‘Mister Dark’ (a short horror story)

ChatGPT

INTRODUCTION

I’ve made no secret of the fact Stephen King greatly influenced my work, but there was another writer who played an equally important role in my evolution as a writer:

Dennis Etchison.

In the mid-’80s my friend and coworker Jim Shoffner gave me a copy of Etchison’s collection “The Dark Country” and I was instantly blown away. I loved Etchison’s practical writing style and the “modernity” of his stories (I don’t know if that’s a real word, but if not, it should be). Etchison didn’t write about vampires, werewolves and reanimated corpses. He wrote about ordinary people doing extraordinarily nasty things to other people – the kinds of monsters you and I might run into during our daily walk through life.

“The Dark Country’s” lead-off story, “It Only Comes Out at Night,” reduced my brain to fried jelly.

I was sitting in my parents’ living room. It was very late, going on midnight. The house was dark and I was already listening with half an ear to the odd pops and groans all old houses make when they are shrugging off the day’s heat and settling in for the night. I read “It Only Comes Out at Night” and when I finished, I could feel the hair on the back of my neck standing on end. I had to put down the book and breathe for a moment. I remember thinking I had just been dragged across a threshold of storytelling I hadn’t known existed. “It Only Comes Out at Night” was breathtaking in its … well … its strangeness. It conveyed its horror by saying less, not more. I would call it one of the finest short stories ever written, up there with Shirley Jackson’s “The Witch” and Stephen King’s “The Woman in the Room.”

That’s when I became a lifelong Etchison fan.

The story you’re about to read, “Mister Dark” is my attempt to write a story Etchison would have liked. Later, it came to pass Etchison did like it, though not enough to publish it.

The story came to me after my first trip to Etchison’s stomping grounds in Los Angeles. The year was 1986 and I was working for a newspaper as the design editor. My boss at the time decided to jump-start a redesign project I was working on by sending me to the Orange County Register for a week, where I would tap the creative genius of design guru Nannette Bisher. I flew out on a Sunday so I could be there first thing Monday morning.

For most folks such a venture would amount to nothing more than a work trip, but for me it was a huge, scary undertaking. I had never traveled for the job, I was terrified of flying, and the thought of driving in Los Angeles scared the shit out of me.

I landed at LAX late that afternoon and somehow found the rental car kiosk and got my car, a bland Oldsmobile or Buick, I don’t remember which. LAX was a labyrinth and I couldn’t figure out how to get out of there and onto the freeway. Somehow I managed, but after half an hour’s driving at 80 mph on a 12-lane superhighway I realized I was heading in the wrong direction. I pulled off and stopped at a gas station, where I asked a surly Latino man for directions. He gave me an angry look and pointed to the front of the building, where I spotted a map vending machine. I paid $2 for a map of LA, got back in the car, locked the doors, and tried to figure out where I was and where I needed to go.

I did that, finally, then got back on the freeway and headed in the correct direction, arriving an hour later at my destination, The Saddleback Inn in Santa Ana. As I was getting out of the car, a woman parked next to me, threw open her door and struck my car with such force it rocked on its suspension. She acted as if nothing had happened. I knew, then, that I was a stranger in a strange land, at least one with different values about car care.

My room was dark and depressing. The door frame showed signs of having been broken down. You couldn’t walk anywhere – you had to drive, even if it was across the street. Helicopters and jetliners flew overhead constantly. At night, searchlights from police choppers filled the sky. And everywhere there was a constant din of noise – cars, cars and more cars. The traffic never stopped, on the ground or above.

I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Come Saturday morning I was glad to get back on the plane.

My overall impression of LA is that it was so big, and so indifferent to the plight of its residents, that anybody who lived there was choosing to subordinate themselves to the vast, hungry and all-devouring machine that was Los Angeles. And that, to me, represented a kind of evil – the casual evil of indifference. The kind of evil that becomes so commonplace that some people can no longer distinguish it from good.

I submitted “Mister Dark” to Etchison for an anthology he was editing. He kept it for a long time but eventually returned it, saying he had almost bought it but in the end decided to pass. I forget the reason. For me, it was a thrill to have him say something nice about my story. And to get his autograph.

Sadly, Dennis Etchison passed away in 2019. He was one of the great writers of American horror.

If you get a chance, read “It Only Comes Out at Night.” If it doesn’t scare the bejesus out of you, check your pulse.

You may not have one.

—

MISTER DARK

Swells of darkness rolled in like the tide as Faye shivered in the rental car. It was a warm night. She angled the folded newspaper into a dim bar of fluorescent light that slanted through the window, while the crazy lady by the dumpster raved and raved and raved.

A billboard across the road, opposite the parking lot, declared: The Staples Center – A Happening Place.

A half-eaten cherry turnover, wrapped in torn cellophane that was dotted with drops of condensation, lay congealing on the dashboard. A Diet Coke cup filled with sweating ice lay on the floorboards. The ice melted and settled with a hollow, rattling sound that scared a twitch out of Faye.

She jerked her head up. She looked out the dusty windshield. A group of teen-aged boys squeezed through the convenience store door. One burst into barking laughter in response to a whispered comment, and dropped his Slurpee. Slush sprayed out over the grease-smeared parking lot.

“Oh, shit,” he said disgustedly. “Look what you made me do.”

“Just go get another one and quit your bitching,” the whisperer said. “We’ll wait.” While the boy went back inside, the others clambered into a brown Mercedes that looked green in the stark light. The crazy lady by the dumpster cawed hoarsely. She had a dented cardboard box in a shopping cart. She was carrying a golf club, which she used alternately to prop herself up and attack the box. “Prince of earwigs!” she shrieked and aimed a wobbling broadside at the box. The boys in the Mercedes laughed.

God. I hate this place. I already hate it. Faye squeezed her eyes shut and forced herself to breath deeply. The city throbbed around her, so much unlike the place she had come from. She wished the sun would rise. She glanced at her watch. It read only 10:43, and worse, that was central time. She couldn’t bring herself to set it back. She sighed. I made a big mistake coming here. The dark pressed closer, barely kept at bay by the light from the convenience store. She decided if the crazy woman came near her, she’d drive away. Back into that Christ-awful traffic on the Santa Ana Freeway, which was an entirely different but no less terrifying form of insanity. She would have to leave soon anyway. She’d stopped only to get a newspaper, but had ended up buying the turnover and Diet Coke with the hope that something to eat and drink would make her feel better. They hadn’t. And now she would have to leave, because the motel had a 10 p.m. check-in time – Pacific time. It was 10 miles down the freeway, if she could trust the map she’d gotten. That might as well be 10 million miles.

“Crawling like an earwig!” the crazy lady snarled, “but where will you crawl now, Mister Dark? No closets to slither from! No beds to make your damned coffin! You’re here with me, and I’m not going to let you out!” She thumped the box with the club and broke into harsh, gargling laughter.

“No. Don’t,” Faye heard one of the boys in the Mercedes whisper. “Just leave the old bitch alone for God’s sake.”

