? Only its silhouette is visible through the thin fabric of the curtain shrouding the bed where you’re hiding.

My principal gripe with “Hokum” is the chattiness of the Irish folk who Bauman encounters at the hotel. They disclose more than warranted to the stranger in their midst and continue doing so.

Also, I’m no fan of the suicide. It’s misplaced as a story arc. The person offing themselves may have been a dickhead but there was no evidence of suicidal tendencies or, for that matter, ideation.

Still, the film’s moodiness, coupled to the good acting by all the principal players, makes for good horror. “Hokum” is but a witch’s cold breath from an A-.

Del’s take

Wait just a minute, Mladen. Aren’t you the one who said, “Why are you making me watch horror?” as the trailers ended and the opening credits for “Hokum” rolled across the screen? I thought you didn’t like horror. Yet here you are, giving an A- to a horror movie. You old softie. I bet you like cats, too.

But you’re right, Mladen. “Hokum” is a damn fine movie, worth every pixel of your digital approbation. But I should clarify – “Hokum” is not a horror movie per se, although it’s being pitched as such. “Hokum” is a haunted house story that evolves into a murder mystery, in the spirit of 2000’s “What Lies Beneath.”

Kudos to Adam Scott for reigning in his comedic impulses and delivering an excellent dramatic performance as the unlikeable Ohm Bauman. Mladen, did you notice the possible significance of his first name, “Ohm,” which is a measure of electrical resistance? You might say he’s stubborn, which would play well with the image of the ram skull, another symbol of unyielding resistance. Bauman is a hard-hearted fellow who has shut off his feelings after a tragedy of his childhood, one for which he blames himself. Yet he yearns for the true vision of himself, just like the goats that climb onto cars in this movie because they seek a reflective surface after eating the magic mushrooms of the forest.

Kudos also to director Damian McCarthy for his steady hand at the tiller, eschewing the temptation of jump scares and gore in favor of mood, shadows and eerie music to build tension in this very scary movie. McCarthy seems to recognize the less seen the better in a movie where everything we’re witnessing just might be a fever dream concocted by a hallucinogenic fungi.

My only quibble: At one point Bauman becomes trapped in a room. I kept asking myself: Why doesn’t he simply break out a window and jump?

Still, “Hokum” is a terrific example of horror, ghost stories, murder mysteries – whatever you want to call them – done right. It pits the Ugly American against Old World Courtliness, and in the end … well, I won’t say, because I don’t want to spoil it for you. Do go see “Hokum” in the theater. It’s much spookier that way.

Oh, and Mladen, I’ll call your A-.

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

Image courtesy of Pxhere by way of a Creative Commons license. https://pxhere.com/en/photo/1222994

INTRODUCTION

The hardest thing you may ever have to do is bury a child. The second-hardest is burying a parent.

When my father passed away, only a year after I wrote this story, I felt like an orphan. Worse, I was now responsible for my mother. I had two siblings, but one lived 35 miles away and the other a thousand. I lived only a mile or two from Mom, so I became the go-to sibling for Mom Problems – the stopped-up sink, the car that wouldn’t start, the strange sound outside the door at night.

Was I up for the challenge? We’d soon find out.

Not a week after Dad passed, Mom was on the phone asking about a piece of paperwork from the bank. It was about her IRA. I came over to check. It looked like all the funds had been withdrawn. How was that possible? Mom started crying. She had no idea what to do, so I told her I’d take care of it, and the next day I was at the bank trying to find out what had happened.

Turns out, it was a kind of receipt. When the IRA was taken out of Dad’s name and put in Mom’s, a new account had to be created and the funds rolled over from Dad’s account to Mom’s. That’s all.

But it was the first of many, many jobs I had to do for Mom over the coming years. She passed in 2022, outliving my father by 24 years. That was 24 years of medical emergencies, hurricanes, car accidents, balky washing machines and scam artists who prey on the elderly I presided over. I look back on it and wonder how I managed – while working a full-time job and dealing with my own medical emergencies, balky washing machines and scam artists.

It was stressful and solutions were hard work – but nothing like the solution provided by the dutiful son in this short story!

You’ll be pleased to know this is NOT autobiographical, and it wasn’t based on real events.

If you’re not pleased about that, I sure am!

THE DUTIFUL SON

“It’s perfectly normal to feel guilt when your parents pass away,” Bob Harrison said quietly, his voice in resonance with the gloom that shrouded the living room. It was a dark day, and the curtains were drawn, and two kind and gentle people had just died.

The other man, young Ed Masters, reached to the side of his La-Z-Boy and yanked the lever that raised the footrest. Then he leaned back and stared Bob straight in the eye and said, “I should have spent more time with them, but that’s OK. My parents will live in me for the rest of my life.”

Harrison nodded. “Yes. In all of us.” He did not know if the words would comfort Ed, but he felt he must try. Barbara and Clayton Masters had been loving and devoted members of their Unitarian Universalist congregation for many years, and now they would have every answer to every question life had ever posed to them, having passed away within a day of one another, a rare partnership in existence that transcended mortal bounds. Harrison almost envied them, but he would mourn only their absence as they had gone to whatever better place lay in store for them.

But young Ed had rarely attended services, and Harrison doubted he harbored any belief system at all. So Harrison had dropped by to visit, to make sure Ed was holding up OK. It was the least he could do for Barb and Clay.

“Will there be services?” Harrison asked. Ed shook his head.

“Nope. Why should there? My parents are alive. In me.”

Harrison tried not to let a frown creep into his expression. Young Ed seemed firm in his convictions – too firm, for somebody who had just lost his parents. Harrison pressed on.

“Will your parents be buried or cremated?”

“Neither,” Ed said.

“I don’t understand.”

Ed rolled his eyes. “Look, I know you’re trying to help, but I don’t need it. Really.” He stretched in the recliner. “I don’t feel any guilt about not spending time with my folks. I’m with them all the time. I’ve taken care of that.”

