Hope this is as easy as the movies make it look.
I don’t know what it takes to topple a god, even one grasping so tenuously to power as the God of the Screen. My occupation is the creation of myths. But I do know one thing: There’s a California sunrise waiting for me on the other side of this nightmare. If I die, I’m a tragic artist, gone too soon and awaiting rediscovery. They’ll call me a genius. And if I live, maybe it’s not too late for me after all. I do hate remakes. But sequels? Well, I like sequels. Redemption stories are what great cinema is made of. And if I live through this, mine will make one hell of a movie. My best work yet.
I think I’ll play myself.
Luciano Marano is a journalist, photographer, and author. His award-winning nonfiction, both written and photographic, has appeared in numerous national and regional publications, and he was named the 2018 Feature Writer of the Year by the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association. His short fiction has been featured in several anthologies, including Year’s Best Hardcore Horror Vol. 3, Crash Code, Breaking Bizarro, and DOA III, as well as the podcasts Pseudopod, Horror Hill, and also Chilling Tales for Dark Nights. Originally from rural western Pennsylvania, he now resides in Seattle, WA. A U.S. Navy veteran, he enjoys movies (especially horror and documentary films), jogging, craft beer, haunting used bookstores, and would choose Wolverine-style healing abilities if he could have any superpower. Luciano-marano.com.
Michael Thinks the House Is Haunted
David Gerrold
Michael Thinks the House Is Haunted
It’s an old house, older than me. It creaks in the wind. It groans in the heat. It settles back into itself at night. It shivers in the winter and aches in the summer. It has its own set of rustling noises everywhere. The chimneys whistle, the windows rattle, the floorboards squeak. The house has a voice.
So Michael thinks the house is haunted.
It’s not just the noises, although they’re very convincing. It’s all the other things.
It’s the basement door that he closes tight every night and comes back in the morning to find it open again, as if something that lives below comes out and prowls the house at night. It’s the drapes in the front room that he opens every morning and then comes back to find them mysteriously closed. It’s his little Catholic statue of the Virgin Mary on the shelf in his bedroom—someone or something keeps turning it to face the wall.
Michael isn’t my first roommate. He’s just the latest one. I’m not that easy to live with. I like playing jokes on people.
Michael has only been living here a few months. He knows all the stories about the house, of course. The house has a reputation, because people like to believe things, so they tell stories.
Some of the stories are pretty good. Four generations of Morrisons lived here—and died here. One of the best stories involves a young woman whose lover fell into the well and drowned; she locked herself in the attic and slowly went mad; she chanted all day in a language nobody understood and sometimes scribbled arcane notes and drawings in a thick journal.
And of course, there was the murder. Or maybe it wasn’t. Nobody knows for sure. Maybe it was a staged suicide. But that’s one of the reasons why it’s hard to find renters. Who wants to sleep in a room with a ghost? Especially an angry ghost.
Sometimes Michael sets up cameras; sometimes he prowls around with his ghost-hunting equipment. He makes videos too, long involved discussions of ectoplasmic concurrences. He has a blog and a podcast and several thousand followers. He’s sure he’s going to find something. They’re sure he’s going to find something. Michael is determined to prove the house is haunted. He makes me laugh.
Sometimes I follow him around, making jokes the whole time about how silly this is and how he’s wasting his time. He ignores me, of course. He’s so determined to find out who or what is opening doors and closing drapes and turning the virgin that it’s turned into an obsession. He goes from room to room, from attic to basement, from maid’s quarters next to the kitchen, all the way upstairs to the far corners of the nursery.
I think Michael is silly. He’s never going to find any ghosts. I’m the one who opens the basement door and closes the drapes and turns the Virgin Mary to the corner. I do it to tease him. I do it for the joke.
I know this house. I know it better than anybody.
It’s old, yes. It’s tired and creaky. But haunted?
I don’t think so.
I’ve lived here nearly two hundred years—and I’ve never seen anything.
David Gerrold is the author of over fifty books, hundreds of articles and columns, and over a dozen television episodes. He is a classic sci-fi writer who will go down in history as having created some of the most popular and redefining scripts, books, and short stories in the genre. His TV credits include episodes from Star Trek, Star Trek: The Animated Series, Babylon 5, The Twilight Zone, Land of the Lost, Tales from the Darkside, Logan’s Run, and others.
His novels include When HARLIE Was One, The Man Who Folded Himself, The War Against the Chtorr septology, The Star Wolf trilogy, The Dingilliad young adult trilogy, the Trackers duology, and many more sci-fi classics. His newest novel is Hella (June, 2020). The autobiographical tale of his son’s adoption, The Martian Child, won the Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novelette of the Year and was the basis for the 2007 movie Martian Child, starring John Cusack, Amanda Peet, and Joan Cusack.
Atropos Green
Jesse Sprague
Atropos Green
The final message I received from Earth haunts me, yet I play the video one more time, carefully watching my granddaughter’s face as she speaks those unforgettable words.
“Old people always say that, Grandma Dini. Just because we’re different than your generation, that doesn’t mean society is going to implode.”