Faye let her gaze drop to the newspaper. A copy of the Orange County Register. A headline on the local front page read: Man convicted of wife’s murder. “A Tustin man was found guilty Thursday in a bizarre murder case in which he allegedly strangled his wife, beheaded the corpse and left the head in a local movie theater aisle. …” Faye felt the little bit of turnover she’d eaten slide queasily into some deeper recess of her stomach. She’d bought the newspaper to check the apartments-for-rent listings in the classifieds, but something on the front page had caught her eye – 12-year-old among eight arrested in gang shooting – and then she’d gone through the other pages. The stories reminded her that she’d left her home in Northwest Florida for this teaching position because it offered an opportunity, a real step forward in terms of pay. But now that she was here, she felt as if she’d bargained away some essential part of herself, and she wondered which master she served, the voice of her own peace of mind, or some other compelling influence that demanded she do what was expected of anyone in her position.

“Oh, Jesus! I don’t believe you,” one of the boys in the Mercedes sniggered as another boy opened the passenger door and climbed out. The crazy lady was whacking the box and babbling. “Never again! Never again, Mister Dark!” Faye shivered.

The day had gone badly. Her flight was late getting out of Memphis. She hated flying and was hoping they’d put her on a jumbo jet, something big to smooth out those terrifying bumps and sudden dips that caused her heart to lodge in her throat. But the plane was a three-engine model, a 727 or something, that bounced across the sky like a cork in white water. The flight became worse as the plane carried her closer and closer to Los Angeles. Somewhere over New Mexico the oven broke. No lunch – not that she could have eaten anything. The steward offered her an exchange, and she took the trade in vodka collins.

A dry, hot gust of wind swept across the parking lot, stirring clouds of dust. The empty Slurpee cup rattled across the asphalt in imprecise semicircles. A BMW pulled up to the gas pumps in the middle of the lot. The boy from the Mercedes was approaching the crazy lady. She was cackling, “Never again, Mister Dark! You’ll never scare anyone again!”

The boy said slyly, “What’cha got in the box, lady?”

Faye flipped the newspaper over and scanned the headlines. A sewer board was meeting. Then: Teen charged in rape of teacher. She was seized by an involuntary shudder, and the car seemed to grow uncomfortably cold. Darkness pooled in the floorboards and filled the back seat. The rape had taken place at a school across town, far from where she would be teaching, but somehow that failed to comfort her. The feeling of dread that had stayed with her throughout the day reasserted itself, worse now than when she arrived at the airport.

LAX had been an incomprehensible maze of corridors and walkways and faceless people who rushed about as if they knew exactly where they were going. By some miracle of providence she recovered her luggage and found the rental car booth, which apparently had closed.

“Where is everybody,” Faye asked the girl at the adjacent Hertz kiosk.

“They’re gone,” the girl answered in a rigor-mortic monotone.

Faye felt as if she were back on the airplane and it had just flown into an air pocket, dropping a thousand feet. “But I had reservations for a car.”

“I can rent you a car.”

So she’d taken the Hertz car, an Alero. A minivan carried her at breakneck speed through the LAX warrens and out to the lot. She got her papers squared away and climbed into the car. An Oriental woman was getting into the car next to hers. The woman’s door flew open and struck Faye’s car with enough force to rock it on its springs. The woman never looked at her.

“C’mon. Tell me what you got in the box,” the boy was saying. Faye looked up. The crazy lady’s gaze darted into and then away from the boy’s eyes, as if she feared being mesmerized by him. He shrugged, started to turn and walk away, when she shrieked, “I got Mister Dark in there! Yes sir! That’s what I got!”

The boys in the Mercedes chortled. The boy in the store finally came out, but he wasn’t carrying a Slurpee. He had a six-pack of Budweiser. The boy near the crazy lady looked back at his friends, rolled his eyes, then said, “Who’s Mister Dark?”

“The prince of earwigs!” the crazy lady blurted, then clutched her chest in a spasm of wracking coughs.

“Earwigs, huh?” the kid commented. The crazy lady spat and nodded vigorously. “In there. In the box.”

“C’mon! Let’s roll!” the boy behind the wheel of the Mercedes shouted. “We got beer!”

Faye watched the string of headlights hurtling down the freeway. She’d taken the San Diego Freeway south, through Signal Hill and past Los Alamitos, and then she had cut east through Garden Grove to the Santa Ana Freeway, where she was supposed to turn south again. Right. Just bear to the right. Half an hour later, with the traffic growing heavier and carrying her along faster and faster, she discovered she was driving north, back into Los Angeles.

So she veered into an exit and stopped at the first gas station she came to, a dark, dirty place that was staffed by a lone Hispanic man.

“Do you have any maps?” she asked him, and he gave her a look of pure malevolence, an expression that chilled her blood to slush, and hooked a thumb at the office.

A map vending machine. She paid $2 for an LA map, hurried back to the Alero and locked the doors. The man watched her from the gas pumps. His face was hidden in shadow, as was the surrounding city as the sun slipped below a bank of clouds and smoke. She tried to study the map, and eventually guessed which way she had to go. As she drove away, she saw the man’s hobgoblin silhouette at the pumps, his head turning to follow her as she crossed the street and fled back into the torrent of cars.

“ – how’d you get … Mister Dark,” the boy snickered, “locked up inside a cardboard box?”

“I charmed the bastard in there,” the crazy woman hissed. “You got to use a charm to catch Mister Dark! The best kind of a charm! Mister Dark likes to hide in closets and under beds. You know why?” she whispered.

“Surprise me,” the boy said.

“So he can scare you!” she screamed.

The boy took an uncertain step back. His friends laughed loud and hard. The boy said, “Well, maybe when I was 2 years old.”

Faye shook her head. She really needed to be going. The motel was 10 miles south of here, and tomorrow she faced a long day of apartment hunting, and work started next Monday. She tried to make herself put down the newspaper and clean up her mess and leave, but she felt drugged and cold and exhausted, as if her brief time in Los Angeles had drained her of vitality. The boy and the crazy lady and the boys in the Mercedes were arguing in a raucous babble. The BMW roared away from the gas pumps, its radio braying punk rock music. Nobody had ever gotten out. The Slurpee cup skittered across the asphalt into a lake of shadow trying to flood inside the building.

“I wanna see what’s inside,” the boy shouted.

“No! You’ll let him out!”

Faye leaned back against the headrest. This was a mistake. A helicopter clattered overhead, its searchlight spearing the ground like a UFO from a Steven Spielberg movie. She wondered who, or what, it was looking for.

“You smack me with that and I’ll bust your goddamned head open, you stupid bitch,” the boy threatened. The crazy lady raised the club to do just that and the boy lunged and snatched it from her grasp. He pitched it aside. It thonked against the dumpster.

The crazy lady threw her arms protectively over the box and cried, “No! No! You’ll let him out! The prince of earwigs! Mister Dark!”

“C’mon, Andy,” a boy yelled from the Mercedes.

I want to go home. Ice melted in the cup lying on the floorboards. It rattled like bones in a cigar box.

The boy wrenched the box from under the crazy lady. The shopping cart tipped over, dumping the box onto the parking lot. The flaps flew open, and shadows seemed to spill out – shadows, and something else.

A gust of wind blew through the car window, catching the newspaper like a sail, turning the pages. Faye looked down and read: 2nd toddler found bludgeoned to death. Across the street, a man stood in the shadows. She hadn’t seen him there before. A hitchhiker. He was holding a sign, and she could barely read it. It said: Anywhere.