“What have you done?” Harrison asked.

“I’ve taken care of it,” Ed answered evenly, a whiff of anger heating the words.

Harrison spread his hands. “I ask because Barb and Clay were well-liked by the members of our congregation, and we’d like to honor their memory somehow.”

“Then have your own services,” Ed snapped. “I’ve already had mine.”

Something was wrong here. That dull, boorish component to young Ed’s personality was hanging over the room like a thundercloud, grief-stricken or not. And he did not seem so grief-stricken at that, Harrison heard himself thinking. Young Ed seemed almost defensive.

“What became of the remains?” Harrison asked.

Ed glared at him. “Is that important?”

“Yes,” Harrison shot back. “Barb and Clay were my friends, and I want to know what you did with them.”

He could see the color rising in young Ed’s cheeks, the anger blooming there like some horrible, crimson flower. And then just as quickly it broke, and Ed let out his breath in a hitching sigh that somehow seemed contrived.

“Will you please just leave me alone?” he sobbed. “Yes, I should have spent more time with them, but I’ve taken care of that. They’ll be with me always now.”

Harrison stood up abruptly and glowered at him. This was an act, a facade, a pretense of grief to throw him off track. He had the horrible feeling that the bodies were here, in this house, and an image sprang to mind of two desiccated corpses being discovered in the back bedroom years hence. It was more than Harrison could bear. Barb and Clay deserved better than that.

He marched down the hallway and began searching the bedrooms. Behind him, he heard young Ed shouting, “What the hell are you doing? Have you gone crazy?”

He went through the bedrooms, and the back bathroom, and then he tromped down the stairs and into the basement. He climbed back upstairs and thumped up into the attic.

Nowhere. They were nowhere. He came back downstairs. Young Ed stood in the hallway by the kitchen, leaning insolently against the wall. Harrison drew up to him and hissed, “I don’t know what you’ve done, but I’m calling the law on this.”

Young Ed smirked, “Be my guest,” and crossed his leg, bumping the kitchen garbage can. The lid toppled over, but not before Harrison spotted the bone inside, gnawed to the gristle.

A lump formed in his stomach. His gaze wandered to young Ed’s eyes. For the first time, he saw the true insanity lurking there.

“I told you,” young Ed said, his voice devoid of any emotion that could be called human. “My folks are alive. In me.”

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 Warner Bros. Pictures.

“Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” Starring Jack Reynor as Charlie Cannon, Laia Costa as Larissa Cannon, May Calamawy as Detective Dalia Zaki, Natalie Grace as Katie, and others. Directed by Lee Cronin. Two hours, 14 minutes. Rated R. Theatrical release.

Spoilers: Mladen took the week off so no, there shouldn’t be any.

Plot summary: An American family living in Egypt suffers a tragedy when their daughter is abducted by persons unknown. Eight years later, the family receives shocking news: Their daughter has been found. They bring her back to their home in the States only to discover she’s no longer the innocent child they knew and loved.

Del’s take:

If you were thinking “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” is a re-imagining of the Brendan Fraser Mummy franchise of 1999, allow me to disabuse you of that notion. This is a different story in every way, and I can’t say I enjoyed it more than its romantic and adventurous predecessor.

“Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” belongs to a genre I call “gorror,” a portmanteau of “gore” and “horror,” because like many horror movies today it relies on gore, blood and cruelty to generate its tension. I long for the good old days when moviemakers understood the theater of the mind is the best venue for scary tales of the supernatural. Remember films like “The Innocents” or the Robert Wise production of “The Haunting of Hill House,” where the antagonists were rarely (if ever) seen? Those movies were terrifying because they allowed the audience to imagine what might be lurking in the shadows. Ridley Scott gave us only fleeting glimpses of the alien for that very reason.

I could give you a laundry list of shock-value scenes from “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy,” but I’ll keep it to just this one: At a funeral wake, the body is knocked from its coffin and a young girl laps up embalming fluid oozing from the corpse. Does that scare you, or make you want to vomit? You can share my plastic bag.

It’s a shame because I really wanted to like this movie. The premise was interesting enough: An American family is living in Egypt, where the father works as a journalist. One day their daughter Katie is abducted from their back yard by a mysterious crone. Authorities are unable to recover the girl and the family returns to America heartbroken. Eight years later they receive a call – Katie has been found. But she’s changed. She’s no longer verbal and suffers seizures and other health maladies. The family brings Katie to their home in Arizona where terrible things start to happen, embalming fluid-sipping notwithstanding.

From that point the movie degenerates into a series of scenes intended to revolt and disgust. These scenes are punctuated with moments of explanation – some might call it too much explanation though I’ll never complain about a movie making its intentions clear. At least the script attempts to capture some of the anguish a family would experience under those circumstances and Jack Reynor as the dad, Charlie Cannon, delivers the appropriate pathos, although at times his horror more closely resembles Moe from The Three Stooges finally noticing his hair is on fire. Natalie Grace is appropriately sinister as the altered Katie Cannon. The most memorable character was May Calamawy as Detective Dalia Zaki, who struck me as a kind of Egyptian Clarice Starling. She presented a quiet, sometimes callow dignity and determination that made me want to root for her. Verónica Falcón was also very, very good as Larissa Cannon’s mother, although her role wasn’t very large.

My problem with “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” is its cruelty. As an up-and-hopefully-coming horror writer I was always told to never place a child in jeopardy, that audiences wouldn’t like it and editors wouldn’t buy it. Obviously that maxim doesn’t apply to cinema as kids in peril have existed in film for decades, long before “The Exorcist” gave us Linda Blair’s head spinning on a pole back in the early ’70s. But even that can be overdone and “The Mummy” takes its best shot, not just with children but everyone. Two hours of toenails being ripped out and tongues being lopped off, and I was ready for this movie to end.

