Shock Totem 4: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted

by Shock Totem

You think so?

  “I know so.”

  The Preacher’s smile only broadens. Interesting how good your timing was, wouldn’t you say? Precisely when I ripped Lucy’s soul from her body, that’s when you were there to witness it. Almost too perfect. Almost as if it were staged solely for your benefit.

  Just as the chill emanating from Chase gets painful, Sasha whirls towards the other ghost, but never gets the chance to ask the question.

  Chase has already plunged the knife into her mid-section.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Three times.

  Pain blooms from her stomach to radiate outward in waves. Blood burbles from her mouth, splashing and seeping from her wheezing chest. When her legs can no longer support her, Sasha lands within the grave she’s been digging.

  Almost too perfect. Almost as if it were meant for her all along.

  Sorry, Sash. Chase’s voice is little more than a whisper. His fingertips skate across her sweaty temple. Feigning affection, even now.

  Why would he do this? The betrayal cuts deeper than the knife.

  We had to be sure you wouldn’t interfere. Maybe when you’re a ghost, you’ll understand.

  —//—

  Jaelithe Ingold was named after a character in Andre Norton’s Witch World series, so it’s no great surprise that she loves speculative fiction. She used to prepare fossils for display at the Carnegie Museum and is now a retail manager. Her work has appeared in Dark Recesses, Electric Spec and Arcane Magazine and is forthcoming in Abyss & Apex.

  WEIRD TALES

  by David Busboom

  I cannot say how it was that we fell into a discussion of so-called supernatural phenomena that night in Kingsport—our interest in spirits was generally limited to those found in bottles—but I suppose it is the sort of topic which must inevitably crop up among the very young, the very old, and the addled.

  Jervas, our daydreamer, was holding forth loudly about a mausoleum he had discovered, and about the empty coffin he had found with his name on the plate. At the conclusion of this tale, which demonstrated either the instability of Jervas’s mind or his power as a storyteller, Basil, the lighthouse keeper, took over. In sepulchral tones Basil related the story of how a bearded man piloting a mystical white ship had taken him sailing upon a bridge of moonlight to explore a chain of islands unlike anything that could be found on Earth. The occultist, Randolph, told of his encounter with a door to the underworld in an ancient graveyard near Big Cypress Swamp, where his companion, Harley, had disappeared. Atal, the elder of the club, was cajoled into repeating his story of the Ultharian cats killing an old farmer and his wife, and I offered an account of my one experience with the Great Unknown—a telling of an on-duty incident at Red Hook which resulted in my current phobia of large buildings.

  We drank and laughed, then, all but our newest member, the Providence man, Howard—who sat, as he had done throughout the evening, absolutely still and expressionless. No one knew much about Howard, except that he was a writer, single, and reportedly poor. He never said much, but from that little it was evident that he was a pessimist, a dweller on the cynical. It occurred to me suddenly that he must be thinking us all a hopeless bunch of romantics; it annoyed me, and for that reason I twisted in my chair and addressed him.

  “See here, Howard, surely you’ve a contribution to make.”

  He seemed to rouse from a deep reverie. “Contribution?”

  “Yes.” I winked at the others. “You must have bumped up against the unknown a few times in your life, seen a phantom or two.” The vacancy of his stare drove me on. “Come on, Howard. As a member of the club, it’s your duty to give us a ghost story.”

  “Nonsense,” he said. “Such talk is pointless.”

  “I can’t agree. The unknown surrounds us.”

  I expected a snort. Instead, Howard continued to stare.

  “Well?”

  “I’ve never seen a ghost,” he said. “And I don’t think anyone else has, either. But an odd thing did happen to me, once, a number of years ago...”

  There was a quick hush in the room, as though a curtain had fallen. Howard had not spoken this quantity of words all night.

  “I was visiting Paris, lodging in an almost empty apartment building,” he continued, more to himself than to us. “But whenever I got into bed and tried to sleep, I couldn’t.” He paused, thoughtfully. “There was too much noise from downstairs. Strange music. I had never heard such melodies. All night it lasted.”