The boy began to laugh. “You crazy old bitch.”

“No!” the crazy lady moaned. “You’ve let him out! You’ve set him loose! He’s in the city! He’s everywhere! Can’t you see him? He’s everywhere – “

Faye looked up at the dashboard. Something was leaking from the turnover, something dark and viscous that smelled vaguely of chemicals. It left a slimy trail down the dashboard, around the air-conditioning vent, and to the carpet. Her gaze traveled from the carpet, to the windshield, her depth of focus centering on the hitchhiker. He seemed to be staring at her, the way everybody in L.A. had stared at her since she’d arrived: a thoughtless look that somehow seemed filled with malevolent intent.

The boy nudged whatever had fallen out of the box with the toe of his shoe. A doll-like hand flipped over. His expression congealed into bafflement, then intense scrutiny, and he yelled, “Oooh, gross! You guys! C’mere!” The crazy lady staggered off into the shadows, her voice fluttering bat-like out of the gloom, “I can see him! I can see him!”

The newspaper slid from Faye’s grasp and the pages rustled as they settled to the floorboards. A breaker of dark reared before her, and it seemed composed of millions of faces, uniform and anonymous in their multitudes, and they were lost for something that no drug, no secret kiss, no act of violence could give them. Anonymity. A car on the freeway. A girl at an airport kiosk. A man at a gas station. A hitchhiker. A crazy lady.

A woman sitting in a rental car outside a convenience store.

Faye stared in nerveless fascination at the lights above the gas pumps, and no insects circled there. Only dust blew through the cones of harsh brilliance, borne on a hot, dry wind, and overhead there were no stars in the sky, only helicopters and incoming jets, and she could hear nothing but the distant thunder of traffic, the city’s asthmatic respiration all around her, the shadows circling and closing, a faceless, bleak tide that lapped at the edges of her thoughts.

Mister Dark.

The hitchhiker was crossing the street, coming toward her. She tried to start the car, but the solenoid clicked uselessly. The boys had gathered in a reverential circle around whatever lay on the asphalt.

The hitchhiker was tapping on the driver’s side window, saying, “Lady? Lady, can I catch a lift?” Her blood had turned to frost. She fumbled for the electric door lock but he had the door open. The dome light didn’t come on. He climbed in and she felt herself sliding across the seat, furtively reaching for the door handle on the passenger side. The locks ratcheted into place.

He said, “You’re not from here. Let me drive; I know my way around this place. I can get you where you want to go. I’m sure it’s on my way.”

In her mind’s eye, Faye saw newspaper headlines about murders and gang shootings and rapes. The muscles around her throat were like pythons. She wanted to cry, but nothing would come out. She pictured herself riding onto the freeway with this man and never leaving, driving without end.

“Well? Where to?” he asked. He’d tossed his sign on the floorboards. Faye saw it from the corner of her eye. She’d been wrong. It read: Everywhere.

The hitchhiker shrugged and started the car. The engine turned over on the first try. He shifted it into gear and eased out of the parking lot.

And then the dark folded over them.

—

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 Pexels user Portrenk. https://www.pexels.com/@portrenk/

INTRODUCTION

According to my-not-very good publication notes, I wrote “Nightwalk” in 1983. I wonder if that’s true.

My recordkeeping back then was spotty. I never thought it necessary to keep track of production dates or publication credits.

Now, as you might expect, I’m scrambling to backtrack and figure it all out. If I could return to my youth, among the many things I would do differently –  among them getting a job in my teens, or taking steps in high school to prepare for college – would be to keep track of the dates I wrote stories and make a list of where (or if) they were published, and when.

I remember sitting on bleachers at the local tennis courts, shaded by oaks, planning the details of “Nightwalk.” I remember the scene – the two boys walking along the road in the dark, and the menacing shape stalking them. I remember thinking a really good writer could make this look scary.

A friend and I had spent the day in Pensacola, about 45 miles away, shopping, eating and going to movies. On the way home I began telling him the details of “Nightwalk.” When I got to the part where the boy trips over the surveyor’s wire, Steve said, “Ah, don’t do that. They always do that in horror movies – trip over something so the monster can catch up.”

Silly Steve. He didn’t understand the monster was going to catch them, tripping or not. Besides, tripping added an interesting moral dilemma – should the other boy stop and help his friend, or leave him as an offering to the monster?

In retrospect Steve was right. They always trip in horror movies. I should have taken that out.

I don’t remember much else about the story – what prompted me to write it, or how long it took to write. Back then I didn’t have the same concept of storytelling I have today.

According to my spotty records “Nightwalk” was published in the magazine After Hours in 1987. I’ll have to dig through my copies to see if I can find it. Unfortunately, they are hidden in a plastic Sterilite box at my storage unit, beneath teetering towers of other Sterilite boxes. One day, when I am rich and have money to burn, I will build a house with lots and lots of bookshelves, and all my back copies – even the copy of my high school newspaper with my letter to the editor complaining about 43-cent-per-gallon gas – will go up on those shelves, including the edition of After Hours featuring the story “Nightwalk.”

Tripping and all.

NIGHTWALK

 The screen door banged open and there was the wet slapping sound of Nikes beating frantically against the porch floorboards. Then the boys were leaping – arms pinwheeling – as they cleared the cement-block steps and thudded heavily against the grass which was already damp with the night. They were off, then, drawn pell-mell into the smoky twilight like two madly scrambling shadows; one, tall and lanky; the other shorter, the motions of his body more pronounced as he struggled to keep pace with his stronger companion. They ran until they had put the honeysuckle hedge that bordered the front yard between them and the house lights. They ran until every house on the block was behind them and only an interminable asphalt road flanked by dark woods lay ahead. That, and The House. Then the taller boy slowed, allowing the shorter one to overtake him, ad they walked with the rubber-legged gait peculiar to exhausted marathoners, speaking ragged whispers. Their hearts continued to race.

“You think this is far enough?” Demmy asked. He was trying very hard not to look tired. He sounded worn out.

Todd made no pretense that he hadn’t been winded by the sprint – but he had his size for an excuse. The air, it seemed, had grown cooler and more rarified since sundown. It burned his lungs.

“Far – far enough for what?”

Demmy snorted, sucked air. “Far enough so that if she changes her mind and comes stomping out the front door hollering like a goddamned cow about to split its udder for me to haul my ass back, I can say I didn’t hear her.” He sniffed, spat, and let out a long, pent-up exhalation of relief. Todd continued to wheeze.

“It doesn’t – doesn’t matter. As soon as we get to my house she’s gonna call your ass and make you walk all the way back – in the dark – by yourself. Past. The House.”

“Oh, eat me. She is not.”

Todd paused to collect a breath. “Fuckin’ A. She told me herself. Gave me a buck to keep my mouth shut. But since you’re my cool bud, I wouldn’t want to see you get screwed. So I guess you ought to be heading back. See ya around.”

“She really did that?” Demmy asked, incredulous. “Gimme that goddamned dollar, fuckhead!”

Todd shook his head wearily. “Oh, Christ. Don’t pout. I hate it when you can’t take a joke. OK. I was bullshitting you.”

