ASHES
A Story Collection
By Scott Nicholson
Published by Haunted Computer Productions
www.hauntedcomputer.com
Copyright 2008 Scott Nicholson
Print edition “Scattered Ashes” published by Dark Regions Press
This is a work of fiction. All people, incidents, and places are solely the products of the author’s imagination. Please do not copy or illegally share this book, and instead encourage your friends to buy a copy for themselves, and I promise to keep the price low. Thank you and I hope you enjoy the book. The writer begins the journey, but the reader completes it . . . .
OTHER BOOKS BY SCOTT NICHOLSON
The Skull Ring
The Red Church
They Hunger
The First
Burial to Follow
Flowers
The Harvest
The Manor
The Home
The Farm
Table of Contents
Introduction: The Horror Of It All by Jonathan Maberry
1. Timing Chains Of The Heart
2. Dog Person
3. The October Girls
4. Murdermouth
5. The Endless Bivouac
6. Sung Li
7. Silver Run
8. In The Family
9. The Night Is An Ally
10. Work In Progress
11. She Climbs A Winding Stair
12. Watermelon
13. The Meek
14. The Weight of Silence
15. The Hounds of Love
16. You’ll Never Walk Alone
17. Penance
18. Scarecrow Boy
19. Last Writes
20. Sewing Circle
The Horror Of It All
By Jonathan Maberry
Horror is a scary word.
Especially to people in the horror industry.
To readers, it’s a great word –full of dark promise and wicked delights. To the largest of the mainstream publishers and most chain bookstores, “horror” is a bad, bad word. Horror books don’t sell. You hear that all the time. Horror is just gore and exploitation. You hear that, too.
Often it’s true. Except when it’s not.
Here’s the thing. Once upon a time “horror” was a nice word that was used to embrace a broad genre of spooky tales ranging from classic ghost stories to vampires to all sorts of creatures that go bump in the nighttime of our imagination. Horror tales didn’t have to be supernatural; of course, Edgar Allan Poe proved that with his psychological thrillers that gouged barbs into our paranoia and private fears. Horror could overlap with other genre–science fiction (you want to tell me Alienwasn’t a horror flick?),speculative fiction (Richard Matheson’s 1954 classic novel I Am Legend, nicely bridged the gap between “what if?” and “what the hell’s that!”), mystery (Robert Bloch nailed that one with Psycho), fantasy (Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos), Fantastique Populaire (Alexandre Dumas brought werewolves into the modern age of fiction with his 1848 story Le Meneur de Loups (The Leader Of Wolves), comedy (start with Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, keep going through Young Frankenstein and put the pedal all the way down with Shaun of the Dead), and even social commentary (Night, Dawn and Day of the Dead).
Horror has been the framework and vehicle for centuries of great storytelling. Millennia, if you factor in the ancient myths of dragons, Cyclops, revenants, ghouls, mummies, and other beasts going all the way back to The Epic of Gilgamesh–the oldest surviving piece of writing, which is rife with monsters.
So why is it a bad word?
The short answer is “marketing.” In 1978 Halloweenhit movie houses like a bloody tsunami. Eerie, unnerving, horrific, terrifying. Halloween was everything good horror should be. And it wasa horror film. Michael Myers was an unkillable embodiment of evil. Good job John Carpenter. If there had been no sequels and if a lot of folks hadn’t taken an incidental aspect of the movie and build an entire genre on it, the word ‘horror’ might still be safe for polite conversation within the publishing world. But a lot of folks in Hollywood who are not and never have been aficionados of horror or even readersof horror, went on to focus on the big fricking knife that Michael Myers carried and the plot device of his killing several people in inventive ways. The weapon and the method are not core to the story. The unstoppable nature of evil and the struggle between overwhelming threat and the natural impulse to survive arewhat the movie was all about. Those are tropes of the horror genre. But Hollywood can never be accused grasping the subtleties of theme and structure; hence the Slasher movie genre was born.
