Torn Realities

by Post Mortem Press

Rawhead growled in his chest. His burned face pained him; he wanted to be away from here, away in the cool of a birch-thicket, moon-washed.

  His dimmed eyes found the stone; the homo sapien was nursing it like a baby. It was difficult for Rawhead to see clearly, but he knew. It ached in his mind, that image. It pricked him, it teased him.

  It was just a symbol of course, a sign of the power, not the power itself, but his mind made no such distinction. To him the stone was the thing he feared most: the bleeding woman, her gaping hole eating seed and spitting children. It was life, that hole, that woman, it was endless fecundity. It terrified him.

  Rawhead stepped back, his own shit running freely down his leg. The fear on his face gave Ron strength. He pressed home his advantage, closing in after the retreating beast, dimly aware that Ivanhoe was rallying allies around him, armed figures waiting at the corners of his vision, eager to bring the fire-raiser down.

  His own strength was failing him. The stone, lifted high above his head so Rawhead could see it plainly, seemed heavier by the moment.

  "Go on," he said quietly to the gathering Zealots. "Go on, take him. Take him..."

  They began to close in, even before he finished speaking.

  Rawhead smelt them more than saw them: his hurting eyes were fixed on the woman.

  His teeth slid from their sheaths in preparation for the attack. The stench of humanity closed in around him from every direction.

  Panic overcame his superstitions for one moment and he snatched down towards Ron, steeling himself against the stone. The attack took Ron by surprise. The claws sank in his scalp, blood poured down over his face.

  Then the crowd closed in. Human hands, weak, white human hands were laid on Rawhead's body. Fists beat on his spine, nails raked his skin.

  He let Ron go as somebody took a knife to the backs of his legs and hamstrung him. The agony made him howl the sky down, or so it seemed. In Rawhead's roasted eyes the stars reeled as he fell backwards on to the road, his back cracking under him.

  They took the advantage immediately, overpowering him by sheer weight of numbers. He snapped off a finger here, a face there, but they would not be stopped now. Their hatred was old; in their bones, did they but know it.

  He thrashed under their assaults for as long as he could, but he knew death was certain. There would be no resurrection this time, no waiting in the earth for an age until their descendants forgot him. He'd be snuffed out absolutely, and there would be nothingness.

  He became quieter at the thought, and looked up as best he could to where the little father was standing. Their eyes met, as they had on the road when he'd taken the boy. But now Rawhead's look had lost its power to transfix. His face was empty and sterile as the moon, defeated long before Ron slammed the stone down between his eyes. The skull was soft: it buckled inwards and a slop of brain splattered the road.

  The King went out. It was suddenly over, without ceremony or celebration. Out, once and for all. There was no cry.

  Ron left the stone where it lay, half buried in the face of the beast. He stood up groggily, and felt his head. His scalp was loose, his fingertips touched his skull, blood came and came. But there were arms to support him, and nothing to fear if he slept. It went unnoticed, but in death Rawhead's bladder was emptying. A stream of urine pulsed from the corpse and ran down the road. The rivulet steamed in the chilling air, its scummy nose sniffing left and right as it looked for a place to drain. After a few feet it found the gutter and ran along it awhile to a crack in the tarmac; there it drained off into the welcoming earth.

  THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARIANS

  Brad Carter

  Brad is a smartass, quick with a one-liner, but you won't find much humor here. It's funny, though--horror, particularly the idea of our own helplessness, would seem perfect for child protagonists (see Stephen King's IT, a very Lovecraftian novel), but that idea seems to have lost its turn in the spotlight recently. It's good to see Brad has brought it back and in such a way that he has. After this, you might want to check out his novel Big Man of Barlow.

  I.

  Terry Jervis was awake. He’d begun to doubt he’d ever sleep again. Each time he closed his eyes, his mind conjured up a series of nightmarish images that left his stomach squirming and his palms slick.

  His mother came into his room in the early morning, in that black time after the stars had winked out but the sun had yet to claw over the horizon. He was lying there, buried in the covers, wide awake and aching from the long since spent adrenaline. The bedroom door creaked open, and Terry burrowed deeper under the covers, as if they could offer him some protection from those things. His scream died in his throat when he recognized the shadowy outline as his mother. He tried his best to feign sleep as she padded across the laundry-strewn floor.