He saw the tension ease out of Demmy’s expression. Then Demmy mumbled, “Pretty shitty joke.”

From some remote corner of the night, a dog barked. Night time is the best time for hearing, Todd thought. Sometimes, when it’s cool and dark and the wind isn’t blowing, it seems you can tune in the whole world – at least as far as The House. His mind seized on that, and he wondered what it would be like to walk past The House at night, if it would be different somehow. If Demmy would do it despite the things they had heard (and Demmy had been hearing them a lot longer), especially after summer before last, those two kids, what happened to those two kids.

“–  don’t see why spending the night with a friend is such a big deal.” Demmy was gesticulating with his hands, flipping them about like spastic marionettes. “She acts like it’s the goddamned worst thing that could happen – Christ, she never lets me do anything!”

Todd took a deep breath. The fire in his chest had cooled to embers; he felt his mind clearing, his thoughts slowly beginning to congeal. Demmy made some crack about his mother and Todd bit down on a sneer. He said, “I like your mom – ”

“Yeah, but – ”

“Yeah, but nothing. Your mom’s OK so lay off.” He looked up at Demmy, hoping find some indication that Demmy knew he was lying. But the other boy’s face was framed in shadow and unreadable.

Demmy grabbed his shoulder, stopped him (Todd’s heart fluttered and he thought, Oh shit! This big, brawny moron is gonna flatten me), and hissed, “But she smothers me, man!” and he went off on an agitated tirade.

Capillaries of a breeze snaked their way through the firs that walled-in the road, tussling Todd’s hair, twining his thoughts and leading them back through time. Demmy’s voice receded into a toneless blur, and Todd remembered Washington, where his father had carved out a niche at the Smithsonian. The city, with its color, its movement, its energy – all the important things in life. Things that had given his mother a nervous condition and had sent them packing to this godforsaken, two-horse western Massachusetts town where his father had bought a hardware store to squander their collective future.

Todd chewed over all the old arguments. Washington was it; Jesus, everything that mattered – everything important – was in Washington: the institute, the colleges, the arcades, the rinks, the malls … the people. What did this place have going for it? Frigging hardware store and wormy-ass friends like Demmy.

Demmy! Todd wondered why they still called him that. The kid was a year older and three inches taller than Todd. Todd had always been called Todd. Never Todd-O or any of those other dumb kid names. Just Todd. And his parents. They were cool. Always letting him do just about anything he wanted – almost anything. Like staying in Washington. No, they wouldn’t – couldn’t – let him do that. Sure, he was only 14. But they could’ve stayed at least until he was old enough to start college instead of dragging his ass out to this – this hole, where time ground down on rusty sprockets and old clock springs, where a stickup at the 7-Eleven made headlines on the front page of the county weekly. Christ.

“ – and then I’m gonna ask her if she’ll let me go swimmin’ – by myself – in Jefferson Hole. You think that’ll shake her up? Hey, Todd, you listenin’?”

Todd blinked away cobwebs and said uneasily, Yeah, uh, I think that would probably, uh, do it.”

The trees shook themselves and sighed as the breeze freshened. A bird twittered and then quieted. The night was alive with furtive noises, and this was the only part of Olianth Todd could abide. Nighttime in the country, with its mysteries, its secrets. There were times, like tonight, when the stars seemed so impossibly large that he thought they might come crashing down out of the sky to smash against the ground. Huge stars, hone to flawless, brilliant clarity in the smoke-free sky of the backwoods. And the quiet – God, it was oh-so quiet.

Except for little noises.

Demmy snapped his fingers. “Hey, wanna cig?”

Todd shook his head. “Hell no, I don’t want a cigarette – not unless you got some gum – and I know you don’t ’cause you never do. And what would your old lady do if she knew you smoked?”

“Fuck her,” Demmy said automatically. “And you’re right. I ain’t got no gum.”

“Well, fuck you then.” Todd’s voice slipped into a grainy falsetto, and he began speaking in clipped-off syllables. “Now Demson, I will not permit you to use that sort of language in this classroom. Is that clear?”

“Wait a second.” Demmy stopped, dug deeply into his pocket and withdrew a pack of Kools. He hooked one from the pack, inserted it into his mouth like the Marlboro Man, and let it dangle there while he opened a book of matches. He struck one and cupped it in his hands. His face flared into ethereal brilliance, framed against twilight. He drew heavily on the cigarette and a thick cloud of smoke swept about his face and vanished into the darkness. He coughed, nearly spat the cigarette, then took another drag and inhaled deeply.

Again, the falsetto. “Demson, my boy. Are you listening?”

Demmy put away the matches and said, “Lemme guess: Miss Lothario. Fourth period.”

Todd clapped his hands. “Correct, my man. You win the Samsonite luggage.”

Demmy grimaced. “I hate that bitch. Always calling me Demson. If I’ve asked her once I’ve asked her a thousand times not to call me Demson. I’m Demmy. That’s who I am.”

You sure are.

“Yeah, I know,” Todd said. “But she does have one thing going for her. She’s the sexiest goddamned teacher in school.” He growled playfully. “She’s a regular Twentieth-Century Fox. God! I could do the horizontal bop with her any time, any place, Bub.”

They were walking along the road shoulder. Chunks of asphalt crumbled beneath their feet. Ahead, the orderly line of fir trees was broken by a blank gash in the night. Hunched at the inner reaches of the pit, they could make out the vague, shadowy outline of a house. It was a massive, brooding structure that had since fallen victim to the years and passed into senility. Patches of shingles had slipped from the roof. Window panes were cracked or missing altogether. The front door had been torn free from its hinges, leaving a gaping socket of blackness in its middle. The house had been given up.

Todd elbowed Demmy in the ribs and nodded. “Why, I’d even be willing to spend the night in that old place, so long as she came along.”

Demmy wrinkled his nose. “That place gives me the creeps. The House. Wish somebody’d tear it down or something.”

“Tear it down?” Todd spoke with mock incredulity. “Nobody’s gonna tear it down. Nobody’s gonna go near that place.” Then, in a whisper, “They say something still lives there.”

“Awww, that’s bullshit.”

“Yeah. You know it’s bullshit, and I know it’s bullshit, but that’s what they say.” He wondered if Demmy would run. He almost felt like giggling..

But Demmy only snorted. Without a trace of humor. “Look, I’ve been living in Olianth a lot longer than you, and there ain’t nothing to any of that bullshit, not even what happened. …” His voice trailed away. Then he said, “So just shuddup, OK?”

“What’s the matter?” Todd leered. “Scared?”

“No, I ain’t scared – ”

“Afraid a monster’s gonna come slithering out of the dark, like OVER THERE!” Todd pointed frantically at the house. Demmy stiffened and Todd heard a tiny gasp squeak past his lips.

“Goddammit!” Demmy hissed. Todd laughed – out loud this time.

“Awww c’mon, you gutless pud. Just a joke. A little joke, that’s all.”

“Yeah. Ha ha,” Demmy answered, still whispering. “Real funny.”

Todd kicked a fractured chunk of asphalt, sent it tumbling along the road shoulder ahead of them. “Seriously though. You know Mr. Aikens?”