I’m grading “The Mummy” a B-. I had meant to give it a C+ but I remembered some of my more generous grades for other movies that weren’t as skillfully put together and I reconsidered. “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” is a well organized movie and its conceit is clever, but the relentless cruelty and its focus on body horror relegate it to mere gorror status.

I’m much more fearful of what the eye can’t see, but the imagination can. I hope Hollywood rediscovers this simple rubric sooner than later.

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

Image courtesy of Pickpik by way of a Creative Commons search.

INTRODUCTION

I’m trying to think back to the first moment I experienced a fear of heights. It has something to do with my father.

Lest you believe this sounds like a therapy session, I mean, quite literally my father.

I couldn’t have been more than 3 or 4 years old – I’m thinking 3. My dad was active duty Air Force and we were stationed at either Vancouver or Spokane, Washington. We were living in base housing.

One night, my dad picked me up and put me on his shoulders. I remember thinking I was about to fall off. I had nothing else to hold onto, so I grabbed his forehead in a death grip. We headed off down the hall. My head bonked against the opening to the hallway.

I remember being so afraid of the highness that I couldn’t wait for him to put me back down.

A couple of years later we flew to Spain, and I was not bothered by heights. I did have one episode of acrophobia in Spain. We were touring a castle and had to navigate a narrow board that crossed an abyss between two turrets. I had to get down on my knees and crawl, I was so afraid. But on the flight home I was fine.

Cut to age 14. I was flying to Detroit to spend part of the summer with my sister and her husband. Mom put me on a DC-9 out of Eglin Air Force Base in Northwest Florida. I was to fly from there to Dothan, Alabama, then to Atlanta, where I would change planes and fly direct to Detroit. I thought that was pretty cool, being able to do that by myself at age 14.

The plane hurtled down the runway and leaped into the air. I took one look out the window and my brain swooned. I remember thinking, “Oh my God, I’ve made a mistake,” and in a moment of panic I actually considered walking up to the cockpit – you could do that in those days – and asking the pilots to turn around and let me off. But I was paralyzed with terror so I averted my eyes from the porthole and looked straight ahead, up the aisle. Eventually, I was able to look out and not seize with fear. By the time I got to Detroit I was mostly OK.

Needless to say, I’m not a fan of flying. I have an irrational fear of heights. It’s not just airplanes – I find ladders difficult to manage, and climbing up on my roof to clear tree limbs and leaf litter has become a challenge. I realize airplanes are the safest way to get from Point A to Point B, that the odds of dying in a plane crash are lower than ridiculous … but I don’t care. I’ve beaten the odds many times before, in things totally unrelated to air travel, and I don’t want to be on an airplane the next time I defy the impossible. Lottery ticket, yes. Handsome boyfriend, yes. Delta 787, no way in hell!

So I wrote this story, an homage to my phobia about flying.

As an acrophobe I can’t imagine a fate worse than being stuck on airplane, terrified beyond words, alongwith a hostile individual hellbent on scaring the living shit out of you. That actually happened to me, on a flight from Pensacola to Los Angeles. I was seated next to a guy who was flying to Houston – he designed video games for a living. When he found out I was afraid to fly he spent the entire flight suddenly grabbing my arm and whispering, “WHAT WAS THAT SOUND?” Needless to say I wasn’t amused.

But there was something else I wanted to say in this story – that anger, hatred and vengeance are often unfocused. You see that so often in this world of 2024, especially involving politics and issues such as LGBTQ rights and the rights of women. People treat their hate as a matter of convenience without bothering to check the facts first. It’s sad that each of us must rediscover the wheel when it comes to the things we think we know, opposed to what is truly there.

I haven’t flown in 24 years. Now that I’m retired, travel is an option. I would love, for instance, to visit Spain, where we lived for three years, and try to find my boyhood house. But to get there will require a trip across the Atlantic Ocean aboard a jetliner. Does enough Xanax and Valium exist in the world to get me there with my wits intact?

If I find out, I’ll let you know.

Meanwhile, what’s that sound?

—

THE FEAR OF FEAR ITSELF

The first hour

From five miles up, Paul Westerbrook thought the ground resembled an impossible dream of heaven.

Impossible, he thought, his depth of focus shifting to his reflection in the airliner porthole. Impossible that I could be here and the ground could be so far away.

He watched his image. Shafts of sunlight slanted through the row of portholes on the opposite side of the cabin, back-lighting his head so that his face was masked in shadow. Darker pools filled in the spaces around his eyes and mouth.

He might have been staring at a skull.

And he could hear a rushing sound. Not the dull thunder of a flood but a fine sandpapery hiss, the sound of air whistling over the bright aluminum skin of the 767 as it hurtled through the thin atmosphere, its engines and wings maintaining a hair-trigger equilibrium between thrust and weight and lift, and he could feel the plane sinking and rising as variables of air density and wind velocity and engine compression altered the formula in tiny but noticeable increments that brought mists of perspiration to his forehead as he tried to calculate the forces of turbulence necessary to send the airplane spinning out of control –

He slammed the porthole visor down.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

And he recited a silent prayer: Please, God. I’ll do anything you want. Just get this plane on the ground safely.

Somebody was speaking to him. He blinked.

“Did you want something to drink, sir?” A flight attendant. She was older than most, with thin, blond hair, pale skin and high cheekbones. She had the calm look of a kindergarten teacher handing out waxed Dixie cups of warm Kool-Aid. The aniline blue uniform of South Air smoothed the curves of her body and gave her a confident, almost motherly aspect.

A bump rattled the plane. Paul grabbed the back rest of the seat in front of him and felt his palm slide greasily over the plastic upholstery.

Finally, he said, “A drink? Yes,” and was instantly ashamed of the tremor in his voice. “Bring me a couple of Valiums and a bottle of Crown Royal. That should do the trick.”