Most of the Slasher flicks–and the natural off-shoots, the Slasher novels—were, as I said, not written by horror writers. They are pre-packaged tripe whose purpose is to tantalize with young flesh and then indulge in ultraviolence that has no thematic value and no artistic flair. They’re mind candy of the least nutritious kind.
The Slasher films collided with another horror sub-genre –the Serial Killer film. There are good and even great novels and movies about serial killers. Bloch’s Psycho, Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs, Jack Ketchum’s Off Seasonare examples for the sub-genre in print; the film versions of most of these are terrific, and there are horrifying entries like Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer. But the genre was truly born out of films like Last House on the Left and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and despite their huge fan followings, neither is a horror film. Chainsawis probably the more debatable of the two since there are real moments of tension; but it’s been spoiled by sequels and remakes that are so overtly exploitive that many viewers have stepped back from the genre in disgust.
In the late 90s and early 21stCentury, we saw the rise of yet another genre that polluted the word horror: torture porn. Films like Hostel, Saw and their many imitators are shock cinema. They’re disturbing to be sure, but perspective makes true horror aficionados wonder at just what is attracting the audiences. The films are sexist and misogynistic in the extreme. The torture seems to be the point of the film rather than an element of a larger and more genuinely frightening tale. The technique appears to be shock rather than suspense.
Good horror is built on suspense. Shock has it moments, but it isn’t, and should never be, the defining characteristic of the genre.
Here’s the bottom line. Slasher, Serial Killer and Torture flicks have all been marketed as “horror.” Go to Blockbuster or check Netflix…that’s where they are.
Discerning audiences, those who enjoy the suspense and subtlety of true horror storytelling were repelled, and they also moved away from allhorror because to modern audiences horror equals graphic and relentless violence.
Horror took it in the back.
It doesn’t help that many of the most popular authors of horror novels–folks like Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Robert McCammon, Peter Straub—don’t consider themselves to be horror authors. They prefer to be known as authors of “suspense” or “thrillers” or other more marketable genre labels,
I can’t blame them. My own horror novels, the Pine Deep Trilogy (Ghost Road Blues, Dead Man’s Song and Bad Moon Rising) were released as “supernatural thrillers.” One of my best friends, L. A. Banks sees her vampire and werewolf novels published as “paranormal romances.” The list goes on.
So, is horror dead?
Nope.
The book you’re holding is proof of that.
Some writers have managed to hold the line against the propagandized war against “horror.” Scott Nicholson’s been at the forefront of that phalanx for years. He writes horror novels. He writes horror short stories. He writes horror. Make no mistake.
Sure, Scott can spin a mystery or a thriller with the best of them. He’s a true writer and tru
e writers can write in any damn genre they pick. But what sets Scott’s horror fiction apar –or, perhaps, raises it as an example—is that it ishorror. It’s subtle, layered, textured, suspenseful and pretty goddamn scary. There are shocks, sure; but you won’t find one cheap shot in this whole collection. There’s blood, too–Scott’s not afraid of getting his hands dirty when it comes to violence.But those are elements he selects with care from a large toolbox of delicate instruments. Like all truehorror writers, Scott is a craftsman who knows how to build a story on character and plot nuance, and then tweak this and twist that so that the story begins to quietly sink its claws into the reader.
Scattered Ashes is a wonderfully creepy, powerful and inventive collection of horror tales that will open doors in your mind –to let things out, and to let things in.
This is a book of horror tales from someone who understands–and loves—the genre. A lot of folks joke about having to leave the lights on when they read horror. Go ahead, try it. It won’t help. This is a different kind of darkness: older, more devious, and if you’re reading this then the darkness was already there inside you, waiting for a nightmare wizard to set it free.
—Jonathan Maberry
Multiple Bram Stoker Award-winning author of PATIENT ZERO. THE DRAGON FACTORY andZOMBIE CSU; and co-creator/consulting producer for On The Slab (ABC Disney)
TIMING CHAINS OF THE HEART
Leather on leather, glove on shift ball, the faint smell of oil in the air. Wide-tread rubber clinging desperately to asphalt, a ton-and-a-half of steel-and-chrome stud machine that could grab and growl in five gears, not counting reverse. It was great to be alive.