Yeah, Demmy knew him.

“He was in the store the other day, shootin’ the shit with my old man, and my old man mentioned something about maybe buying that place – ” Now they were directly across the road from the house “– fixing it u so he could rent it out to somebody one of those bed-and-breakfast places. As soon as he said that, Mr. Aikens starts in on that writer who used to live there – you’ve heard about him, I’d imagine.”

“Yeah,” Demmy mumbled uncertainly.

“That real famous writer way back in the late twenties or early thirties. I’m not sure; what’s his name?”

“I dunno.”

Todd scratched his chin. “He used to write all those weird stories about devils and monsters and old ruins. He wrote ‘Nightwalk’ – his novel that’s really famous – while he lived in that house. It was about this huge flying thing that only comes out after dark; I saw the movie on Creature Feature.”

“Sounds like a mental to me,” Demmy remarked gloomily.

“His name … what was it?”

“Strangelove?”

Todd sniggered. “No, dummy. That was a movie with Peter Sellers. And I know who you’re thinking about. Lovecraft. It wasn’t him.”

“Poe?”

Todd rolled his eyes. “No, not Poe for God’s sake. Somebody else – Jakes! Jakes! That’s who. Jakes. He lived in that house, way back when. At least that’s what Mr. Aikens told my dad.”

Demmy murmured in a low voice, “Yes, I think I remember somebody saying something about a famous writer staying in that house for awhile, but that was a long time ago. Didn’t he take off?”

In the distance Todd could see a patch of wan light. The porch light at his house. They were almost there. Mom had probably left it on for him before she and Dad left for Sebring.

“I dunno. Anyway, Aikens. …” and the night grew hushed, as if it too would stoop closer, bend an ear and hear the story. Todd found himself whispering, “… said that this writer guy moved into the house and for awhile, everybody here was real excited – you know – having somebody really famous living right here in town and all. People used to walk down this road just to catch a glimpse of him.”

The night pressed closer. Todd lowered his voice still further.

“But it was no dice. The guy never came out. A recluse. Spent all his time cooped up in that old place. Used to send his housekeeper into town for groceries, and she was a tight-lipped old battle ax.”

Demmy sniffed, poked his hands into his pockets.

“Anyway, after awhile, people began to think something weird was going on in there, and they started staying away. Eventually they were pretty much able to forget about him – that is until the night he left.

“Aikens said that the ‘writer fella’ had up and left without so much as a goodbye or a kiss my ass. Forgot about all his stuff and just blew right out of town like he was runnin’ scared or something. Damnedest thing he’d ever seen. One of those storage firms brought a truck in about two, three weeks later and gathered up all his stuff. And that was it. Never saw him again. And the guy never wrote another book. Strange.”

Todd cleared his throat. “Then Aikens took a long suck off his Nehi Grape and said the house had been rented out at least a dozen times since and the longest anyone had managed to stick it out was three months, and how the general consensus – that’s polite for gossip – was that maybe this writer guy, during his stay at the house, had stirred up a bunch of ‘spooks,’ seeing as how he was a horror writer.”

“I don’t think I wanna hear anymore,” Demmy whispered. The House was now to their right and behind them as they continued toward the point of light in the distance. Every few seconds, Demmy would snatch a furtive glance over his shoulder.

“What do you mean you don’t want to hear anymore?” Todd mocked. “I’m not finished.” You’ve got to hear more. I haven’t gotten to the good parts yet, the parts about why they call it “The House,” the parts about those kids, summer before last, how they were mutilated so badly that nobody could look at them without puking, how the cops thought they might have been partially eaten .. there. In front of The House. “You scared? Afraid something might reach out and grab you? Huh?”

“Shuddup!” Demmy hissed pleadingly. “I don’t give a flying fuck about no monster. But haven’t you noticed how weird it feels out here all of the sudden? It’s too quiet. Even the crickets have stopped – ”

“That’s because the monster is around somewhere,” Todd answered in a sibilant whisper. He smiled. “The monster from the writer’s novel. The one that lives in The House. The one that killed those kids.”

“It was a pree-vert who killed those kids,” Demmy snapped. But he looked genuinely alarmed.

“That’s what the cops told everyone. But that isn’t what they think,” Todd answered ominously. He jerked his head to the right. “The monster – ”

“Shuddup! Shuddup! Listen!” Demmy squealed.

“ – tore them limb from limb, chewed them up and spit them out in little pieces all over the front drive – ”

Demmy grabbed Todd’s arm, squeezed it so tightly that Todd winced and had to grit his teeth to keep from shouting. He tried to jerk away; Demmy’s grip was unyielding.

“What’s your problem anyway?”

Demmy had stopped. His eyes had gone wide and were shot with fear. “Can’t you hear it? Can’t you feel it?”

Todd paused. What was Demmy talking about? Could Demmy hear things that he couldn’t, or see things he couldn’t see? Did he have some unexplained sensitivity, some jungle instinct that had been dulled in Todd by years of city living?

“Something is out there …” Demmy said thickly. Todd snorted, laughed uneasily.

“Awww, c’mon. Bullshit. There isn’t anything out there. …” His voice trailed away when he realized how dumb that had sounded. Demmy’s grip on his arm tightened.

“Something’s out there. I can tell.”

Todd hesitated. Demmy was right. Something had changed. It was unusually quiet. Where were the night sounds, the little whisperings and rustlings that let you know the sun had gone down? Shadows slithered and roiled in the inky turbulence. The woods on either side of the road had become impenetrable black walls – walls that could hide things from anyone – two boys, for instance, walking along a deserted road at night.

“Bear … or something, maybe,” Todd whispered. The air had become supercharged with panic that had a burnt, ozone smell.

Demmy moaned, “Ohhh, Todd, let’s get outta here,” and then behind them – behind the wall of firs – Demmy gasped and whirled. A part of the night grew darker, and then tree limbs were being sheared from their trunks to the sound of bones snapping as something big moved toward them out of the darkness like a black thunderstorm.

Todd’s heart crawled into his throat. Suddenly – miraculously – the pressure on his arm was gone. He turned and watched as Demmy began running – running for the pinprick of light that now seemed impossibly far away. Panic prodded at him; his feet began to move with dreamy slowness, as if this were a nightmare where nothing moved with any urgency. From the cavern of night came a low, rumbling growl that cut a swath of chills along his spine. He felt himself staggering – then running. As he moved his mind seemed to clear so that everything came into sharper focus, and he knew suddenly that if he did not run he die here on this dark road, he would die –

Ahead, Demmy’s misty form bobbed against the light. Todd heard talons clawing at asphalt behind him. From some hidden reservoir of terror came the strength for him to scream, “DEMMY – DEMMY – WAIT! PLEEEEZE!”

Claw clicks on the pavement, drawing nearer.

“DEMMY! DEMEEEEE!”

Demmy’s form suddenly winked out of eclipse and Todd heard a whimper and a thud. In a second he was on top of the other boy, saw him lying in the wet grass on the road shoulder, his face screwed into a rictus of surprised horror. A surveyor’s wire was wrapped around his ankle.

“Todd? Todd – ”

Todd raced past him without breaking stride. Serves him right.

