by Shock Totem
“Mom and Dad wanted another son, so they brought a dead baby back to life. That’s why your birthday is today. Everyone born today was once a dead baby.”
“What about Johnny Mayhew?” Johnny was one of his classmates, but not really a friend. Luke had only invited him to be polite. Johnny hadn’t come because he was having a party of his own. “His birthday’s the same as mine.”
“Then I guess Johnny Mayhew was a dead baby too.”
“You can’t bring dead babies back to life.”
“Sure you can. On Dead Baby Day. All you need is a kiss from a child that nobody wants. That child dies and the dead baby comes back to life.”
Luke thought about it, imagined how it would feel to kiss a baby that was dead. Then he thought about how it would feel to be a child that nobody wanted. “Who...who kissed me?”
“My brother.”
The words sat there for a while in the darkness before Luke, no longer so certain, said, “I’m your brother.”
“My other brother. My twin brother, Paul. That scar I have on my side? That’s where we were connected when we were born.”
Luke said nothing. He’d wondered about his older brother’s scar before, but had always been threatened with a punch in the face if he asked about it.
Mark continued. “We were separated at birth. I was fine; but Paul...got sick. They had to hook him up to all kinds of machines to keep him alive. He would have needed them for the rest of his life. He died when we were three. On Dead Baby Day. Then Mom and Dad told me that you’d be my new brother.”
Luke shook his head. “They’d never do that.”
“Why not? Paul was never going to have a good life. They probably thought I was young enough that I’d forget I’d ever had a different brother.”
“No.”
“What do you think they keep in that room that’s always locked? It’s all the equipment that Paul was hooked up to.”
His parents had always told him that it was a room for old junk. Luke had never questioned them, had never had a reason to question them. “Why would anyone kiss a dead baby?”
“You don’t have to kiss it yourself. When you kiss Mom good night, she can take that kiss and give it to someone else. Just hold her cheek to a dead baby and he’ll suck the kiss right off.”
“That’s just stupid,” Luke said; but he said it softly, suddenly afraid to be heard.
“Fine. Don’t believe me. But I was right about Santa Claus, remember? Mom and Dad told you I was lying; then they admitted later that it was really them leaving the presents.”
“This is different.”
“Well, just be careful.”
“What?”
“Be careful. Don’t get into trouble. That’s all.”
Luke was beginning to sweat. He was afraid he’d wet himself, even though it had been a year since that had last happened. “Why?”
“Well, if Mom and Dad were willing to trade in one child, who’s to say they wouldn’t do it again? Maybe one of these days, they’ll decide that you didn’t turn out the way they wanted, either.”
“One of these days...” Luke whispered, more to himself than to Mark.
“Well, one of these Dead Baby Days.”
Luke was about to ask another question when there was a knock at the door. His mother walked into the room and knelt down beside his bed. “Did you have a nice birthday?” she asked.
He nodded.
She turned to look at his toy shelf. “You’re getting quite a collection,” she said absently. When she turned back, Luke wasn’t sure, but he thought there were tears in her eyes. “I love you.”
He nodded again, no idea what he should say, terrified of saying the wrong thing, of accidentally giving away that Mark had told him about Dead Baby Day.
She stroked his cheek for a moment, then kissed it. She turned her cheek for him to return the kiss.
Luke lay petrified and began to cry as he felt warm urine running down his thighs.
—//—
Michael Penkas lives in Chicago, Illinois and has worked as both a librarian and a typesetter. In his spare time, he writes ghost stories and performs at various open mics around the city.
LONG LIVE THE WORD
A Conversation with Kathe Koja
by Nick Contor
For those who are clued in, the name Kathe Koja likely conjures up a thrilling blend of joy, terror, and the dissociative feel of a fever dream. Reading her words can have that sort of jarring effect on you. But for those less informed...
Kathe Koja has always processed the world by writing down what she sees. Her prose has a lyrical quality that manages to beautifully ride the line between the surreal and the concrete. But she only started to take herself seriously as a writer after attending a Clarion writing workshop. Her debut novel, The Cipher, won a Bram Stoker Award and a Locus Award in 1991. The rest of that decade was spent writing a series of equally impressive novels and short stories, many in collaboration with Barry N. Malzberg.
The new millennium has seen from her a number of young adult novels that feature her unique voice, a style and maturity that is unfortunately not always entrusted to books aimed at teens. In 2010 she returned to adult fiction with Under the Poppy, which is currently undergoing a stage adaptation. A 2012 debut is planned.
I was fortunate enough to be able to catch up with Kathe and explore her ideas on literature and the creative process. Enjoy!
—
NC: So how has life been treating you lately?
KK: Very busy—I’m working on the stage production of Under the Poppy, an immersive show that includes live actors, live music, film, and puppetry, set in the Victorian brothel. It’s the first work I’ve ever adapted for the stage: Lots of moving parts, lots of people, and the budget to raise. It’s a great deal of work, and a lot of fun. I’ve also taken part in a much smaller theatre project, about Arthur Rimbaud. And writing, too, of course—the sequel to Under the Poppy. This is a project with a will of its own.