  "Honey, wake up. Something’s happened," Terry’s mother said, shaking him gently. "There are some people here that need to ask you some questions."

  The people who had questions were police officers, two of them, and they sat in the Jarvis family’s breakfast nook, their hands folded around steaming cups of coffee. Both the officers were grey-haired, older than Terry’s father, and had grizzled faces patchy with emergent stubble. They sat side by side while Terry’s father sat at the head of the table, blowing absently at his own cup of coffee. He still wore his work shirt from the Toy Bonanza factory. Terry’s father had been working the overnight shift, which meant the police called him home from work. Terry knew it was serious, whatever had happened to his friends.

  "Sit down, honey," Terry’s mother told him, pushing him lightly toward the one remaining empty chair. She stood behind him as he sat.

  The police officers exchanged a look. The larger one, who wore a mustache and had a badge hanging from the front pocket of his jacket that identified him as "G. Hodel," cleared his throat. "Terry, I’m Detective Hodel, and this is Officer Hawkins." He indicated the uniformed officer beside him.

  Terry nodded but said nothing.

  "You were at the library earlier tonight your friends Craig Gilbert and Tony Peraza, weren’t you?" Officer Hodel asked.

  Again, Terry nodded. When the police officer continued to look at him, Terry cleared his throat and answered softly, "Yes."

  "Go on, son," Terry’s father prompted, squeezing Terry’s shoulder.

  "We were studying," Terry elaborated. "Mr. Garrett assigned a group project."

  "You boys do anything other than study?" Hodel asked. No longer interested in his cup of coffee, he focused on the fourteen-year-old boy. "Lots of kids there in the afternoon, but maybe not so much studying going on, am I right?"

  Terry shifted in his chair. "Yeah. I mean, we talked. You know, goofed around. All the computers were taken, so…"

  Officer Hawkins, a slimmer, darker version of Officer Hodel, sipped loudly from his coffee.

  "At what point did you boys decide to stay in the building past closing time?" Hodel asked.

  Terry looked first at his mother then at his father before returning his attention to his hands. When he spoke, his voice sounded small and defensive. "It was Craig’s idea."

  "Should we have a lawyer here or something?" Terry’s mother asked. She was wrapped in a heavy bathrobe, her hair pulled back in a ragged ponytail. In the dim, smoke-laden lights of the workplace, she was still pretty for her age, sexy even. But now, in the brightly lit breakfast nook, stripped of her makeup and robbed of sleep, her eyelids heavy and drooping, she looked every day and then some of her forty years.

  "No lawyers, Becky. If Terry tells the truth, everything will be just fine," Terry’s father broke in. "Right, officers?"

  Hodel nodded.

  Terry sighed, sounding wearier and more resigned than any fourteen-year-old had a right to. "Craig dared us. He said we were scared of the Midnight Librarians…"

  II.

  Craig was the de facto leader of the trio, a tall kid with unruly blonde hair and ruddy babyface cheeks. His father had in his day been a sort of town bully. Now,
he confined his bullying to his son, knocking Craig around for the slightest infractions. But rather than arouse sympathy, Craig’s rough and tumble home life only raised him in esteem in Terry’s estimation. Craig was tough.

  Craig had exhausted his supply of dirty jokes for the afternoon and had begun to pursue another favorite activity: goading his two best friends into some ridiculous prank.

  "We could totally get away with it," Craig said.

  "There’s a security system in here," Terry protested.

  "I know that, asshole, my dad installed it. He laughed about it the other night at dinner. Said the city is trying to cut back on utilities, so they turn all the power off at night," Craig explained in his talking-to-a-retard voice. "That’s what gave me the idea."

  "I don’t know…" Terry said, looking to Tony for support and finding none.

  "We just go in the bathroom and stand on the toilets so they can’t see our feet under the stalls," Craig continued in a conspiratorial whisper. "Once they lock up and turn out the lights, we can do whatever we feel like. It’ll be so fucking cool."