He reached the front yard. God, the light looks like heaven.

He took the porch steps in a single, exaggerated leap that sent him careening against the screen door. For a panicky moment he couldn’t get the damn knob in his hand. From out of the night he heard his name called. He got the door open, but hesitated before stepping inside to look. Demmy was at the corner of the yard, running stiffly, and behind him … oh, behind him, the darkness bearing down.

Todd stepped inside and slammed the door shut.

The house was black; it seemed unnaturally large in the murky twilight. Everything was hidden in sooty shadows and ear-ringing quiet. All he could hear was his thundering heart, his ragged breathing, and from outside –

“Todd! Todd!”

– distant and muffled by wood, plaster, but drawing closer now. Much closer. Pretty soon. …

“Todd! Open the d – ”

The sentence was left unfinished. The silence that followed came down like a question mark. Todd turned, pressed his cheek against the cool door facing and whispered, “Demmy?”

Nothing.

“Demmy? Then, louder, “Demmy?”

Todd frowned. “Demmy? What’re you doing? What the fuck are you doing, dammit! Demmy!”

The bones in his leg seemed to so soft. His stomach roiled queasily.

“Demmy!”

Panic was edging back into his voice – God – none of this was happening. That line he’d fed Demmy on the road back there – pure bullshit. Fiction. There couldn’t be anything out there. There couldn’t.”

“Demmy?”

It could have been a dog, or something. Couldn’t it? A bear. Did they have bears in Massachusetts? Todd didn’t think so. Probably a big dog from the sound of things – somebody’s lost pooch out roaming the woods, maybe a wild dog that wouldn’t come near the house, the light. Maybe Demmy already knew that and was hiding in the cedars by the porch, playing some stupid-shit joke, getting him back for all the shitting things he had done.

“Demmy.” Todd’s temples had begun to throb angrily. “Demmy, I know you’re out there. Goddammit! If you don’t want to spend the night in the front yard you’d better hoist your ass up here pronto!”

He was out there, hiding, playing some dumb game. Having a good laugh at the city boy’s expense. That’s what he was doing – that’s what he had to be doing. Making Todd look like an idiot so he could go around school Monday and tell everybody how he’s pulled a fast one on Mr. Bigshot City Slicker, and what a pussy Todd had been, afraid of the dark, of noises and shadows in the dark.

Todd gritted his teeth and whipped open the door. That frigging dumbass –

The porch was slicked down with something that looked oily and scorched in the porchlight’s yellow glare. And at the welcome mat lay a shredded bundle of – a –

Jesus.

Then the porch light was swatted out, and the night reached out to Todd to gather him in.

About the author:

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

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

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

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

INTRODUCTION

Obviously I wrote this story a looong time ago. I mean, c’mon. A Falcon? The last Falcon rolled off the Ford assembly line in 1970, according to Dr. Google.

But that’s OK because the central conceit of  “Paradise Café” – criminal regret – is timeless.

Seriously. Haven’t you ever done something you regretted – I mean really regretted, so much that it ate your lunch for weeks and weeks until you finally came to some kind of internal accommodation with it? I have. There are things I’ve done, things I’ve said, that make me so ashamed my brain reflexively flinches from the memory. I wish I could go back to that moment and not do the thing I did.

In “Paradise Café,” Rochester Allston did something so horrible that it has consumed his life. And now IT is about to consume him. Actually, it already has.

I wrote “Paradise Café” in the early 1980s. I’m guessing it was 1981 but truth be told I did a pretty terrible job of keeping track of things like story conception dates, so I can’t say with absolute certainty that was the year. Hell, it could have been in the late ’70s.

At that time I was mesmerized by Stephen King and was trying to write like him. I think you can see King’s influence in this story – brand names, colloquial dialogue, and a species of horror that treads somewhere between reality and fantasy. Of course it’s nowhere near King’s level of writing, but it tries.

I remember “Paradise Café” being based on an actual place. Was that actual place named “Paradise Café” or something else? I can’t remember. Nor do I recall where it was located. We ate lunch a few times at a little seafood shack in Freeport, Florida, that bears a resemblance to the diner in this story. But there was also a joint called The Red Bar in Grayton Beach, Florida, that looks like the actual “Paradise Café” building. Maybe it’s an amalgam of the two.

What counts is that Rochester Allston, as do the protagonists in many horror stories of that era, meets his comeuppance. The reward for doing bad things, even for burned out, hopeless, shopworn old Bible salesmen, is often terrible and eternal.

And it is always couched in irony.

So take a seat in the Paradise Café. Wash your hands after handling the menu. They won’t have beer, but you can order an ice-cold Coke, and maybe a BLT.

Just be careful leaving.

You never know what will follow you out of a place like that.

—

PARADISE CAFE

The sign read “Paradise Cafe,” Rochester Allston saw. It was written in florid cursives that were dirt-smeared and eaten at the edges. The painted letters seemed to run in the oppressive heat of the Mississippi afternoon.

And he thought, Oh. Lord.

He slid the straw hat from his brow; it came off like it had been greased. He waited for dust to settle, then rolled down the Falcon’s window a little farther and tested a smothering breath.

This heat … playing hard on the old man. And then he almost remembered … a distant screech of tires, or was that only the echo of a memory? He still couldn’t deny it, just as he could not deny the dream that had followed, the dream that was so repugnant his mind kept all but its presence concealed from him by day, the particulars lurking in his subconscious to emerge at night as he slept, so that he awakened slicked in cold sweat, and remembered only that he had screamed.

Forget it.

He breathed more deeply and the sign still read “Paradise Cafe” and he remained hot, hotter than he’d ever remembered, soaked to the bone with sweat, his back and his armpits pools of damp, spots of perspiration little crawling things loose inside his clothes. The Falcon was sweltering with the windows down, as he’d driven the Mississippi backroads, and now that he’d found what passed for paradise the heat was everywhere at once, a drowsy presence slithering beneath a patina of road dust and grime and endless afternoons on the road, talking – talking – talking –

He’d have traded his soul for a frozen mug of Wiedemann Bohemian Special. Or just a Coke – anything cold.

He snapped shut the sample case to his right. It’s the heat. That’s what’s got me whipped, he told himself, the thought slurred and indistinct as the afternoon took hold of him. Heat. And no sleep.

He opened the car door and grabbed the case, his shirt peeling from the vinyl seat like a clammy second skin. The case was heavier than he expected; it contained a depressing burden of unsold plastic Jesus dashboard ornaments, clasped-hands-in-prayer bookmarks, and most worthy of all, the Living Waters Bible, the word of God made comprehensible to the feeble minds that populated these sweaty backwood towns through large type and lots of pictures, which at the sacrifice price of only $9.95 plus tax was reasonable beyond the expectations of any God-fearing Southern Baptist … or the legions of pretended faithful.

Well, that’s what you’d think, anyway.

He got a better grip on the case, shut the car door with his hip. He walked toward the door, half expecting hound dogs to rush out, sniffing at his heels and urinating on the car tires. The case was an anchor, dragging at his body, and as he took the steps to the door he thought of cool afternoons spent beneath ancient oaks, wrapped in the slow swoon of a hammock and the easy slumber peculiar to Saturdays when nothing needed doing anytime soon. Once, life had been like that. But it seemed things would never go that way again.