The attendant smiled warmly. “White knuckles, eh?” she whispered, and he nodded too quickly. He thought he must look to her like a contrite child.

“Do you fly often?” She was easing into the seat next to him, and he thought he could feel a shuddering vibration passing through the floor of the airplane and up through the frame of his seat. Or was that a change in engine pitch? Was the pilot throttling back as a warning light suddenly blinked red, or was a turbine starting to rattle as hairline cracks widened into chasms of flawed metal and the blades prepared to fly off the shaft like knives thrown by a blindfolded magician –

“Not much. But from now on, yes,” he said. And he had made the decision himself, hadn’t he? In spite of Gail’s subtle coercion, he had accepted the position of regional buyer for the McAndliss chain of department stores, a promotion that would give him more opportunities – a final chance as it were, because twice before he had refused offers like this for whatever reason had seemed important at the time, and if he’d refused again … Well. Gail would have said nothing, but her measured ways of doing things when she was angry would have spoken volumes. You are an indecisive and fearful man, she would have thought, adding: I don’t know why I married you.

So he’d accepted the offer.

But the job required flying.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” the attendant said and laid an utterly cool palm on his hand. Her skin was as dry and smooth as a pool hustler’s chalked cue. “Most people experience a little anxiety while flying. Sometimes it’s acrophobia, claustrophobia, or even a combination of the two. Are you afraid of heights?”

Paul nodded once. Heights. God, yes.

She patted his hand. “My father used to say, ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself,’” She shook her head sadly.

Paul nodded without enthusiasm. At that moment he didn’t care about borrowed aphorisms. He simply wanted to be on the ground.

“My father was an airline pilot.” She smiled mysteriously. “He never worried about … the unexpected.”

A staticky voice scratched from the cabin speakers. It was the captain, announcing that Air South’s non-stop service from Los Angeles to Atlanta had reached its cruising altitude, that passengers could remove their seatbelts, that their flight time would be about four hours and 45 minutes – Paul stopped listening. His heart seemed ready to jump out of his throat.

The attendant gave Paul’s hand a reassuring pat and stood up. “I’ll bring you a cocktail and check to see how you’re doing.” At that moment the whining throb of the engines shifted to a lower, almost subliminal pitch that seemed to resonate through Paul’s bones. His stomach looped into a tense knot.

She looked at him and said, “Try not to worry, Mr. Westerbrook,” and her gaze hardened for a moment, as if a layer of ice had formed over her eyes and melted, long enough for her to whisper, “If the plane crashes, all the worrying in the world won’t change a thing.”

Then she was padding silently toward the rear of the airplane, and the terror was swarming all over Paul again as he tried to remember when he had told her his name.

The second hour

Paul wondered what Gail was doing at this moment.

In his mind’s eye he saw her at the dining room table, her leather portfolio beside her with papers spilling between the teeth of the zipper – homework papers or tests to be graded, the things teachers carried with them. She would remove the papers and arrange them into neat stacks and attack them until they were back inside the portfolio.

That is, if she were there. And not next door.

When he landed at Hartsfield International Airport he would go home in a taxi. After 17 years, their marriage could no longer supported airport reunions.

But he envied her. He envied her discipline and her stubbornness and her immunity to fear.

“Here’s your drink, Mr. Westerbrook,” the flight attendant announced. Two other attendants were pushing a drink cart up the aisle, tossing ice cubes into plastic glasses like crap shooters and popping the tabs on cans of 7-Up and Coca-Cola.

He thanked her nervously and drained half the glass in a single swallow. The liquor seemed to cauterize the lining of his throat. Bourbon and Coke – mostly bourbon. He wasn’t a bourbon drinker, but anything with alcohol would have served the moment.

He glanced at her nametag: It said TESS.

She slid into the seat next to him and in a conspiratorial whisper said, “Do you like the drink? That’s the way my father liked them – heavy on the bourbon.”

Paul took another sip. Why hadn’t she asked him what he wanted to drink? He thought to ask, but said, “You mention your father often. You must love him very much.”

Her gaze became unfocused, and a tracing of a smile crossed her lips. “Yes,” she said. The smile dimmed to an expression Paul approximated with regret. Then she was back to business. “Now finish that drink because the first officer tells me we’re headed for some rough weather.”

Paul felt ice crystals forming in his blood. Rough weather? Turbulence? Something cold was sliding along the lifeline in his palm – a drop of moisture, either condensation from the cup or chilled sweat. He managed to stammer, “Will – will it be bad?”

The flight attendant – Tess – shrugged. “You never know, especially with this flight crew.”

He raised an eyebrow and took another hit off the drink.

“The first officer has been drinking since we left LAX,” she said.

The liquor burned like lye. It caught in his windpipe and he choked, spraying bourbon over the tray. He hacked until his eyes burned and tears smeared everything into watery blots of shadow and light. When he was finally able to breath, he wheezed, “But isn’t that – isn’t that against the rules?”

She frowned. “You’re darn right it’s against the rules. Honest to God. My father would have a heart attack if he could see what goes on in the cockpit these days.”

“But why doesn’t the Captain put a stop to it?” Paul babbled.

She shook her head wearily. “This sort of thing goes on all the time – it’s not unusual. All the airlines have problems with alcoholic pilots.” She hesitated and cocked an ear. “Did you hear that?” She listened a moment longer. “It sounded like they shut down an engine.” Paul felt his eyes goggling. She tittered, and it was a sound without mirth. “I guess not.”

She walked away, humming softly. Paul stared blankly at the seatback ahead of him. A pit seemed to have opened in his stomach, claiming everything inside him and giving back nothing but black fear.He wished he could fold himself into that pit and simply disappear until this ordeal was over. He wished he could return to the heavenly ground.