  "Yeah…" Tony agreed, drumming his fingers on the table.

  Terry chewed idly on the eraser of his pencil. "Man, I don’t know…"

  They’d gathered books to study for their upcoming report on the Industrial Revolution, but had mostly disregarded them in favor of ogling the female students. Even when they’d tired of boasting of the things they’d do to Amber Donohue if given the chance, the boys still couldn’t force themselves to study. Then Craig had cooked up his idea. It was perfect: Craig’s father was out of town, Terry’s mother and father both worked late, and Tony’s mom just flat out didn’t care where her son was.

  "Man, I don’t know," Terry repeated.

  "Maybe you’re just being a pussy." Craig smiled, displaying the gap between his front teeth.

  "No, I mean, it’s not like I’m scared or anything…" Terry stopped abruptly, realizing his mistake as the words left his mouth.

  "If you’re not scared then why are you trying to back out?" Craig asked.

  "Yeah," Tony agreed. "If you ain’t scared…"

  Terry sighed. He was hardly surprised by this outcome. Craig was a master manipulator. As a result of Craig’s "if you’re not scared" gambit, the boys had discovered the joys of flaming bags of dog feces left on front porches, firecrackers dropped in trashcans, toilet paper strung in tree branches, and other assorted rites of young manhood. This newly proposed activity, however, seemed to Terry to be more malicious than their other acts, more…criminal.

  "You know you want to," Craig prodded.

  "Yeah, it’ll be fun, man," Tony chimed in, kicking Terry’s shin under the table.

  Terry grunted noncommittally.

  "Oh, shit," Craig said, slapping his palm on the table. "I know what this is about. You’re still afraid of the Midnight Librarians!"

  III.

  Hodel looked at Officer Hawkins. The younger man answered the detective with a shrug.

  "It’s a story Mrs. Thompson used to tell us when we were little kids," Terry said.

  "The boys used to go to spend a lot of time at the library during the summers," Becky Jevis explained. She was puttering around in the kitchen, just out of sight. "It’s over there by the park, you know, and it can be hard when you work at night and you have boys in the house. Anything to get them out of your hair."

  Hodel nodded. He’d raised two boys himself.

  "If we were bad or loud or rowdy or whatever, Mrs. Thompson would threaten to call up the Midnight Librarians," Terry said. His mother placed a cup of hot chocolate before him, and he used a spoon to poke at the tiny marshmallows bobbing on the surface of the steaming liquid.

  "And these Midnight Librarians are…" Hodel held out his empty hands.

  Terry blew on his cup. "I don’t know. Monsters, I guess. She said that there was some…what do you call it…like a witch, but a man?"

  "A warlock?" Hawkins ventured.

  "Yeah, a warlock." Terry nodded. "Mrs. Thompson said there was one of those back in the old days, like a hundred years ago, and the people who lived in Autumndale burned him to death. She said he’d done all sorts of black magic before he died, and that it brought all sorts of spirits from outer space--'cept she called it 'the stars'. She said the Midnight Librarians were some of these spirits that stayed overnight in the library, and that they would eat anyone who was there after midnight."

  "Okay, let’s forget all that for a minute," Detective Hodel broke in. "How about this Mrs. Thompson? You kids get along with her?"

  "I guess so…" Terry trailed off.

  "That woman is a busybody," Becky said. "I mean, she was always on the boys for something, even when they weren’t getting into any trouble."

  Allen Jervis, Terry’s father, grunted. "Old bitch was calling all hours of the day, waking me up. The boys caused a ruckus now and then…big goddamn deal, they’re kids."

  "But she was right about the Midnight Librarians," Terry said quietly.

  "Was Mrs. Thompson working tonight?" Officer Hodel asked.

  Terry nodded. "Yeah, she was there."

  "She get on you boys at all?"

  "A little. Craig got kinda loud, telling his jokes."

  Officer Hodel sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "All right, Terry. Let’s take a break for a little bit here. Drink your hot chocolate. I need to talk to Officer Hawkins outside for a minute."

