by Unknown
Deciding that no one else needed to know that his father had painted this—at least not until after the funeral—he stuffed the painting into a black trash bag. He set it with the rest of his dad’s belongings before he resumed cleaning out the house. It quickly became apparent that his father either had a strange sense of humor, or was just strange.
He found more paintings throughout the house. When he unhooked a painting of an orchid, he noticed that the wallbehind it was partially crumbled and a dried orchid was stuffed into the wall, peeking out in a manner that perfectly mirrored the image from the painting.
Curious, he used his pocket knife to carve out the spaces behind the other paintings, finding an old shoe, a smashed chair (his father had jammed the chair in with the insulation) and dozens of other objects. It seemed his father had buried the subject of each painting behind where it was framed.
The painting of the corpse gnawed at him, itching at the back of his mind like a trapped insect.
Could his father have killed someone and stuffed the corpse into the wall?
On a whim he pressed his ear to the wall where the painting of the corpse had originally hung. Holding his breath until his lungs ached, he strained to listen. Nothing. There also was no stench, but that didn’t prove anything. Still . . . he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was hidden behind the plaster, as if a nearly imperceptible pulse were reverberating beneath the wall’s surface.
The sensation was unbearable.
He ran to the garage and tore apart the workbench until he finally located a hammer, and then rushed back to the wall where he’d first discovered the painting. He pounded away until it broke open, and didn’t stop until he’d dug a hole approximately the size of a dartboard.
Sweat trickled down his brow as he took his cell phone and shined it into the hole. A creature packed into the wall like a maggot nested in rotted food craned its neck towards him with a featureless face.
***
The next day, the family came looking for him. They didn’t find much but bags of belongings and a large variety of oil paintings . . . one of which depicted two pale, faceless corpses twisted around one another in a dark hollow.
Besides writing, Diane Ward is an avid artist. She lives with a variety of reptiles in attended humidified terrariums. Since she lives in the Deep South, she plays the banjo, fortunately, it is tenor, not clawhammer.
IN THE OTHER ROOM
J. M. LEWIS
We don’t open the door to the room across the hall.
Mama always says, “Never open that door.” When she says this, her eyes squeeze at the corners, while her eyebrows rise. She pulls her tone from a profound place a child wouldn’t understand–intense insistency.
The same mixtures of fear and curiosity churns in my stomach at Mama’s warning. Her strength gives weight to the warning, but also makes the room a little more interesting. She has to go to work, so she tells me to take care of my sister, Carolyn.
Mama can’t find anyone to keep us during the day, since Ms. Hattie-Louise died three weeks ago. “I’ll be back soon, okay?” Mama says. She looks around as if she lost something, hesitating to leave, but reluctantly does.
I hear the locks tumble. I stand there, looking at the oaken waves on the door. Lyn is next to me.
After a minute, I realize Mama forgot to make breakfast before she left, so I turn to Lyn and say, “How about some cereal, Lyn?”
She just nods somberly, while sticking her thumb in her mouth and twirling the curl at the end of her pigtail.
I get a step stool to reach the cereal off of the top of the fridge. Once I reach it, I turn around to smile at Carolyn, but she’s not in the kitchen with me. I leave and look for her, cereal box in hand.
Just down the hall, she stands in front of the room. The doorway sits lonely in the middle of the wall across from three other rooms. It is made of a strange, raw, knotted wood with a red tint.
As I look at Carolyn, her hand goes from her mouth to the doorknob.
Everything in me surges forward to stop her, but I don’t move. I don’t even yell.
The door opens silently, as my sister releases the knob.
Blackness clings to the edges of the door, as if waiting to get out. A grey-green hand creeps from the room toward Lyn.
The hideous hand breaks me from my daze and I sprint to her.
The hand—pocked, lumpy, cracked, and oozing—drips crimson in front of it. The drops sizzle and evaporate as they hit the floor, like water on a hot skillet.
In my haste, I trip over myself and spill cereal everywhere.
The hand darts toward Lyn, grabbing the front of her pajamas, streaking the white, bunny-patterned cloth with red.
I scramble to get up, crunching cereal underfoot, as my sister screams with sonic intensity, until the bloodstained door closes with silent finality.
J. M. Lewis is a student at UWG in Georgia. In his spare time, he visits the world of the macabre... Sometimes he writes what he sees.
ORAL FIXATION
APRIL WILLIAMS
Todd Spencer grinds dead, rotting animals into pet food. He’s had the job for 5 years, and although he’s sickened by the drudgery, the stink, he consistently works with a smile.
He’s thinking of what he’s going to do come the evening, skin tingling, mouthwatering.
He’s been doing it every night for 4 years; knows the security guards routine. A small hole in a back fence provides entry. Dark clothing and his own natural quiescence do the rest.
Three tombstones: The first belongs to the body of a man who was murdered in his apartment building several years back. When Todd touches the tip of his tongue to the cool, hard granite, it tastes like blood. His eyes water and roll back as he savors the flavor like a cat with a fresh kill.