J.D. Jolley peered at the strip of black ribbon that rolled out in front of his headlights. The ribbon disappeared into the larger strip of night. Night hid the rest of the world, and that was fine with J.D. The world was nothing but litter along the highway, as far as he was concerned.
He pumped the accelerator once, then again, steadily, listening to the thrush of exhaust. A lot of muscle drivers stomped, but J.D. never stomped. You had to treat a '69 Camaro like a lady. With tenderness, compassion, lots of foreplay if you wanted a smooth ride.
"You're purring like a kitten in a kettle tonight, Cammie," J.D. said, patting the dashboard. "Warm as a manifold cover and wet as a water pump. What say we get it on?"
The moon was out, weakly grinning down on his left shoulder through the clouds. No matter how far he drove, the moon never seemed to move. It was one of those things about the world that J.D. accepted without a second thought. Hell, that was up there in the sky, and the moon didn't have a damned inch of asphalt. Maybe if those pencil-necked engineers ever came up with solo rockets, he'd take another study of the heavens. But until then, the sky was nothing but wind resistance.
He hung his arm out the window. A good little back-breeze played against his elbow. Ought to add a couple of miles per hour. He was shooting for one-forty tonight.
This was his favorite stretch of road, a nice straight three miles of open country. The local cops never patrolled out here for the simple reason that the only traffic was farm tractors and cattle trucks and the occasional riding lawn mower. The few farmhouses in the area were back from the highway, buffered by wide green and brown fields lined with barbed wire. Nobody to bother but the big-eyed cows, and they were practically kneeling in awe.
J.D. pressed the clutch and slid the Camaro into first gear. He clenched his left hand on the steering wheel. A lot of muscle guys had those faggy vinyl wraps on their steering wheels, but J.D. liked the natural factory feel. Same way with his women.
The back seat practically needed reconditioning, he'd worked the shock absorbers so much. A '69 Camaro drew the babes. They couldn't resist the sleek curves and classic lines, not to mention the throbbing under the hood. True, it was a lower class of women, but hell, one was pretty much the same as another when their legs were splayed out the back window.
So women were allowed in his meat wagon. But not on his midnight runs. Those were reserved strictly for him and his Cammie, a bond that was far more sacred than any relationship of mere flesh. This love was truer than motherly and was right up there with religious love. This was a man and his car racing against themselves.
For that same reason, he never dragged in the Saturday night specials with the hot rodders. There was a brisk betting business going on in this two-factory Iowa town because there wasn't much else to get excited about if you didn't invest in hog futures. The local cops were under orders to steer clear of the four-lane east of town when the muscleheads fired up their engines. But solo riders like J.D. were cracked faster than a powder-dry engine block.
If they did blue-light him out here, he could easily outrun them. They had those little pussyfoot cruisers that whined if they even got within sniffing distance of triple digits. They were driving damned imports, made in Korea even if the label said American. Ought to be a law against that.
J.D. closed his eyes and gave the gas pedal a little boot leather. His bucket seat shivered and he shivered with it, even though it was April. He was joining with the car. The spoiler was his open and gasping mouth, the carburetor throat was sucking oxygen, his crankcase belly was growling, hungry for petroleum, and the tires itched like his moist toes. The muffler was backfiring brimstone.
He popped the clutch at the same moment he popped open his eyelids. The asphalt squealed in agony as he left a fifty-foot scar up its spine. He straddled the dotted white line as he power-shifted into second, leaving another mist of scalded rubber hanging in the air behind him. J.D. glanced at the tachometer, saw that he was at 7,000 RPM, and he booted into third. Cammie was already at sixty and they'd not yet begun to party.