  We waited. Finally someone said, “Well? Go on.”

  “That’s all,” said Howard.

  “You were visiting Paris, and you couldn’t sleep because someone was playing music downstairs and that’s the whole story?”

  “Yes,” said Howard. “That’s my brush with the unknown.” He looked up at our astonished faces. “Oh,” he said. “I forgot one part of import. There was no downstairs at this house. My bedroom was on the ground floor.”

  —

  David Busboom lives in Champaign, Illinois with his mother, sister, bulldog, and more books than he knows what to do with. He attends Parkland College, and is a member of the Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. This is his debut story.

  STRANGE GOODS & OTHER ODDITIES

  Animosity, by James Newman; Necessary Evil Press, 2011; 235 pgs.

  That damned James Newman has done it again.

  Some writers spray you with endless torrents of blood and guts and other bodily fluids. Others ply you with long dialogues and crazy back stories, dragging things out and bogging things down. Newman doesn’t have time for that nonsense. He writes about people in normal, everyday situations who quickly find themselves in dark, frightening places; places that, even more frighteningly, do not look all that different from their starting points. I tend to label most of his works as Straw Dogs horror.

  Since receiving my review copy of Animosity in the mail last fall, I have read it three times. Each reading done over the course of a day. It is that gripping. Seriously. The title alone sets hooks that are not easily pulled free. In definition, animosity is a feeling of strong dislike, ill will, or enmity that tends to display itself in action.

  The very simple premise is one that we have seen before. An innocent man is presumed guilty and penalized/terrorized by his peers...but it’s more than that. Newman takes this theme and populates it with real characters. These are people I could see and hear, people that, in my mind’s eye, took on the appearances of folks from my hometown. His main character is far from a perfect hero; he bears scars and flaws, but he remains a character you root for just the same.

  Without giving too much away, Animosity is the story of Andrew Holland, a horror writer and the celebrity of the cul-de-sac he lives on. His neighbors don’t exactly like—or understand—what he does for a living as much as they like the fact that they have a celebrity in their midst.

  That is, until the dead little girl turns up; discovered by Holland and his dog one morning

  It is then that things shift toward the dire. Nothing sudden, just enough to notice. Friendly waves stop, neighbors look away. Things swell and infect, judgments are made and punishments delivered. Lord of the Flies in a posh development. All the while, you keep thinking there is no way this could happen, but then the very real probability flexes its dark muscle and you know that, indeed, it could.

  That is only the basic surface plot; I could go into all the nuance and subtext, but I couldn’t do so without exposing even more of the story than I already have, and that would be a huge injustice. I will simply close by saying this: I am a James Newman fan, and the man has hit it out of the park with this one. Way out.

  —John Boden

  Witch, by Witch; Tee Pee Records, 2006; 7 tracks; 40 min.

  When Witch’s self-titled debut dropped in 2006, the album caught me by surprise. Mainly because J. Mascis was in the band, as their drummer. Mascis, for those unaware, is the man behind the long-running legendary
indie rock band Dinosaur Jr.—a longtime favorite of mine (those fuzzy solos are so nice). So when I heard he had once again set up shop behind the drum kit, it was unexpected.

  Before Dinosaur Jr., Mascis bashed the skins in the punk/hardcore band Deep Wound and later, in the early 90s, for the doom-metal band Upsidedown Cross. With Witch, he not only traded in his guitar and wah-wah pedal for a drum kit, he also revisited a heavier, doomier metal style far removed from the musical style of the band he built his career on.

  Joined by Kyle Thomas (guitar and vocals) and Asa Irons (guitar), both from the avant-folk/rock band Feathers, and Dave Sweetapple (bass), the result is pretty fantastic.