The second belongs to a woman who died at the age of 85 in 1893. This stone is grandma to him. He licks it slowly up and down, then in small circles. It tastes like home baked bread and chocolate chip cookies. Love. To Todd, love tastes like vomit.
The third is his favorite. The angel shaped tombstone belongs to a woman he loved, though she never knew. He used to touch her hair on the bus, until one day she turned around and slapped him. She died mysteriously about a year ago.
His knees weaken and his palms sweat as he approaches the stone. He caresses it slowly, lovingly. Then he embraces it, holding it so tight it’s as though he wants to crush his own flesh and bone into the granite. He gets on his knees, tongue protruding.
“Go ahead,” she whispers. “I know you want to.”
Todd does want to, but he can’t move.
“Don’t be shy. You love me, don’t you?”
Todd slowly begins to lick the stone. It tastes like sex, sensuality; romance and passion. He trembles with excitement.
Then panic. Something is terribly wrong. His tongue is stuck. He looks up to the spirit in pleading panic.
The spirit smiles an ethereal grin. “You will be joining me soon.”
Todd tries to still his shuddering, unable to keep the tears from streaming down his face, his bladder from betraying him. He doesn’t want to be found dead like this.
Several years later, a man approaches Todd’s tombstone, and licks it with the fervor of a wild animal, relishing the flavors of desperation, sickness and loneliness.
April Williams is the author of Intolerable Entities, a horror/supernatural novel. She writes relationship and spirituality articles for examiner.com. Her passion is to send chills through the minds of her readers.
MARVEL THE MAGICIAN
GERALD A. GRIFFITHS
Marian Turner had spent a small fortune organizing Billy’s tenth birthday, renting the tables, chairs and canopies, and obtaining a permit from the city so they could cordon off the cul-de-sac for the boy’s block party.
Dave, Marian’s husband, was in charge of barbequing and there was even a hospitality tent with kegs of beer and assortments of wine next to the Turner’s garage for the adults.
Marvel the Magician—when he wasn’t doing his mentalist routine at the senior centers—was to perform along with his lovely assistant, Tanya.
Marian was feeling a nice glow midway into the party as she carried her cup of Chardonnay and a slice of birthday cake and joined her friends Debbie Martin and Constance Billings at their table.
“Hi-lo,” Marian said, gulping more wine.
Debbie and Constance were fuming, watching their inebriated husbands flirting with the neighborhood floozy across the street.
“Hank, you jackass!” Debbie shouted. “Hello! I’m sitting right here.”
“Tom can be such a pig at times,” Constance said. “Oh look. That tramp Jenny Rogers is putting a move on Dave.”
An attractive woman in a tight-fitting top, and skimpy shorts had her hand on Dave’s arm and the two of them were laughing, Dave giddily twirling his spatula.
“That snake. I swear I’ll kill him and that witch,” Marian said.
Marian turned her attention to the semi-circle of children sitting Indian-style on the lawn, applauding as Marvel the Magician and Tanya completed a trick and took their bows.
For his next act, Marvel asked for three volunteers. A few hands shot up. He pointed at the audience and summoned three young boys to join him.
“He’s gone and picked Billy and your boys,” Marian said to her friends.
“For my next trick, I will make these three lads disappear right before your very eyes,” Marvel the Magician announced.
“Too bad he can’t make our husbands disappear,” Debbie chuckled.
Tanya opened a curtain on an upright box the size of a shower stall.
“Just step inside,” Marvel instructed.
The magician muttered something to each boy. They whispered back and squeezed into the enclosure behind the curtain. He turned toward the crowd and smiled.
“Ladies and gentlemen, you are about—”
A braying donkey burst out from behind the curtain and stampeded into the audience. Next, a potbelly pig snorted and waddled out followed by a large slithering serpent that hissed at the startled crowd.
Marian couldn’t believe her eyes.
No one could.
Each creature had a human face; faces greatly resembling the three children that had just walked behind the curtain.
“My God, what have you done?” Marian screamed at the bewildered magician.
“I don’t know. This has never happened before.”
“What did you say to them?”
“What I always ask the kids before each trick: what they want to be when they grow up,” Marvel the Magician replied.
“And what did they say?”
“They wanted to be just like their dads.”
Gerry Griffiths lives in San Jose, California, with his family and a loving menagerie of rescued pets. He has received numerous honorable mentions from both Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and Writer’s Digest. His horror collection of short stories Creatures is available on Amazon.
MIRROR VIEW
MAX BOOTH III
The tapping on the glass woke her up. It was the same every night, the persistent beating of someone trying to get in. It’d started after her husband disappeared, and had not given her one night of peace since. Most nights Erica managed to ignore it, but tonight her bladder was going to win the battle.
She stumbled past her dog sleeping beside the bed and made it into the bathroom, flipped on the switch and saw what she had already expected: in the mirror, a shadow. One second it’s there, and then the next it’s gone; vanishing with the darkness. Her eyes felt like sandbags—the mysterious loss of her husband was too much for her to handle. As a result it had begun to play tricks on her mind; made her see and hear things that weren’t really there.