The third hour

Paul sat rigid in his seat. He could hear a metronomic pulsing, the sound a wheel bearing on a car makes when the grease has been reduced to sludge and metal is rubbing against metal and the entire wheel assembly is about to fly apart. He listened closely, his ear filtering out the extraneous noises of people chatting, and he could hear it: a droning throb modulated by regular basso pulses that seemed to beat through the airframe itself, the sound of weary machinery about to fail.

He listened.

It was the sound of his own heart.

God, he thought, if Gail could see me she’d – she’d –

Tess was suddenly in the seat next to him. “Did you enjoy your drink?” she asked happily.

Paul nodded, and asked distractedly, “And how is the first officer enjoying his drinks?”

“Fine, fine,” she said dismissively, ignoring the sarcasm.

“What about – ” Paul hated to say the word, as if saying it would make it real, “those storms. Are we through them yet?”

Tess’s eyes narrowed into a playful squint and she shook her head. She raised the visor and pointed. Paul risked a quick glance and then twitched his eyes away as the vertiginous change in perspective caused him to swoon. On the horizon he had seen … clouds. He was no meteorologist. But they resembled volcanos of turbulence and violence. He slid the visor back down.

“Cumulonimbus, Mr. Westerbrook,” she said gravely. “Thunderstorms. Hell breathers.” That last part came out in an overdone stage whisper. On the ground he would have laughed at her melodrama, but up here, trapped in this cabin, he could only stare, dumbstruck with terror.

“Those are the same clouds responsible for most airplane crashes,” she said.      “For instance, the worst disaster in aviation history occurred on the Canary Island of Tenerife when two 747s collided during a thunderstorm. Over 500 people …” She clasped her fingers around an imaginary matchstick and blew silently.

Paul squeezed his eyes shut and turned away. Why was she telling him this? She knew he was afraid. Why was she doing this to him?

“To quote my father,” she said, her voice suddenly solemn, as if she were about to recite a catechism, “`God created thunderstorms to keep pilots humble.’ But then thunderstorms aren’t the only reason airplanes crash.” The fingers came up for another accounting. “Mechanical or structural failure is the second-leading cause, followed by pilot error, mid-air collisions – and did you know, Mr. Westerbrook, that even disturbances by passengers have been blamed for airplane crashes? Did you know that?”

He dared to open his eyes and look at her. She looked back with a knowing smile.

He heard loud voices from the rear of the airplane. Tess’s head went up like a wolf sniffing the air for deer scent. She hauled herself out of the seat with surprising litheness.

Paul looked back, fearful of what he might see. An elderly woman was standing by her seat and the man next to her – Paul could see only the man’s bald pate – seemed to be in some kind of distress. Paul settled into his seat and shivered.

A man wearing the South Air uniform appeared in the aisle, striding toward the rear of the plane. He was tall, his hair grayed at the temples and his face framed with lines. Paul thought he must be the captain, and the sight of him came simultaneously as a comfort and a shock. What could be happening that required the captain’s intervention?

After a few moments, the captain reappeared, moving toward the cockpit. Paul loudly cleared his throat.

The man stopped and Paul said quickly, “Is everything all right, Captain?” He thought his voice sounded muffled and indistinct, as if a ventriloquist had spoken the words for him.

The man grinned and said, “Everything’s fine. An elderly gentleman was having a problem with his ear.” He pointed to his own ear. “The pressure. But now he’s fine.” He hesitated and added, “Oh, and I’m not the captain. I’m the first officer.”

A tremor shook Paul. This man didn’t look intoxicated. But Paul had heard stories about pilots’ abilities to hold their booze. Maybe this first officer would return to the cockpit and knock back a stiff belt of bourbon and snicker about the chicken shit in seat C15 who was about to crap his drawers.

Without thinking, Paul asked: “Sir, are you drinking man?”

The first officer chuckled. “Excuse me? I’m a member of the LDS church. We don’t drink alcohol.”

“And what about the storms,” Paul blurted, hearing the panic rise in his voice but not caring. “We’re flying into storms, aren’t we? Thunderstorms. Hell breathers.”

The man looked baffled. “No,” he answered tentatively. “We’ve got a few stratocumulus at about 70 degrees compass heading, but no thunderstorms.” He tucked his tie into his shirt. “Just relax and enjoy the flight, sir. We’ll be in Atlanta in about two hours.” He walked away.

Paul felt a prickly sensation across his body, as if his skin were cooling and shrinking back around his bones.

Lies.

She’d lied to him.

In the jumble of his emotions a thought loomed – something he could never quite forget. A lie Gail had told him. About the man next door, and the afternoons she spent over there, “tutoring” his son. He remembered the vow he’d made to never believe anything anyone told him without confirming it himself.

Lied to. He’d let himself be lied to again.

“My God, I’m not believing this. I’m really not believing this.” Tess was in the seat next to him, smelling of spilled bourbon and petrouli and a faint whiff of sweat. “That man in B28 – he had a gun! He threatened to shoot up the airplane!”

Paul shook his head. He said, simply, “No more.”

“Thank God Karen – she’s the flight attendant responsible for rows 20 through 38 – saw what was happening and stopped him.”

Paul closed his eyes. “We’re not flying into bad weather.”

“She wrestled the gun away from him before he could pull the trigger,” Tess continued, a hard edge forming on her words.

“The first officer hasn’t been drinking, either,” Paul went on.  “He’s a Mormon, for Christ’s sake.”

“Do you have any idea what a bullet would do to this airplane?” She seemed to be talking to no one but herself. “What would happen?” she murmured questioningly. “The cabin would lose pressure, and rapid decompression might damage the flight controls – no, this airplane has electronic flight controls. It’s the older jets with mechanical flight controls, like the 727, that might have problems. But the pilots could lose consciousness. The plane could crash, I suppose.”

“Have you heard anything I’ve said?” Paul asked, his voice rising. The plane jiggled and his heart raced a moment. “What were you trying to do? Scare the shit out of me?”