My granddaughter’s voice crackles in my headphones, sounding a million miles away. In fact, the distance back to Earth is far greater than that. After more than nineteen years in space, our ship is just six months from returning home.
I stare into her eyes, bright green, as if she’s wearing colored contacts.
Harri’s expression—the same rebellious sneer that’s been sported by teens since the dawn of time—melts away. “I promise,” she says with menacing sweetness, focusing those green eyes directly into the camera, “we’ll be here waiting when your vessel returns home.”
I jab at the red button below the monitor. Pulling off my headphones, I hear the common sounds of the women’s dorm, where I’ve lived for all of my fifties and most of my sixties. Rhi, a woman from the Tech Team, lies immobilized in a containment chamber. Tubes feed her and keep her unconscious. The hiss of energy from that and the soft snores of the only other woman on board make a low drone in the white and gray room. I haven’t left the dorm since waking even though it’s hours past “breakfast time.” The definitions of day and night surrendered long ago to the unremitting darkness of deep space.
With the video turned off, I stand and lean against the nearest bed—stacked in tiers on all walls of the room. The only decoration in our space quarters is the center console, where three monitors—each with privacy screens and headphones—play the home movies we receive from Earth.
The waves sending the videos travel at the speed of light. That’s twice as fast as our ship moves, so what we see on our screens are scenes from Earth’s past. I don’t know what we will find on Earth when we inevitably arrive. The ship can’t even stop but must continue to follow the pre-programmed course home.
I don’t understand all the science of our mission. Unlike almost all the other people chosen for this voyage, I’m not an astronaut, a scientist, a soldier, or even college-educated.
Fifty of us were selected for travel to the Alpha Centauri system. Earth was swiftly becoming unlivable, with climate change bringing on far worse storms than anyone had predicted. Global temperatures were continuing to rise and new studies showed that it would not stop. The expedition was a last-ditch eff
ort to save humanity. We went to find a new home, a world to colonize.
I wish I’d never gone. But I can’t claim my presence was luck; I auditioned to be here. I pull up that video and queue several more to watch after. There are many more videos I could play from the voyage, but I don’t need to watch all of them. I wait for the selected series to play.
* * *
Year 0
AUDITION TAPE: Dini Kemper: 2029-02-01
My face fills the screen minus two decades of wrinkles. My smile is too bold. This is a problem I’ve always fought on screen. It all goes back to my start in show business as a magician’s assistant. My employer, Harry Whoo, became famous with his magic act. Then Hollywood scouted me for movies and Harry swiftly fell out of favor without his “Dini.” The only thing I have left from those days is my stage name and that darned smile.
“When I first heard about the Alpha Centauri mission,” I say, “I was proud of our scientists for figuring out a potential solution to Earth’s decline. Traveling as part of the Moirai’s crew was a mission for heroes; being an actress who once played an astronaut’s wife didn’t qualify me.” I laugh—a warm, velvety sound. My laugh is better suited to film than my smile.
“Then the positions for Earth correspondents were announced. I knew I had to go. Being one of two faces to report back to Earth’s masses is a huge responsibility. But I believe that the citizens of Earth, especially the children, will need to learn about any habitable world we might find to help them adjust to leaving Earth when the Moirai returns.”
On the screen, I run a hand over my dyed brunette hair. The salon-made color hid a dozen gray hairs, but even that was too much in an industry obsessed with youth. Still I am a real movie star, not like the YouTube sensations invited to fill the other spot. I’ll never comprehend how eating odd foods on dares, pranking people on camera, and taking baths in random substances adds up to fame.
My younger self holds up a picture of my granddaughter, Harri. “And I have her to inspire me. Harri is barely eleven months old now. She and her mother Cici mean everything to me. I can think of no better way to safeguard their futures than to help find a new home for humanity. And then to expose them to the place that will someday be their new home.”
* * *
YouTube: THEEVERS channel: 2029-09-05
Everett and Everly don’t look like twins. She’s a petite blonde, and he’s a lanky goofball with wild tufts of brown hair. But they act the way I imagine twins should act. Despite the video being labeled as TheEvers announcement of their roles in the Alpha Centauri mission, the first minute of the video is them bickering about some “challenge” they are planning to do later.
This is the future of the entertainment industry? I shudder to think what this says about the decline of society.
When they start talking about the mission, it comes without warning and rapid-fire as all their videos seem to be.
“If you didn’t watch our last video—” Everly says.
“Where we discussed our upcoming mission to Alpha Centauri—” Everett says.
“Then you should go back and watch it before continuing on,” Everly says.
“We’ll wait,” they say together.
There’s a brief pause where Everett makes faces behind Everly’s head, stopping whenever she glances over.
“Back?” Everett asks the viewers.
“Well, last video we talked about the woman we’ll be ‘co-hosting’ with on the voyage aboard the Moirai, Dini Kemper. But we also—”
“Announced that today we’d do a coin toss to choose which of us would go to Alpha Centauri and which of us would be the Earth correspondent and post—”
“All the videos to our YouTube channel—”
“TheEvers,” they say together. “The only YouTube channel that broadcasts from the stars.”