  Witch play a slightly mixed bag of doom-metal styles: traditional, stoner, and psychedelic, though heavy on the traditional side of the spectrum with a good dose of 70s rock. The cabalistic lyrical content may remind some of Witchcraft, and fans of the legendary St. Vitus or Pentagram may hear musical similarities, but Witch groove with a more vintage rock swagger than those aforementioned bands—at least the latter two. This is consistently reinforced by Kyle Thomas’s vocals when his upper-range begins to sound somewhat akin to that of old-school Robert Plant. The guitar work throughout the album is excellent, rife with solos and dark grooves courtesy of the Sabbath-heavy riffs. Sweetapple’s bass runs and clear tone in the mix make his instrument more of a standout element rather than an unnoticed part of the rhythm section, the backbone of which is Mascis’s standard but solid drumming.

  The album starts in epic form with the stunning “Seer,” a glorious doom-laden jam best suited for a funeral parade at the End of Days. The same formula is applied to other tracks like the stalking stomp of “Black Saint”—accompanied by riff-heavy two-and-a-half-minute closing jam punctuated by some fuzzy dual leads—and the mind-wearying ebb and flow of “Rip Van Winkle.” With the first six songs painting on coat after coat of heavy, doom-riddled texture you might find yourself scratching your head when the final song, “Isadora,” opens with acoustic guitars and subtle vocals wrapped in an eerie melancholia that lasts for almost four minutes. But then things veer back into familiar territory as the floodgates are opened to the down-tuned riffage and solo work that comprise the first six songs. The song ends in classic, plodding doom fashion and Kyle Thomas singing “Isadora” over and over and over again...

  And this is generally where I hit play again.

  In the years since this album was released, with newer bands like The Sword, Saviours, Blood of the Sun, Priestess, Dixie Witch and Early Man having imparted varying degrees of 70s-influenced stoner rock and doom upon our ears, the style began to feel a bit overwhelming, the scene saturated in mediocrity. Thanks, of course, to the labels who tried to exploit things and shove more and more similar bands down our throats, as they tend to do. Despite this, there will always be a handful of diamonds to be found within the deep, sucking mud of the mainstream’s latest go-to genre. Witch, and those aforementioned bands, are some of those diamonds.

  —K. Allen Wood

  Angelology, by Danielle Trussoni; Penguin Books, 2011; 451 pgs.

  I love me a good swashbuckling, mysterious, and historical adventure. I even greatly enjoy reading the much-maligned Dan Brown, because he does his research, creates interesting scenarios, and comes up with some pretty daring hypotheses that are rooted at the very heart of Conspiracy Theory Nation.

  This description also applies to Danielle Trussoni and her best-selling novel Angelology. In this book we are introduced to Sister Evangeline, a young nun of the Franciscan order, and V.A. Verlaine, a budding art historian with a passion for the life of Abigail Rockefeller. Verlaine is working for some rather dubious individuals—a mysterious man named Percival Grigori and his family—in search of a connection between the former Lady Rockefeller and the St. Rose Convent, where Evangeline lives and prays.

  In requesting access to the Convent’s archives, Verlaine sets off a chain of events that will forever change the lives of both parties. As it turns out, Percival Grigori and his family are Nephilim, the legendary offspring that resulted from the mating of angels and human women centuries ago. According to the mythology of Trussoni’s book, these soulless, beautiful creatures have been behind every major war and countless other cataclysms throughout human history. I smiled when I read this; knowing as much as I do about the aforementioned Conspiracy Theory Nation, and understanding their theories on the role of the Nephilim follows much the same path that Trussoni lays out, I couldn’t help but read on.

  The crux of the story is that the Angelologists, those who’ve dedicated their lives to understanding—and fighting against—the Nephilim, are desperately searching for a particular, celestially-blessed instrument that, should it fall into the wrong hands, could forever alter the makeup of our world…or destroy it completely. It’s a race against time for the Angelologists, examining clue after clue, hoping to discover the whereabouts of said instrument, all the while feeling the breath of the Nephilim and their powerful allies on their backs.

  Trussoni does a wonderful job of building atmosphere. Her descriptions are spot-on, her characters are wonderfully complex and authentic, and she creates two different settings—New York in 1999 and Paris in the 1930s—that came to life in my mind. She has also researched exhaustively, for every contemplation and scenario she presents can be backed up by actual accounts and historical figures. She also does a wonderful job of combining the story of the original fallen angels, the Watchers, with that of Orpheus. In short, she leaves absolutely no stone unturned.