She shook her head, her gaze refocusing into a glare. “Mr. Westerbrook, are you familiar with desensitization therapy?”

That caught him off guard.

“It requires that a person who is afraid of something be repeatedly exposed to the source of his fear until he becomes desensitized to it.” She paused and sighed. “That’s what I was doing. I apologize if I frightened you, but it seemed the best way to handle the situation. Like my father said,” she added cheerfully, “You have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

Paul clenched the armrests until veins stood out on his hands. “Is that so? Well tell me, what do you think your father would say about a flight attendant who scares the living shit out of her passengers? That’s not exactly standard procedure.”

Her expression chilled to absolute zero. “He wouldn’t say anything, Mr. Westerbrook. My father is dead.”

Instantly, Paul’s anger swirled away. He mumbled, “Oh.”

Her stare was blank. “He was killed in a plane crash. Three years ago. In Houston.”

The breath eased from Paul’s lungs in a slow, defeated sigh. Some emotion, yellow and bitter like shame, began to gather inside as he tried to imagine the grief she must feel when she came aboard an airplane. He found that it was beyond his comprehension.

She picked at her jacket. “I was only trying to help.”

He nodded slowly. Maybe he had been too harsh. Finally, unsatisfactorily, he said, “OK, let’s just … forget it. No more fairy tales about storms or drunken copilots or crashes.”

Tess said, “Fine,” and got up to leave. Paul touched a finger to her sleeve and added, “The first officer told me the man in the back was having problems with his ears. So no more fairy tales about whackos shooting up the airplane. OK?”

She gave him a puzzled look. “I guess he was trying to reassure you. Truth is, the man really did threaten to shoot up the airplane. Karen took the gun away from him and gave it to me.” She whispered urgently, “Look, Mr. Westerbrook. This airplane is like a miniature city – all the things that happen in a city can happen up here, too. People fight, get drunk, die – “

“No more fairy tales!” Paul said out loud, fresh panic making the hairs on the back of his neck brush against his damp shirt collar. His voice warbled beyond the narrow perimeter of the seats around him. Another passenger, a young woman who was reading a novel, glanced his way. “We agreed. No more fairy tales!” He started to clamber out of his seat but realized he had no place to go, so he sat back down and stared stonily in the opposite direction.

Tess tapped him on the shoulder. He refused to look at her. So she said in an exasperated tone, “Does this look like a fairy tale?”

He looked. Resting in her palm was a tiny revolver.

The fourth hour

Impossible, Paul thought, squeezing a sweat-soaked lump of napkin as if he were pumping a vein to give blood. This is impossible.

The airplane had entered an area of clear-air turbulence. It roller-coastered through the ice blue sky like some kind of Six Flags ride, sliding down invisible flumes of air to abruptly surge higher. His inner ear told him this was all wrong, and the glands in his jaw began to ache, a prelude to motion sickness. But he promised himself he would not puke. He would not add that to his list of miseries.

He thought of the old man and the dainty gun Tess had showed him, and his heart pancaked into a spin. It made no sense. Why would the man want to kill himself and everyone else aboard?

Then a final question occurred to him: How could the man have smuggled a gun past the metal detectors and X-ray machines?

The first officer has been drinking since we left LAX.

Thunderstorms, Mr. Westerbrook. Hell-breathers.

And, finally, The man really did attempt to shoot up the airplane. Karen took the gun away from him and gave it to me.

Lies.

He couldn’t stand it. He undid his seatbelt and marched toward the rear of the airplane. An attendant who was sitting in the last row of seats spotted him, rolled her eyes and moved to get up, but he was already upon the bald man hunched in Seat B28.

Paul’s first impression was that the man had died a thousand years ago and the airline was returning his body, filched by graverobbers, to its rightful resting place in some Egyptian tomb. The man was old. His flesh was wrapped around his skinny bones like yellowed cellophane, and his hand shook with a palsy that seemed to consume all his energy so he could do nothing but squat in the seat and stare straight ahead, his drooping lips permanently bent into an atrophied frown.

Paul thought: This man couldn’t have brought a gun aboard.

The elderly woman sitting next to him glanced up. Paul asked, “How is the problem with his ears?” and the woman answered in a brittle rattle, “Oh, he’s doing much better – “

Somebody planted a hand on Paul’s shoulder and he jerked around, expecting to see Tess’s leering smile. But it was the other flight attendant. She said irritably, “Sir, you’ll have to return to your seat – “

Paul seized her by the shoulders and her eyes grew round and afraid. “Tess,” he hissed. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I think Tess has lost her marbles. She’s got a gun!”

The woman shook off his hands. “I don’t know what you’re talking about but you’d better return to your seat – “

“I’m talking about Tess!” he said angrily. “She’s got – “

“Keep your voice down!” she snapped. “You’ll cause a panic. I’ll make sure the Captain hears what you’ve got to say.”

The plane dropped suddenly and they both grabbed seatbacks to hold on. An overhead bin unlatched and the lid flew up with a plastic clatter that startled the woman with the novel, who glanced up apprehensively and then buried herself in the book with a look of ferocious concentration. Paul turned and scuttled down the aisle.

A newspaper clipping lay in his seat.

Next to it was a bullet.

He held the bullet before him like a jeweler assaying a gemstone, his emotions bouncing between fascination and outright terror. And then he turned to the clipping.

The headline read: “40 survive crash at Houston.” Paul could not stop himself from reading the story.

“An Air South jetliner carrying 62 people crashed at Houston’s International Airport on Monday, but only 22 people were killed in what authorities describe as a heroic effort by the flight crew to land the crippled jet.

“Air South Flight 6212 was only 1 1/2 hours into its nonstop flight from Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport to Los Angeles when the crew radioed a distress call and asked for emergency clearance to land at Houston.

“Emergency crews stood by as the Air South jet, a Boeing 727, attempted to make a wheels-up landing. The jetliner broke into three pieces before finally coming to rest on a taxiway.”