Everly pulls out a coin and holds it out to the camera. Then she rotates it in her fingers showing both sides. Everett grabs it from her hands.
“Heads,” Everett says.
Everly thumps her hands on the table in front of them like a drumroll and after a few false starts Everett tosses the coin in the air. He catches it. There are a dozen ways to cheat on a trick like this. Given my past profession, I know a lot about magic tricks, even the new type of sleight-of-hand that is all the rage on YouTube. I find it hard to believe that anyone would really decide their fate by a coin toss.
The twins look at the coin. They speak at the same time once again. “And I won the toss!”
“I get to travel on a spaceship,” Everett says, beaming his toothy smile.
“And I get to eat real food for the next twenty years!” Everly pokes him in the ribs.
* * *
Year 10
SENT from the Moirai: 2040-05-22: PUBLIC MESSAGE: Author: DINI
The video starts with Everett and me outlined by the starscape shown in the window at our backs. I look as young as I ever do beside Everett, which is to say not at all. His brown hair is starting to turn gray and there is no hair dye on the ship, but Everett still exudes the presence of a teen. It was cute when he was twenty and the voyage started; at thirty he should have matured. Most days I want to smack him. At this crucial moment, I am as excited as he is, though my calm, bemused expression doesn’t show it.
We both face the camera, eager to send our news home to Earth.
“We’ve been putting off making this report until we were sure,” Everett says. “Or Dini has … I’ve been dying to send out a message since we reached the Alpha Centauri system. It’s crazy. I, uh …”
“Six days ago,” I say, picking up on his trailing voice naturally after a decade of sending broadcasts to Earth. “We reached a green planet, and the scientists gathered samples. After much debate, we decided to follow the long tradition of naming celestial bodies after ancient Greek gods. Our ship, the Moirai, was named after the three fates of Greek legend. It seemed fitting to choose one of the fates for the planet. To honor the idea of one life coming to an end in order to begin anew, we’ve dubbed the planet Atropos. She was the fate who snipped the thread of life to—”
“Aaaaand, enough boring Greek mythos … moving on to what people actually care about,” Everett says. “Yesterday we sent down a settlement team!”
My too-bright smile masks my annoyance at being interrupted. “That’s right! A settlement team. Atropos should be able to support life.”
Everett thrusts his fists upward in triumph, as if he found the planet and saved humanity single-handedly. “Most of the crew has been sent down already. And in the morning, I’ll be joining them.”
“From here on out, Everett and I will be recording separately, because I will be one of the ten people staying with the Moirai.” There didn’t need to be many of us to return, since the only real purpose was to deliver the samples we’d collected. There were forms of analysis available on Earth that the Moirai simply didn’t have.
“I’ve been trying to talk Dini into a celebratory drink, but she’s being a …” Everett makes a raspberry sound with his mouth.
“I’d have a celebratory drink with you,” I say. There’s real sadness I can’t quite mask in my eyes. Despite finding Everett a bit much at times, he is the only friend I have on board the Moirai. The ten-year voyage back to Earth will drag without him. “I’m too old to deal with the hangover that goes with your sort of ‘celebratory drink’.”
“You’re not old, Dini,” Everett says, winking. “You’re just seasoned.”
“I’m not a chicken.”
Everett shrugs. Personal discussions on camera are something I avoid. I give so much of me to my audiences, but I have to keep a bit for myself. Everett doesn’t understand that. I guess that’s what his type of modern celebrity does—broadcasts their own lives.
After a moment of looking at me, Everett returns his goofy smile to the camera. “Enough of us … time for what you want to see: my expertly cut footage of the crew and what they’ve discovered so far about this
planet.”
The video cuts into a montage of samples and scientists explaining the samples, namely that everything points to habitability. Despite the fact we’d hoped for a habitable planet, the odds hadn’t been good. Nothing mattered more than the fact that Atropos was capable of supporting human life.
The factoids are interspersed with shots from the ship’s outer cameras of Atropos. The planet nearly glows in an unbelievable green, with lush forests and frozen icecaps of a luminescent, milky jade color. We found no evidence of intelligent life on the land, but the video flashes several captures of the scarlet-scaled creatures that seemed to be the most advanced lifeform.
Then come pictures of the basecamp for our ground team. A group of scientists in suits, but without helmets, give a thumbs-up.
The pictures of their camp contain little more than the spacecraft they landed in and a wide area they cleared for crops. But the ground team also sent pictures of the white-trunked trees that surround the camp. The shadows in all of these pictures seems exaggerated and dark. Of course, differences are to be expected in a new world.
The video finishes with a shot of the distinct Atropos green forest spreading out toward an ocean white-capped with wind and rain. After the dingy gray of the spaceship, and the faded colors of Earth before that, the view assaults the eyes with its brilliance.
* * *
RECEIVED from Atropos: 2040-06-15: Author: EVERETT
There is no picture, but the audio of Everett’s voice comes through fine. He talks for a while about how gorgeous Atropos is and how they are finding new foods. He spends a solid five minutes blabbing about some fish that he swears tastes like strawberries. But at the end, there is a message specifically for me.
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