  And to be honest, this is where the book and I were somewhat at odds. For as much as I adore flowery prose and in-depth analysis, there reaches a point where I just want the story to move forward already. Angelology is 450 pages long with very small type—I don’t know for certain, but I’d assume the word count approaches two hundred thousand. And the majority of the book takes place over two days. It drags on and on and on at times, and at one point I found myself praying it would end soon. However, there is a large section in the middle that takes place in World War II-era Paris, an exploration of the beginnings of certain characters’ journeys, and that was done beautifully. It was brisk and to the point, and all the information we needed is handed to us in a reasonable amount of time. Why couldn’t the rest of the book have been like that? I mean, Trussoni could seriously cut about a quarter of the words—possibly even a third—and not lose a single ounce of ambiance.

  Of course, this could only be a personal preference on my part, so I really shouldn’t make a huge deal out of it. On the whole, this is an extremely entertaining and thought-provoking novel. Though I became frustrated with it during points, by the end the story picked up pace and pretty much flew to the finish line. I ended up wanting to know more about these characters—which I undoubtedly will, seeing as there’s a sequel in the works. Hopefully, that one will be a tad more succinct.

  So yeah, I’d recommend Angelology, but only to certain folks. Those with short attention spans or those who bore easily should stay far, far away.

  —Robert J. Duperre

  Dark Night of the Scarecrow, by Frank De Felitta (director), J.D. Feigelson (writer); starring Charles Durning, Robert F. Lyons; 1981; Not Rated; 96 min.

  This 1981 made-for-TV movie is an unabashed classic. Never heard of it? Shame on you.

  Written by J.D. Feigelson and directed by horror novelist Frank De Fellita (Audrey Rose), the pair crafted a film that was way ahead of its time in regards to subject matter and theme. It originally aired on CBS, one of the more “uptight” networks at the time. The film tells the story of Bubba Ritter, a mentally retarded man in a small town. Because he is mentally but a child himself, Bubba, played superbly by Larry Drake (in fact, the entire ensemble is amazing), befriends young Marylee Williams. The two play games and sing songs all day—until tragedy rears its ugly head.

  On the way home one day, Marylee takes an ill-advised detour into a fenced-in yard and is mauled by a dog. This is the catalyst for a v
icious turn of events that bait a tension trap that doesn’t spring for another 80 minutes.

  Enter Otis Hazelrigg, the town Postmaster and a man with a sinister secret.

  Hearing about the attack on the little girl, Hazelrigg gathers himself a posse and they head out to Bubba’s farm, having already convicted the young man of the evil deed upon the girl. But Bubba outruns them, barely, and hides inside a scarecrow, playing “the hiding game” as his mama called it. The men discover him and gun him down in cold blood, literally moments before the dispatcher informs them that the girl is alive and told authorities of the dog attack, that Bubba didn’t do it.

  Soon after, strange events begin to plague the men of the vigilante group; all are haunted by the vision of a scarecrow, and then they begin to die off. The ending is one of the creepiest I can recall, despite it being a TV film. It left such a mark on me that I could vividly recall the film after seeing it one time, on its original airdate.

  Finally in 2010 the folks at VCI Entertainment saw fit to give it a long overdue DVD release. I am happy to say the film stands up just as well as it did then. Still a great, solid, and engaging story. Still great acting, especially the always wonderful Charles Durning as the creepy Otis Hazelrigg.

  This is one film that deserves to be a yearly classic, maybe a marathon rotation all through the month of October. Hey, they did it with A Christmas Story.

  —John Boden

  Chilling Tales: Evil Did I Dwell; Lewd Did I Live, Edited by Michael Kelly; Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, 2011; 224 pgs.

  In his introduction to Chilling Tales: Evil Did I Dwell; Lewd Did I Live, editor Michael Kelly describes the tone of the anthology as uniquely influenced by the vastness and loneliness of the Canadian wilderness. Many of the eighteen stories, all by Canadian authors, do share a distinct bleak tone--but many also bring a welcome element of light.