NC: Under the Poppy is your first novel marketed to adults after a number of books targeted to the YA market. Was that a conscious decision on your part?
KK: Not in the sense of a five-year career plan. What I’ve always done is write the work I want to write, feel moved and energized and excited to write, and then decide what to do with it afterwards. Not every book makes it to life, but it’s the way I need to work, and Christopher Schelling, my agent, is immensely supportive, a great boon.
I had been writing and enjoying YA for about eight years—I wrote seven books for Frances Foster at Farrar Straus & Giroux, an experience I’ll always be grateful for; Frances is a real writers’ editor, an increasingly rare experience in publishing these fragmenting days, and FSG is a great house. Writing YA was a totally new field for me, and I had a blast.
So Under the Poppy came as a real surprise package from the unconscious, with its subversive puppets and baroque setting; I’d never written a historical novel before, but this one just felt so tremendously right that I didn’t stop to think of what I hadn’t done before, I just did it.
The same with the stage adaptation: I didn’t stop to think or consider: Uh-oh, I’ve never written anything for the stage before, I’ve never adapted any material before (mine, or anyone else’s); I just tried it, made mistakes, tried to “fail better,” as the incomparable Beckett says; and when the creative people to whom I showed the material responded enthusiastically, when they wanted to be part of the project, I knew it was going to be okay.
NC: I wonder if it’s that drive to create based on an intuitive spark that is responsible for your distinctive style? I know a lot of people have singled out your prose as being very unique.
KK: Style is really just another word for voice, right? And voice is innate, not something a writer has to think about, or should; like watching yourself ride a bike, or even write your signature, if you stop to think, to try too hard, something’s wrong; it should be natural.
NC: Dark F
iction has been seen as both subversive and conservative. Some works tend to undermine the status quo, while others seek to maintain it. Do you think your work falls primarily into one camp or the other?
KK: I stand with the subversives, always.
NC: So does that mean that the status quo is always wrong?
KK: Wrong for whom? Subversion, change, reapportion, reappraisal—they can all be facets of creation. Though everything changes all the time, in one direction or another, stasis is just very slow decay. Subversion can be innovation, and the innovators—Emily Dickinson, Caravaggio, Christopher Marlowe, Rimbaud—are the ones who bring us all forward as a creative species. We’re still trying to catch up to Dickinson!
NC: That’s interesting. Would you say that creative works are at their best when they are challenging a societal norm in some way, then? Should that be a goal that an artist works toward in your opinion?
KK: Speaking solely for myself and my own work, I don’t think that fiction is “for” anything other than itself: A novel is a novel, constructed to tell a particular story about particular individuals. That said, Leonard Cohen notes that “Your most particular answer will be your most universal one,” and if a novel, a story, by its existence and/or its telling poses a challenge to ugly or unfair or outdated societal norms, well boy howdy!
NC: Is the current failure of many traditional publishers and the rise of electronic publishing and self-publishing via POD a boon to that kind of fiction? What’s your take on the current state of publishing?
KK: When you’re in the rapids it’s hard to see if what’s coming is the stretch of calm water or more of the same; or a giant waterfall—to me, that’s where publishing is now. We all, writers, readers, editors, publishers, know that things are changing very quickly, but no one knows with great certainty what will happen.
As a writer, I think e-books and print books are both desirable and viable, for different reasons, just as traditional review outlets and book blogs are both desirable and viable. And Story is the one thing that does not change, the appetite for which does not die. So long live the word!
NC: And don’t forget distribution channels. Big chain retailers like Borders, Barnes and Noble, and Waldenbooks are all closing or drastically downsizing. Do you see authors becoming more freelance in the future?
KK: As in doing their own marketing/bookselling? Short answer is yes...I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing—no one knows or cares as much about your work as you do—but it’s a time-intensive second career, and very different from the time spent alone at the keyboard.
NC: I think it can be liberating as well. There’s no need to wait on someone else to validate your work, you just write it and put it out there. Of course, the downside of that could be a saturation of the market with poorly-written books. I think good authors could be overlooked because they are poor marketers. Fair statement?
KK: Very fair, and it’s a risk in play now, too; how many times has a friend said “Hey, you’ve gotta read this!” about a book, story, writer you’ve never heard of? The digital wilderness multiplies that effect for the worse, because there’s just so much of it out there. But there’s also the ability to be available to people in ways not before possible (even with print books—for a quick example, a reader in Ireland bought a signed copy of The Cipher from me this week), and to directly access the people to whom your work speaks.
And time is the sieve. I’ve been reading Ovid lately and thinking a lot about what lasts: no one knows what formats may evolve or fall away, and anyway that’s just the surface concern. We are all writing for the future as well as the present, but only the future will decide who is read.
NC: Well, that’s all I have. Any parting thoughts or rants? Is there a question you always wished someone would ask?
KK: Ovid's about the best place to end as any. Thanks for the questions, Nick, this was fun.