She flushed, washed her hands and splashed some water on her face, hesitantly looking back up at the mirror. But all she saw was herself; a pale, skeletal figure that hadn’t eaten much of anything in weeks. She was slowly killing herself.
There was something else, too.
A handprint.
It’d been there for quite a while now, as if someone—or something—had etched carved the image into the glass. Maybe that was why she was so drawn to the mirror. What was it trying to say?
Erica shrugged it off. She wasn’t going to figure it out tonight. She turned off the light and headed back to bed, but found herself pausing halfway down the hallway, as if suddenly pulled back by an undeniable force.
Something was different tonight. The handprint . . . hadn’t the thumb been on the left side of the hand? That couldn’t be. It had always been a right hand. But this . . .
Erica promptly spun around and strode back down the hallway, reaching through the opened door and around the wall, searching for the light switch. But as soon as she found it and flipped it on, an abrupt explosion of white light infiltrated her reality.
She screamed but no sound escaped her lungs. Slowly the light began to fade, and when her vision had finally returned, Erica found herself back in the bathroom. It took her a moment to realize she no longer possessed a reflection, and that instead of looking at the mirror, she was instead viewing life from inside the mirror.
She felt a hand grab her shoulder and she turned around, discovering her long-lost husband standing beside her with a desolate smile across his face, tears streaming down his cheeks. He gestured back to the bathroom and she followed his gaze, spotting their Jack Russell Terrier waddling in through the door, winding his head around to inspect the sudden commotion.
The dog looked straight at the mirror, as if he could see through the dimensions. Together, Erica and her husband placed their hands on the glass, creating an eternal imprint on the other side.
The dog cocked his head and barked.
Max Booth III recently moved to Texas and is really trying his best not to make fun of the redneck agenda that surrounds the state. He instead spends his time writing stories and burning his hand on his toaster oven, which he secretly believes is just playing hard to get. You may contact him at [email protected].
MOMENTS FROM THE FRINGE
GEORGE WILHITE
BEGIN TRANSMISSION
2618.12.24
Probe Hercules
Captain Ronald Harmon
This may well be my last transmission, my love. I will not waste it on official business since it is no longer irrelevant.
Sad to say, I am indeed adrift with no chance of return.
Vinnie, the voice of the obviously failed computer that was supposed to be the triumph of this tin can, informed me in his cold metallic way in a single message that amounted to a machine’s equivalent of “oops!”
Can’t blame him—his creators likely had just as cold of a response to this unfortunate blunder.
I am so far away that it is easy not to consider me a person, only an instrument in another SNAFU mission. Maybe now they’ll stop trying.
Though time loses its meaning out here, I believe you will receive this message on Christmas Eve. I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas. Kiss Erin and Richie for me and try to decide what story you will tell them about their long-lost father. Erin may remember my face but I am forever a ghost to our beautiful baby boy.
Don’t make me into some invincible hero; remember my faults as well. I can only hope the good outweighs the bad. Please don’t hate me for volunteering and putting too much gung ho faith in this program. I did what I thought was right.
The probe rotates in a ceaseless dance through the expanse of space and time. I only know two kinds of illumination now—pitch black or blinding white, depending on the particular cosmos which surround me.
I will live a very long time unless I take action to end my life, and Vinnie will likely be quite aggressive in his efforts to thwart such attempts.
I must stop typing and transmit this soon for I am moments away from The Fringe. I will attempt another transmission but I assume the Com Disk will suffer the same rapid deterioration as
that of the Achilles before me.
Maryanne, I love you and will see you again someday, when we behold the truth that lies beyond this short frail existence we now know.
The Fringe is right before me. It is beautiful beyond our wildest dreams, more stunning than even . . .
END TRANSMISSION
George Wilhite has been an aficionado of the horror genre since discovering Poe and Lovecraft as a child and coming of age during the renaissance of American Horror in the late seventies. He has over a hundred stories published in print and online. For more information, visit: www.authorsden.com/georgewilhite.
NOTHING LEFT BUT FAITH
ERIC POLLARINE
There, in the darkness of the bedroom she kneels.
She cries out to God.
A thunderclap shakes the house—destroying the message, and in the stillness that follows, there is only her breathing and the sound of footsteps left. The moonlight makes her skin like alabaster. Her hands are porcelain; smooth like a doll. She folds them into a trembling steeple.
“Our Father who art in Heaven,” she pleads, she begs.
“Hallowed be thy name,” she says.
“Thy kingdom come,” she stammers.
“He’s only footsteps, outside the door,” she mutters.
“He’s only footsteps behind the bed,” she fades.
“He’s only footsteps, he’s only, he’s only . . . ”
She screams.
His hands are sure and like a topographical map, adorned with fissures as she strains, and in the distance, the sounds of discarded faith echo after raindrops the size of pennies.
And further still, in the moonlight and lightening he walks the street as a silhouette.
Letting her breath wash away, he says, “Thy will be done.”
Eric Pollarine is an author and freelance writer, who lives, works, writes, smokes and drinks far too much coffee in beautiful dreary Cleveland, Ohio. You can contact the author through Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and stay up to date with other goings on, through his website www.unlikelyconvergence.com.