Sleep.

He pried open the screen door, stepped into the grainy twilight inside the restaurant, and found the ubiquitous heat in here, too. The screen door banged shut.

He looked across dusty floorboards and chipped, formica tabletops – each chair squared neatly against the table, each table fastidious with a glass ashtray, a napkin dispenser, a lunch menu laminated in transparent plastic, salt and pepper shakers – rice grains in the salt to keep it from crystalizing. A thermometer on the back wall said “Royal Crown Cola – the fresher refresher!” The temperature read 78, and he knew that couldn’t be right.

“Hullo.”

He searched for the voice, scanning the counter, rows of padded stools, and saw a shape through the window in the door that opened onto the kitchen, a suggestion of pink sliding in shadow.

The waitress appeared and moved along the counter, wielding a half-composed frown and looking flustered at the prospect of work. She swept a slick tendril of hair behind her crimped, white hat and said, “Hullo” again. The scowl deepened.

“How do you do, Ma’am,” Allston answered. He ran a shirtsleeve over his forehead, then moved to the table in the back, away from the window. It looked cooler there. The waitress followed.

When Allston had sat down, the waitress pulled out a notepad and Bic pen from her apron pocket. The name “Angie” was embroidered on the pink lapel of her blouse. Her gaze flitted, lizardlike, from the packing case at his foot to his face.

“What can I get for you?”

Allston leaned forward, propped his elbows on the table. He took the menu and scanned it quickly, looking but not really seeing what was printed there. At the top of the sandwiches column was a photo of a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich and a sweating Coke. He said, “I’ll have a BLT – says here you got BLTs.”

She nodded, scribbled words, seemed to stare through the pad at him. “Whatcha want to drink?”

“Beer. Wiedemann – ”

She shook her head. “Dry county.”

Allston closed his eyes. “Coke. A Coke. With lots of ice.”

She was gone in a whorl that set the dust astir. Allston yanked a napkin from the dispenser, pulled the neck of his shirt loose and took a long, slow swipe with the napkin. The glare coming through the window seemed unbearably bright, a hot ingot of freshly poured steel still glowing from the furnace. He tried to think of air conditioners and hammocks slung beneath oaks and Wiedemann beer. And sleep.

He pulled out his wallet and thumbed the bills. Two ones, a ten, and another one. Thirteen bucks. Never had he experienced such a run of sorry luck. No sales. No nothing. And then … that goddamned wreck – he couldn’t believe he’d said the words to himself. He wanted to forget – he really needed to forget about all that.

And he didn’t want to think about the dream.

“You’re a salesman, ain’t you?”

The waitress seemed to appear from the thin, superheated air. She set down a glass of water. Allston snapped the wallet shut, leaned and slid it into his trousers pocket.

“Whatcha got in your case?” She tapped it with her foot. He stooped and hefted it to the table and undid the clasps. Was she interested in buying something, or would this be another dry well?

“Oh. You’re a Bible salesman.”

“And other spiritual necessities.”

She glanced at him, then began picking and prodding at the case’s contents. He almost considered trying her out on the wonderments of the Living Waters Bible, but she’d found something else, a porcelain figurine of a young girl kneeling in solemn prayer. She clasped it like something precious, raised it to her eye and attempted a smile. She turned it to the light.

Allston said, “That’s hand-painted porcelain, ma’am. Made right here in Mississippi. It’s a beauty.”

The lines in her face hardened. She stared back at him and murmured, “I can see that.”

She set it back in the case. “You want your Coke now or with the sandwich?”

He exhaled wearily. Another dry well. He said, “Now, please.” She whirled and marched back to the kitchen.

He stared and stared, eyes away from the bright window, looking at nothing and thinking of nothing except relief, of sleep, of earlier times. It had been less complicated then, compared to now. Getting by – nothing flamboyant, but work that put bread on the table and beer in the fridge and made for lazy afternoons enveloped in dizzy lethargy. He shifted in the chair and felt his body move in a boneless rearrangement of lumps and dull aches. It was difficult to keep his eyes open. These last few weeks … he turned those events over in his mind and couldn’t touch them –

 – the little girl was staring at him –

He jerked from a slouch, startled at the depths of his thoughts.

The little girl was staring.

He hadn’t noticed them come in. They’d taken the table by the window and, squinting against the brilliance, he could barely make out the blurred contours of a man – a big man, big as a diesel engine, made to look all the bigger by the sleeveless T-shirt he was wearing. His wife sat across from him and was rendered anonymous by the light. An older child sat at the woman’s left; Allston couldn’t guess its sex because of the overalls … and the little girl. The girl watched Allston with an intent that disturbed him. The little girl … she reminded him of something.

Allston pulled another napkin from the dispenser and mopped his forehead and neck. He drank from the water, frowned at its strange taste. The ice was almost melted, and it didn’t feel cool at all. Somebody had boiled a glass of water and put ice in it; that’s what he thought.

The little girl watched. She knew something about him, Allston felt. And now, he saw, her older brother/sister was staring too. Sister, he guessed. The hair. It was long; loose strands seemed to float, suspended on thermals snaking across the tabletop.

The waitress brought his Coke. He sipped and it was thick as syrup.

The family was watching him. All of them. Watching – not a word spoken among them, as if he were intruding on some space reserved exclusively for them. The room seemed 10 degrees hotter now. He breathed in gusts and glanced at the R.C. Cola thermometer. He looked over the menu again. He looked at his nails – anywhere but the window where the family baked in the sunlight and watched – where the child watched and knew.

The waitress appeared again with his sandwich, mercifully intruding on the moment. She stood between him and the window, eclipsing the square of sun. He watched her set down the plate. The toast was scorched around the edges and the sandwich had the look of something that would raise blisters on the roof of his mouth. He waited as she scribbled the check; she slid it between the ashtray and napkin dispenser, and without a word, walked away.

The girl was standing behind her.

Allston blinked and caught his breath, surprised and frightened in a single lash of tingling heat. The girl did not move; her eyes did not move, but held him immobile. Allston stared at her. He struggled and composed a slow, nervous smile. He opened the case.

“You know, I got something that might suit a pretty little girl like you.”

He withdrew the porcelain girl-in-prayer. He held it out to her. “Here. Take it.”

The child didn’t move.

“It’s yours. No charge.”

The girl reached and grasped the figurine. She did not look at it, but drew it behind her head, held it there a moment, then pitched it at him. Viciously. He was so surprised that he didn’t try to dodge or even hold up his hand, and it struck him in the forehead, landing with a thump that seemed to set every nerve in his body to thrumming. He stared in stunned amazement at her, his jaw unhinged and a cry suspended there. Her expression didn’t change. He clapped a hand over his forehead, felt oily liquid, couldn’t tell if it were sweat or blood until he looked down and saw red spatterings on his plate. Then he was overcome with nausea and thought he might puke. He grabbed a handful of napkins and held them to his forehead, a flare of pain arching behind his skull. A tear of blood ran along the ridge of his nose. The figurine rolled off his lap and clonked to the floor.