—//—
BLOODSTAINS & BLUE SUEDE SHOES
by John Boden and Simon Marshall-Jones
Part II: Black Soul Choir
Before we begin this issue’s tour through that dark musical landscape, let’s get you up to speed on what was covered in the last installment. Short answer: Not a lot. We basically outlined what our agenda for this series is. To try and chronicle, with as much detail as possible, that long, abusive and twisting relationship between music and horror. We name check artists and cover a wide—and I mean WIDE!—variety of styles. So sit down and strap in, we’re going down south. We have a date at The Crossroads.
Darkest at Dawn
Finding information or historical data on early forms of music before the 12th century is incredibly difficult; knowledge of such things mostly being confined to specialist academic circles with a necessarily restricted readership and sphere of interest. Most of the music from this period existed in the form of plainchants (sung in churches and monasteries); songs sung by peasants and villagers, which were most likely tied to the agricultural cycles and their everyday experiences of life; as well as the emergence of what later became known as the “troubadour,” wandering minstrels traveling the country and performing—and later becoming attached to—the courts of royalty and the nobility. The latter’s material often reflected themes of love and chivalry, but they also dabbled in subjects decidedly darker—it is as well to remember that life in medieval times was harsh and could be decidedly brutal (the average life expectancy was something on the order of 35–40 years then). However, by the 14th century, both subject matter and musical prowess had grown, influenced, no doubt, by the horrors of the Black Death and events in the far-off Holy Land, where the Crusades had been constantly on tour since the early 13th century.
By the 1800s, the “romanticism” movement took even broader steps toward the marriage of darkness and music, with classical composers incorporating sinister themes into their works, such as Berlioz and his disregard for musical fashion of the times; his Symphonie Fantastique, for instance, was centered around fantastically dark themes—the composer standing trial in Hell and losing his head to the Dark Lord’s guillotine. The French composer Saint-Saens wrote the Danse Macabre (Op. 40), a theme carried over from a deeply-entrenched medieval concept, that of death being no respecter of status in society—whether you be Pope or peasant, all were subject to the Reaper’s call at some point.
Other classical composers, both well-known and otherwise, delved into the darker side of life. Dvorak, better known for his New World Symphony, also wrote a piece called The Noon Witch. Rachmaninov gave us The Isle of the Dead, and Liszt brought us Der Tanz in der Dorfschenke, also known as The Mephisto Waltz. Lesser known composers such as Cesar Franck created Le Chasseur Maudit (The Accursed Hunter) and Paule Dukas provided us—and Walt Disney—musical entertainment in the form of L’Apprenti Sorcier (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice), which was used to great effect in the sequence in the classic animation Fantasia, where a hapless Mickey Mouse attempts to use magic to do his household chores with unforeseen consequences.
From this “classical” period, and extending all the way to today’s popular culture, one popular meeting place for horror and music has been what is termed the “murder ballad,” a type of song that is usually slow and hauntingly beautiful but always ends badly. Many of these had their origins in traditional English, Scottish and Scandinavian ballads, from whence they were transported with the people seeking a new and better life in the colonies of the New World. There, as the proto-Americans consolidated their positions and lives in the new colonies, these ballads changed and evolved to reflect the new society and culture that was slowly emerging. As intimated above, these songs still have a place in the modern world, and one can say with confidence that there’s a continuous line from thence to now. From the oft-covered song “The Prentice Boy”—which, ironically, is available on an album called A Folk Song a Day, recorded by Jon Boden, but I am guessing he’s of very distant or no relation to one of the writers of the present article—right through to the Nick Cav
e & The Bad Seeds album named for the Murder Ballads genre, which is testament to the continuing prevalence of the genre as a musical force.
However, all you really need to know about this species of song is “Somebody done somebody wrong and somebody is going to die.” The gamut of murder balladry runs from well-known standards like “Tom Dooley” and “Lamkin” to “Pretty Polly.” Even the grunge punk band Nirvana delivered the sinister “Polly” on their 1991 Nevermind album (which, incidentally, the band themselves, especially Kurt Cobain, hated, considering it was vastly overproduced). The late Johnny Cash marked his 1994 comeback with the haunting “Delia’s Gone.”
To bring it up to date and to start making even more solid connections to today’s music, the murder ballad is also a prevalent force in blues music—which is the basis of so many genres, like soul, jazz, rock and roll, R&B, and even classic rock—from “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” to “Stack-O-Lee.” Blues has its origins in the latter part of the 19th century, and evolved from spirituals, work songs, and ballads which were primarily sung by plantation workers in the Deep South of the United States. The latter genres were a way of uniting the common experiences of those workers, and forging communities and almost a separate culture, binding them together and fostering hope.
The blues, when it emerged as a musical force, strove to express the tragedy and injustice of the slaves’ lives, but it also wormed its scaled fingers around horror’s cold hand, reminding us that tragedy is not necessarily personal but universal in nature. Life isn’t all a bed of roses. For instance, there’s a plethora of voodoo references and ghostly encounters, influences that swept in from the black man’s home country of Africa, from whence he was forcibly removed, and thence through Haiti, Jamaica, the Caribbean, and finally to the Southern States. Hell, even Muddy Waters, arguably perhaps one of the most famous blues musicians of all, practically gave us a checklist of needs in his “Hoochie Coochie Man,” and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins made voodoo the pillar of his whole shtick.
