Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest #10

by Apex Authors

  Baku jumped then, closing the gap between them. Baku was slowed with age, but whatever had changed the manager made him slower than his knife-wielding chef.

  Baku pushed then, with the back of his arm and the weight of his shoulder, and he shoved the manager inside the freezer. The door was a foot thick and it closed with a hiss and a click. Only if he listened very hard could Baku hear the angry protests from within. He pressed his head against the cool metal door and felt on the other side a fury of muted pounding.

  When he was comfortable believing that the manager would not be able to interfere, he removed his ear from the door. He turned his attention again to the fuse box, regarding it thoughtfully.

  Then, one after the other, the fuzzy white pods of light were extinguished and the basement fell into perfect blackness. The heavy thing that struck Baku in the chest was unseen, unheard, but definitely felt.

  The shock sent him reeling against the freezer door. He slammed against it and slid to his knees. He caught himself by jabbing his knives into the concrete floor, using them to keep himself from falling further.

  Somewhere nearby the thing regrouped with a sound like slithering sandbags. Baku's ear told him that it must be huge—but was this an illusion of the darkness, of the echoing acoustics? He did not know if the thing could see him, and he did not know what it was, only that it was powerful and deadly.

  On the other side of the room Baku's assailant was stretching, lashing, and reaching, and so was Baku. He flattened his chest against the wall and leaned against it as he tried to rise, climbing with the knives, scraping them against the cement blocks, scraping off flecks and strips of paint that fluttered down into his hair and settled on his eyelashes.

  A loud clank and a grating thunk told Baku that his knives had hit something besides concrete. He reached and thrust the knife again. He must be close to the fuse box; he'd only been a few feet away when the lights went out.

  The thudding flump that accompanied his opponent's movement sounded louder behind Baku as he struggled to stand, to stab. Something jagged and rough caught at his right hand. A warm gush soaked his wrist and he dropped that knife. With slippery fingers he felt knobs and what might have been the edge of a slim steel door panel. He reached for it using it to haul himself up, but the little hinges popped under his weight and he fell back down to his knees. The light metal slab fell to the floor with a clank of finality.

  The monstrous unseen thing lashed out. One fat, foul-smelling limb crashed forward, smacking Baku's thighs, sweeping his legs out from underneath him. He toppled and landed face-down. His bleeding right hand grazed the dropped knife, but he couldn't grasp it. Holding the remaining blade horizontally in his left hand, Baku locked his wrist. When the creature attacked again, Baku sliced sideways. A splash of something more gruesome than blood or tar hit Baku on the side of the face.

  He used his shoulder to wipe away what he could. The rest he ignored. The wet and bloody fingers of his right hand curled and fastened themselves on a small shelf above his head.

  The thing whipped its bulk back and forth but it was not badly hurt. It gathered itself together again, somewhere off in the corner. If Baku could trust his ears, it was shifting its attack, preparing to come from the side. He rotated his left wrist, moving the knife into vertical position within his grip. He opened and closed his fingers around it. To his left, he heard the thing coming again.

  Baku peered up into the darkness over his head where he knew the fuse box hung open. The creature scooted forward. Baku hauled himself up and swung the fine German steel hard, with all the weight he could put behind it. It landed once, twice, and there was a splintering and a sparking. Plastic shattered, or maybe it was glass. Shards of debris rained down.

  One great limb crushed against Baku and wrapped itself around his torso, ready to crush, ready to break. The man could not breath; there in the monster's grip he felt the thing coil itself like a boa constrictor, slow but wickedly dense.

  In the center of the room the beast's bulk shuddered unhappily as it shifted, and shuffled, and skidded. The appendage that squeezed Baku was only one part of a terrible whole.

  Before his breath ran out, before his hands grew weak from lost blood and fear, Baku took one more stab with his good hand. The heavy butcher's blade did not bear downward this time, but upward and back—and the fuse box detonated with a splattering torrent of fire and light.

  For two or three seconds Baku's eyes remained open.

  And in those seconds he marveled at what he saw, but could never have described. Above and beyond the thunderous explosion of light in his head, the rumbling machines ceased their toil.

  The current from the box was such that the old man could not release the knife, and the creature could not release its hold on the old man. As the energy coursed between them, Baku's heart lay suddenly quiet in his chest, too stunned to continue beating. He marveled, briefly, before he died, how electricity follows the quickest path from heaven to earth and how it passes with pleasure through those things that stand in water.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Interview with Cherie Priest

  Three hit novels. A nice fat contract with Tor. Lead story in Apex Digest. Yes, things are looking good for this mistress of gothic horror.

  I was delighted when Cherie accepted my offer of an interview. It's fun to talk about things such as werewolves, zombies, and killer Irish nuns.

  Jason Sizemore: First, let's talk Eden Moore. She's a bit of an oddball, likes to keep a low profile, has a snootish intellectualism about her ... yet, to a reader, she's immediately likable. Describe the process of creating such a memorable protagonist?

  Cherie Priest: I mashed together a friend of mine from high school, a groovy coworker, and one of my old roommates. Together, they make up Eden Moore. She looks like a combination of two of them, and thinks and talks like the third. So I guess her creative birth wasn't really very interesting ... or creative, either, for that matter.

  JS: The third book of the Eden Moore series, Not Flesh Nor Feather (Tor), comes out in October, 2007. Are you forever finished with Eden's story, or might she appear in other works?

  CP: I'm not sure. Tentatively speaking, book number three is the final book in the Eden series, but that's not to say that—should a publisher come up to me with fat sacks of cash—I wouldn't revisit the characters. I set up the ending to offer the possibility of continuing adventures, but not the promise of them. I like Eden, but I'm looking forward to writing about some other people for awhile.