This was better than sex. This was red-eyed adrenaline, a spark in the old plug, a rush that made the small hairs on the back of J.D.'s neck stand up and dance. Fence posts blurred past both quarter panels as the Camaro's grill chewed up moths and the slipstream set the sawgrass swaying along the ditches. The G-force pressed J.D. against the seat. An excited sweat gathered under his eyes and his tongue felt like a gasket between the valve covers of his teeth.
He squinted at the small fuzzy dot ahead where the headlights petered out, at the murky oblivion that was always his destination. He was getting there, he felt it in his bones, he glanced down and saw the needle tacking toward one-ten and his bowels had gone zero-gravity. He was reaching down to glide into fourth when he saw the pale shape, a small figure that grew large too soon, from nothing to five-feet-six in only three seconds, and J.D. barely had time to see the face in the sweep of headlights.
Later he would tell himself that there was no way he could have observed all that detail in a fraction of a second. It was his imagination that must have painted the portrait. Eyes like a spotlighted deer's, wide and brown, impossibly deep. Eyebrows frantically climbing the white slope of forehead. Mouth open, choking on a scream that could fill the Holland Tunnel.
It was a glancing blow. J.D. didn't remember doing it, but he must have nudged the wheel slightly and his virgin-tight rack-and-pinion responded instantly. Otherwise the Camaro would have bucked and rolled, tumbling through the shin-high corn and strewing vital organs and steaming spare parts across the stubbled fields. At over a hundred, mistakes got amplified. But in that overdriven moment, J.D. was more car than man, high octane in his blood as he manipulated the automobile back onto course.
His foot had instantly left the accelerator but he had resisted the impulse to lock down on the brakes. The braking instinct was natural, but the resulting fishtail would have had J.D. ending up with a drive shaft necktie. The muffler growled as he downshifted and when he reached sixty he began working the brake pedal. He pulled to the side of the road and felt his heart beating in time to the idling pistons.
"Damn, Cammie," he said, when at last he was able to take a breath. "That was a close one."
He left the engine running while he opened the door and stood up, disoriented from the abrupt change in m
otion. He walked to the front of the car and knelt at the right fender. There was a crumple in the panel and the headlight chrome was dented and hanging loose. He took off his glove and ran a gentle hand along the fender and a few chips of candy-apple red paint flaked onto the shoulder of the road. He saw a smudge on the bumper and wiped at it.
Blood.
He looked back up the highway, but under the veiled moon, he couldn't see anything on the pavement. J.D. got behind the wheel and shifted into reverse.
"I'm so sorry, Cammie," he whimpered. The closest thing he’d ever had to tears tried to collect in his eyes. "It was just an accident."
He held the horses in check as he backed up, keeping the revolutions steady. The crankshaft turned quietly in its pit of golden thirty-weight. He'd damaged her flesh, but he could take care with her heart. J.D. pushed the gas pedal gently as he cut a U-turn and drove up the road.
He killed the engine when he reached the body, but left his headlights on. The first exhalation of night fog swirled in the low beams as he loomed over the figure.
She was wearing a dress. The cotton was tattered, but it was a pretty dress, butterfly yellow, the kind that should have been easy to see at night. Her slim legs were sticking out below the hem at an obtuse angle, a scuffed sandal dangling from one big toe. The other foot was completely bare, a red sock of blood where the skin had peeled away.
Her arms were accordioned under her chest and she was face down. Her hair was brown, and the big curls fluttered in the breeze. A pool of crimson was spreading out from under her belly. She was leaking like a busted oil pan.
He touched her skin where the dress had slid down one creamy shoulder. This was a dairy girl, J.D. was positive. Must have crept out her window and met some little boy blue behind a haystack. Come blow your horn. She had no business being out on the road at that time of night.
He turned her over and wished he hadn't. That split-second portrait before the accident had been of a pleasant face, one with round cheekbones and plump ruby lips and strong nostrils. But this, this was like a bag of beef soup that had been dropped on the highway from a helicopter. This was roadkill.
Ashes Page 1