Paul scanned the story, and then his eye came to rest on a string of cold paragraphs midway through.

“FAA crash investigators on the scene said the pilot reported a rapid decompression incident at altitude that resulted in damage to the jetliner’s control systems.

“Officials would not comment on the `incident,’ but survivors who spoke with reporters said a hysterical passenger apparently opened an emergency hatch to `get off the plane.’

“Officials would not confirm the report, but one of the survivors, a man identified as Paul D. Westbock of Atlanta, was taken into custody by airport security personnel and later transferred to the federal detention facility in Kingwood.”

The date on the clipping was three years ago.

It all came to him, all of it, the pieces falling together, and Paul found that he could not sit down, that he had been overtaken by a kind of numbness as explanations finally meshed with events, and he would not sit down until this airplane was on the ground, his memory serving up a final shocking image of Tess and the dainty little gun – a lady’s gun, really. He had to tell the Captain what was happening. He had to. Because there was nothing left for Tess to do now but kill him.

He stepped out into the aisle and began hurrying forward.

As he approached the bulkhead that separated coach from first class he heard her say, “Where are you going, Mr. Westerbrook?”

She was sitting next to the emergency hatch. She motioned for him to sit down. He paused and weighed his chances of making a dash for the cockpit. The gun was cupped in her palm.

She stood and pushed him into the seat next to the hatch.

“You should be in your seat, Mr. Westerbrook,” she hissed.

“It wasn’t me,” he whispered. He heard his voice starting to crack. “The names aren’t even the same.”

“I was on that flight,” she said, ignoring him. “I tried to help the man who was afraid. But as you read, I didn’t do my job very well.” She swallowed noisily. “My father was the pilot. He died. But I lived. So did the man. He never undid his seatbelt.” A tremor ran through her. “Somehow that doesn’t seem right.”

Paul watched her hand. He wondered if he could grab the gun. In his mind he saw Gail laughing at him: Why would you even consider such an absurd thought; you’re an indecisive and fearful man. I should’ve divorced you and married Thornton next door.

“I want you to do something,” Tess said, and Paul knew she was no longer speaking to him. “I want you to make it right.”

Paul shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said, but he thought he knew exactly what she meant.

She turned and skewered him with a stony stare. “I want you to open that door.”

His heart clenched around the words. He tried to imagine doing that – grasping the release lever and pulling OUT, then UP, and the hatch popping away like a champagne cork and air blasting out, into a sky-blue void, sucking him with it, with nothing below but miles of tumbling emptiness and gyrating terror –

No, no, his mind rejected it with a convulsive shudder that brought real tears to his eyes and had him fumbling for his seatbelt.

“Unfasten your seatbelt and open the door,” she said evenly.

“No,” he whimpered, scrunching his eyes shut. “It wasn’t me.” He winched the belt tight and grabbed the armrests and sat that way a few trembling moments, daring to peek after nothing happened. He saw that Tess was gazing at him almost tenderly.

“Don’t you understand?” she asked softly. “I know it wasn’t you. But it doesn’t matter. You’ll do. You’re the best I can do.” Then her eyes narrowed into slits and the last inflection of sanity departed her voice and she whispered slyly, “Unfasten your seatbelt and open the door.”

He shook his head no. No. No.

He could see the rage building in her, a flaming, almost artificial blush of crimson rising in her cheeks. A vein pulsed in her neck. She appeared ready to explode.

She undid her seatbelt with a practiced snap and stood and glared down at him. The color of her uniform seemed to go from blue to black.

“All right,” she muttered hoarsely. “Then I’ll shoot the goddamned pilot and copilot, and we’ll all go down. And it’ll be your fault, Mr. Westerbrook. Just like before.”

Later, he would reflect on this moment either consciously or in nightmares and realize he had acted without thinking, in a way that was decidedly untimid, and that his actions came not in response to some admonition or coercion. He simply acted.

He grabbed the emergency hatch handle and pulled OUT –

 – she turned and her face was a smiling rictus of triumph –

 – and then he pulled UP –

 – her expression collapsed into dawning horror –

 And the cabin exploded as the hatch blew out and was snatched into the screaming slipstream and then everything was pouring through the socket in a bellowing shock wave of frigid air and papers and pillows and every loose thing inside the cabin that could fill the vacuum. The plane lurched sharply and began to dive. Paul felt himself being sucked into that freezing, screeching storm and grabbed the armrests of the seat next to him, his heart whamming with sledgehammer blows, until the seats themselves began to tear away from the cabin floor and jitterbug toward the opening.

 Something larger flew overhead and banged into the hatchway.

 Tess.

 He peered over his shoulder and saw her clinging to the edge of the hatch, her body flapping against the 767’s aluminum skin, and beyond her was empty sky and clouds – a confluence of every terror Paul could imagine brought to horrifying reality only inches from his face. But again he acted without thinking, and this too he would look back on and wonder where the courage had come from.

 He reached for her.

 They locked eyes for a moment, and what he saw in her was malice refined to its purest essence. She mouthed two words. She gave him an evil smile.

 And then, she let go.

All the hours afterwards

 They let Paul go.

 He passed every lie-detector test. The gun was registered to Tess. And another passenger, the woman who had been reading the novel, corroborated parts of Paul’s testimony.

So they let him go.

And when he returned to work, he told his superiors he could not do the job. He didn’t care what Gail thought.

Because Tess had told him, just before she let go.

She had said, “Next time.”

And there would not be a next time.

—

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 Searchlight Pictures.

“Ready or Not 2 Here I Come” Starring Samara Weaving as Grace MacCaullay, Kathryn Newton as Faith MacCaullay, Elijah Wood as the lawyer, Sarah Michelle Gellar as Ursula Danforth, Shawn Hatosy as Titus Danforth, David Cronenberg as Chester Danforth and others. Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. 1 hour, 48 minutes. Rated R. Theatrical release.