  The two police officers stepped out onto the front porch of the Jervis house. The night had that firewood-and-cold-copper smell of impending snow. It was early for snow, still a week out from Thanksgiving, but it looked like it was going to be a cold winter.

  Hodel fished a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket and lit up. "This goddamn Edmund Tattersail shit. I swear...this fucking town."

  "The Salem of the South," Hawkins agreed, blowing air into his cupped hands. "Guess that reputation ain’t for nothing."

  Hodel enjoyed his cigarette. He’d been trying to cut back lately after his yearly physical results told him he was headed for Heart Attack City. But tonight he decided to allow himself a little extra indulgence. Any time something in Autumndale reminded Hodel that the town had yet to truly join the march of time and move into the new century, he felt like he could smoke a whole carton at one go. You needed something to clear your head of all the bullshit that went along with living in a town that had produced one platinum-selling country singer, two NFL football players, and a Miss America contestant, but was still mostly just known as the only town that had actually burned a person accused of practicing witchcraft as late as the late 19th century. Welcome to Autumndale, Arkansas, home of Edmund Tattersail, author and painter, accused of witchcraft and summarily executed in the Year of Our Lord 1890.

  "Midnight Librarians. Good Lord." Hodel shook his head. "Still, I guess you’d better go pick up Thelma Thompson."

  "Oh hell, Bill. Do you really think that’s necessary?" Hawkins protested. "You don’t think she…"

  "We shouldn’t rule anything out," Hodel said. "It sounds like the old bird had an axe to grind with those kids."

  "Yeah, but I’ve seen that old lady. She’s old as hell, pushing ancient. And those kids were…" Hawkins trailed off here, struggling to find the words to describe the crime scene. Before moving to Autumndale, Hawkins had worked traffic patrol for the state police. He’d seen his fair share of carnage painted across the interstate, but this was something else entirely.

  "Look, Joe, we’re friends and all, so I’d hate to pull rank on you here," Hodel said, pinching the hot cherry off the end of his cigarette and stowing the butt in his pocket. "Just go wake the old bird up and get a statement. I’ll finish up here."

  Hawkins threw up his hands in surrender. "All right. I’ll go put granny under the naked lightbulb. You walking back to the station?"

  "I’ll radio for a ride. You go ahead, now."

  Hodel watched Hawkins stalk across the lawn to the parked cruiser. He smoked on
e more cigarette before going back inside.

  In the kitchen, Allen Jervis had moved on from coffee to beer, and he was now slugging down a Miller Lite like it was some sort of life-saving elixir.

  "All right, Terry," Hodel said, lowering himself into the chair and propping his elbows on the table. "Why don’t you tell me about what happened when you boys stayed past closing at the library."

  "Let’s try to get this over with," Jervis said, polishing off his beer. "The boy’s been through enough tonight as it is."

  Hodel nodded and watched the man help himself to another beer from the refrigerator.

  IV.

  Tony nearly got them caught. They were crouched down on top of the toilets, waiting for the library to close and the building to clear out. When one of the librarians reached in to flip the lights off, Tony let out a nervous giggle that made the librarian call out, asking if there was anyone in the restroom. Terry found himself hoping that whoever it was would come back and check the stalls so that he could be done with this stupid prank, but no such luck. The light switch clicked off. The door thumped closed. And the boys were left there in the darkness.

  "Give it a few minutes," Craig whispered. "Make sure they’re really gone before we go out there."

  Terry regretted again going along with Craig’s scheme. He cursed himself silently for not having the courage to decline. The few minutes that Craig insisted they wait seemed to stretch into hours. Terry listened to the slow dripping of a leaky faucet, hearing each drop reverberate in the tiled interior.

  "All right," Craig said from the next stall. "I bet that’s long enough."

  The library was dark. What little light drifted in through the high windows was the weak and diffuse illumination from the park’s lampposts and the occasional passing set of headlights on the road. Every sound was amplified by the emptiness of the building. Even the boys’ footsteps on the carpeted floor seemed to resound. They stood there hushed for a moment, looking around at the towering shelves and the empty tables and desks. The shadows cast here and there unnerved Terry. How could there be shadows when it was so dark?