He opened one eye and looked balefully at the girl from behind a triangle of napkin. He hissed, “Get! Get outta here, you!” then closed his eyes, dropped back and let the sweaty dark come over him. His head throbbed to a cacophony of bell sounds. He felt a headache coming on, a bad one. It was hot and he’d made a mistake – a big mistake – in stopping at the Paradise Cafe and, suddenly, all eh wanted was to be away from here, this part of the country where the people seemed filled with meanness and no respect for a man trying to make an honest buck.

He folded the napkins and reached for his case, all before he saw that the other members of the family had joined the girl and were standing at the edge of his table, their faces unmoving and sinister. He gazed up at them, holding his breath. They watched. He thought he felt flickers of communication going between them. He thought if he moved something terrible would happen. Something awful. Like in the dream. That sickening twist of the gut right before the car wraps around the telephone pole, out of his – anybody’s – control. That thought again. The car. Tires.

For a half-minute he waited, his thoughts paralyzed. He moved his right hand slowly for his rear pocket, pulled out his wallet, removed three dollars and slid them between the ashtray and napkin holder, next to the check. He put his wallet back in his pocket.

They watched.

He rose, slowly. He turned his back to them …

… and shambled out the door.

The sun stung his exposed flesh like hot needles. He shimmied between his car and a big Ford wagon – it belonged to the family, he guessed – tossed in the case and then squeezed into the front seat. He could still feel the weight of their stares as he started the car and backed out of the dusty parking lot.

The sign still said “Paradise Cafe,” and he thought, Oh. God.

The car jounced over ruts, his head thumping in rhythm to the movement, and then he was on clean, smooth asphalt. A breath of wind snaked its way into the car.

That little girl … why?

Flickering light played across his rear-view mirror …

… a windshield, heliographing sunshine.

It was the stationwagon, bearing down on him at an impossible speed, rushing up from behind like some horrible predator, the jaws of its grill showing chrome-plated teeth.

Allston felt the blood drain from his head. He could clearly see them, the burly man, the woman next to him, two distinct silhouettes in the back seat.

Without thinking, he stood on the gas pedal. The Falcon seemed to groan as it accelerated. The tires began to howl. He didn’t care. The stationwagon was keeping up with him – it surged up to his bumper and then dropped back, surging forward again as if to exhort Allston to go faster, faster.

Allston had the steering wheel in a death grip. His gaze darted from the road to the mirror to the speedometer; when the stationwagon swung alongside his car, the speedometer needled had just nicked the 80 mark.

He snatched a glance at them. They were watching him with a kind of subdued glee. The little girl had her face pressed against the window, her nose a spatula of flesh on the glass, her eyes wide and piercing.

The stationwagon edged closer to his Falcon, seemed to brush it, to kiss it, so that the steering wheel lurched in Allston’s grip and he had to fight to keep the car on the road. The stationwagon veered in again, this time smacking soundly against the Falcon.

And suddenly, Allston knew what they wanted. His heart crawled into his throat. He tried to shake his head, his thoughts cramping into recollection. He heard tires. Rubber, grabbing asphalt. The memory of the accident began to replay in his mind, and he could not stop it, could only watch in silent horror. … He had been low, closer to zero than ever. Desperately low, ready to panhandle, to beg, God so low. And only if he could keep things going another week, Lord, just a week – that’s all he was asking – he could turn it around. Somehow. But he was low and the only antidote he knew for that was the road, the road and a couple of six-packs of Wiedemann Bohemian Special, to exorcise those inner voices that never relented, always reminding him that he had no chance for anything but scraping by, that somehow he had missed his calling. But on the road he was moving, and movement always held the possibility for a lucky turn of fortune, the one ingredient absent from his life at the moment. And so he’d bid good riddance to Tupelo and had taken to the road, a clutch of Wiedemann empties clanking around on the floorboards, half a dozen others scattered along the baking fringes of some Mississippi state road. Night had come with his hangover, the electric glare of the headlights an icepick boring into his skull. It was impossible to keep the car on the road; the center line was wandering over the asphalt in loose, serpentine undulations, and he could only think of the next gas station and another six-pack of Wiedemann to take the bite out of this thundering, skull-cruncher of a headache. Tires screamed, and it was a sound like mortal agony. A great big battleship of a stationwagon was hurtling past, slewing sideways, and for a stuttered second he had seen the little girl’s face, illuminated in the pools of his headlights, frozen in his subconscious for all time. The little girl. Her mother and father. An older sister. The stationwagon swept by his Falcon, shrugging into the soft road shoulder and flipping to smash full-on into an embankment. And then it had exploded, the fire sucking out his breath and the light from his eyes, the sound from his ears, giving it all back in a sudden, terrific CARUMP that had jarred him clear to the bone.

The car had burned. Oh God, it had burned.

He didn’t stop. He didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop, Oh Jesus, not with the empties rolling around in the floorboards and he didn’t stop, he didn’t and instead he’d run, just put the pedal to the firewall and run, all night and into the next scorching afternoon, just run anywhere, and he had to forget, he had to wipe it from memory because …

… now they came to him. In the flytrap motel rooms where he stayed when he could scrape up the bucks. In the roadside taverns where he drank to forget. In the rest areas … all the places he dared to sleep.

And that was what he could never remember, the rational part of his mind fending off recognition until the last possible moment and then purging it just as quickly. The little girl. Her family. That was the dream. Stalking him as he slept. Sending him to his death until he came away clutching a mattress or the leg of a barstool or the steering wheel, unable to remember exactly what he had dreamed but feeling an ugly presence slithering back into the inaccessible regions of his brain, waiting … waiting for him to sleep again.

He needed to forget. What had happened. What he’d done. So he would be rid of them.

That stationwagon smashed into his car. Dimly, he heard glass shattering. The steering wheel spun crazily and there was a breathtaking moment of weightlessness as the Falcon skidded off the road and somersaulted once, twice, a sickening cacophony of metal concussions drowning out any other thought but terror. The roof came down on him and he felt bones snapping. Detonations of pain erupted across his body. Something speared him in the ribs. He couldn’t breath.

The car settled with a final, jolting shudder, and Allston knew what would happen next. What always happened next. The delicate cough of spilled gasoline igniting. Flames racing through the car. He would burn, Oh God, he would burn. Scream and burn. He told himself he was dreaming this, that he’d fallen asleep at the Paradise Cafe and soon the frowning waitress would be tapping him on the shoulder to tell him his sandwich was ready and he’d awaken and know he had dreamed the awful dream again, that if he were to preserve his sanity he must erase the past from memory. He must forget.

Fire began to eat at the upholstery. He wondered if the dream always seemed this real.

—

The waitress knelt and picked up the porcelain girl-who-prayed. She remembered what the deputy said.

Heat stroke. Had t’be heat stroke, though Jesus knows I never seen a case worse’n this.

Blisters. Flesh like a slug that had been dipped in rock salt. Christ, what the hell had happened?

She crossed the dining room and stood for a moment in front of the air conditioner grate. Red ribbons waggled on the chilly draught of air and tickled her face. It felt good, and it offered a temporary refugee from the stink of burned hair.

Then she disappeared behind the door to the kitchen, where dishes needed washing, and hot thunderclouds of steam curled darkly at the heart of paradise.

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 .

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 .