Plot summary: Sitting on the front steps of the Le Domas family mansion after the deadly events of “Ready or Not,” Grace MacCaullay finds herself swept up in a new, deadlier hide-and-seek style contest as members of four families vie for control of the High Council, a body that serves Mr. La Bail, aka Lucifer.

Spoilers: Does the Devil wear Prada?

Del’s take

Grace MacCaullay has just defeated the entire Lucifer-worshipping Le Domas clan in a night of bloody mayhem at their now flaming mansion. The authorities rightfully suspect Grace as having committed many felonies, but she’s injured. She’s taken to a hospital. She’s grilled by a detective who has already decided her guilt. Her estranged sister, Faith, is summoned, as Grace never removed Faith as her emergency contact. And then. …

She and Faith are brought before the shadowy High Council, where they learn (a) the Le Domas clan wasn’t the only collective of rich bitches who sold their souls to the devil for worldly wealth, (b) Grace’s destruction of the Le Domas family has created a vacancy at the head of a cabal of devil-worshippers called the High Council, and (c) four new families will compete for that vacant position – and the immense power it conveys – by sacrificing Grace and her sister to Mr. La Bail, aka the devil, before the sun rises the next day.

Sound familiar?

Yes, “Ready or Not 2” is about power. In an opening scene, Chester Danforth – before he is smothered by his children – watches a war play out on the TV news, then picks up his telephone, orders a cease-fire, and watches the breathless announcement of a cessation in hostilities on the very same news broadcast. And yes, “Ready or Not 2” is an eat-the-rich indulgence in wish fulfillment, especially in 2026, as the 1 percenters pad their velvet-upholstered cushion of wealth and control at the expense of poor suckers like you and me.

But what “Ready or Not 2” really wants to be is a John Wickian-style semi-comedy about the power of family, which is the weakest of its three subtextual pillars. The whole family-comes-first theme is largely irrelevant to the matters at hand – the bloody extermination of wealthy parasites and their useless scions as creatively and graphically as possible. In fact, the constant intrusion of guilt becomes annoying – how often can Faith remind Grace that she abandoned her little sister, that she “wasn’t there”? Americans are besotten with this notion of familial abandonment. It’s become trite, an easy fallback when an icing of emotional resonance is needed for tension or motivation.

The comedic aspects of “Ready or Not 2” are somewhat clever and operate on multiple levels, but the overall tone is one of satire, not slapstick, though some scenes definitely qualify as physical humor – the rocket launcher, for example. Dialogue has its moments, too, but the quality of the writing isn’t as sharp or as hilariously acerbic as something like “Doctor Strangelove.” Overall, the humor tends to trivialize, not satirize, making it impossible to view “Ready or Not 2” as anything but a trifle.

As is the case with many horror movies these days, even the ones alleged to be funny, “Ready or Not 2” is drenched in blood, and some of the violence crosses the line between horror and torture porn. For example, an extended battle between Titus and Faith became a teeth-loosening, rib-cracking orgy of mayhem that goes on far too long. Were Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett were taking far too much pleasure seeing their female character get her ass kicked?

The first act is slow, but acts two and three pick up the pace, redeeming “Ready or Not 2” as an entertaining movie. But like a SnapChat message sent late at night, anything of significance fades by morning, relegating “Ready or Not 2” to the sales bin of disposable entertainment, stat. Again, it’s a trifle. Nothing more.

I’m giving it a B. See it in a movie theater.

Mladen’s take

Samara Weaving and Kathyrn Newton are very good actresses. Their faces express as much about what they’re thinking as the words they’re saying in “Ready or Not 2 Here I Come.”

Also praiseworthy is the pit massacre near the end of the movie. Clearly, it was modeled on the way the Trump administration operates.

Between the sisters’ back-and-forth squabbling and rehashes of family history and the pit, there are a few chuckle-inducing skits. I enjoyed watching Elijah Wood play the anti-Frodo, though his rendition of a Mephistopheles wedding prayer and ritual could have been more joyful.

But, none of these bits of the positive make “Ready or Not 2” good.

Again and again and again, the protagonists and the antagonists make damnably poor choices, because, I don’t know, the scriptwriters were too unimaginative to come up with more realistic ways folks end up making dumbass decisions. Either the estranged but re-uniting sisters prolonged their misery by, say, not shooting or beheading the brother-and-sister team trying to kill them to get the chairman’s seat on the bedeviled High Council or the antagonists, whose souls have been sold to Satan, turn out to be remarkably poor shots or too conniving for their own good or just too maniacal. Come on, you’re allied with Beelzebub. Wouldn’t that automatically imbue you with capacity to have at least one of the, oh, dozen, 50-caliber bullets you fired from a high-end sniper rifle find its mark?

One other bit in the movie irritated me. It’s the poor choice of vocabulary. Whenever one of the devil worshippers violated a devil worship bylaw, they would metamorphose into a fountain of gelatinous goo that had a large splash radius. The younger MacCaullay called those splatter events “combustion.” No, no, no. The evildoers didn’t catch fire. They didn’t burn. They exploded, goddamnit.

More deeply disappointing, though, was that my building hope was dashed. As “Ready or Not 2” progressed, I started to hope that the elder MacCaullay would figure out a way to knock off Lucifer or at least subvert Hell by turning it into an alternative Heaven. No such luck. The best she was able to do was initiate the pit mayhem, which, though much appreciated, felt like she had failed to finish what she was dragged into.

I have not watched the first “Ready or Not” and I had no expectations for “Ready or Not 2.” In fact, when Dusty asked us if we’d like to see the movie, I confused it with another title that appeared in theaters in late 2025, “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t.” I knew nothing about “Ready or Not 2” before I saw it. So, my review is sincere, my counsel untainted. You can wait for this one-notch-above-a-C+ movie to hit the streaming circuit.

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