  JS: What can you tell us about Not Flesh Nor Feathers that will whet our appetites?

  CP: It's got a scene in it where Eden and a friend blow up a tunnel full of zombies with industrial-grade fireworks. And if that doesn't whet your appetite, then you must be all dead inside. I'm just sayin'.

  JS: I've just finished reading Dreadful Skin (Subterranean Press), a lavish collection of stories about an Irish nun named Eileen Callahan hot on the trail of her werewolf nemesis. Now let me say that you appear to have a knack for creating unique, memorable female protagonists. Do you attribute this to natural talents, a strong maternal influence while growing up, or being a bad-ass MFA graduate?

  CP: Much like Eden, Eileen is based on someone I knew. She's a rough caricature of a woman I worked for at UTC while I was finishing that MA—and note the lack of an “F” in there, because there's nothing “fine” about rhetoric, apparently. So it seems like, more than anything else, I have a knack for meeting unique, memorable women.

  JS: Dreadful Skin is anything but conventional, and my hat goes off to Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press for publishing the book. How much of a challenge was it, for instance, writing in so many different points of view in the first novella of the book, “The Wreck of the Mary Byrd?"

  CP: It was a marvelous great challenge, because it was something I'd never really done before. To tell you the truth, the whole thing was a bit of an experiment. Oh, it wasn't just an exercise in masturbatory
writer wankery, don't get me wrong; but there was definitely a sense that I was stretching my personal comfort zone and boundaries. As you noted above, I'd just spent three books in one woman's head, so it was a real challenge to shift gears and get inside the heads of half a dozen other people for awhile.

  But it was also very satisfying, and an awful lot of fun.

  JS: Your work has a strong sense of setting. One could make the argument that the city of Chattanooga, TN, acts as a secondary character in your first two novels. Now that you've moved to the West Coast (Seattle, for all the Cherie Priest stalkers out there), do you see your future novels occurring in much colder, wetter climates?

  CP: I honestly don't know yet. Since I've been in Seattle I've only begun and finished one full-length project in its entirety, a young adult project that's loosely titled The Ado Ward. The others I've written here (Not Flesh Nor Feathers, Dreadful Skin) were all started in Tennessee before I left; but The Ado Ward is set entirely in Tampa, Florida—and my next book up for Tor is also going to be set primarily in Florida.

  I was born in Tampa, and I spent quite a lot of time in Florida before I moved to Tennessee. And now, even though I haven't lived in Florida for years, I've found that the chill and persistent weak drizzle of Seattle make me nostalgic for the heat and bombastic storminess of the Gulf Coast. Of course I miss Tennessee, too—it was my home for almost twelve years. But its yearly cycle of too hot/too cold/too wet/too dry always exhausted me a little.

  This having been said, in another couple of years there will be a vampire novel out through Tor called Awake Into Darkness ... and at the moment, it lacks a setting. I might put it here in Seattle. You never know.

  JS: One thing I find interesting is your hobby of urban exploration. How'd you get involved with this dangerous pastime?

  CP: It's hard-coded into my DNA. My mother and her sisters are exactly the sort of women to drive past an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere, stop the car, get out, and climb through a broken window to take a look around. They liked to do this to new homes that were under construction, too. When I was a little kid, it used to embarrass me to death; but as I got older, I started joining in on the fun. So in short, it's the result of a predisposition towards intense nosiness and deep-seated narcissism. (Read: “That No Trespassing sign applies to everyone except for me.")

  JS: You have our lead story in this issue, “Bad Sushi.” Is this your ode to Lovecraft, or a reaction to some ... bad sushi?

  CP: Ode to Lovecraft. I love sushi, and it's never done me wrong yet. The story's setting is based largely on a little mom-and-pop restaurant in Chattanooga where I used to eat several times a week.

  JS: I'd like to hear more about two of your upcoming projects with Tor, Fathom and Awake Into the Darkness.

  CP: Well, let's see ... Fathom is a modern fantasy—but think Nightwatch more than Charles DeLint. Not that there's anything at all wrong with DeLint—there most certainly is not, he's fantastic—but that's not what I'm shooting for with this one. It's quite dark and quite strange, and quite difficult to sum up. Suffice it to say, it's about gods and monsters ... with the occasional superhero and 18th century Spanish pirate thrown in for good measure.

  Awake Into Darkness is a trashy vampire novel that's more fun than a doctor's medicine cabinet. Warring factions, political intrigue, sex, conspiracies, and unholy scientific experiments. Hurrah! [:: throws confetti ::]

  JS: As a kid, what was your Saturday morning routine?

  CP: Get up, get dressed up, go to church, and yawn through Sabbath School. I was raised a Seventh Day Adventist, so my Saturdays were pretty dull.

  JS: Has anyone ever measured how many words per minute you speak after a stiff cup of coffee?

  CP: The technology doesn't yet exist! But someone somewhere is working on it. Scientists are looking to tap me as an alternate energy source.

  JS: Who are some of your favorite contemporary horror writers?

  CP: Ooh ... let's see. Straightforward horror and not “other books with horror elements?” Then I'd have to say Ramsey Campbell and Joe Lansdale, they're my stand-bys. Most of the horror I read comes from an older crowd, though, or it's nonfiction. One of the most terrifying books I ever read was Isaac's Storm by Erik Larsen, about the Galveston hurricane in 1900. Holy crap, that one gave me nightmares.

  JS: *evil grin* Give us a sampling from your first (unpublished) novel, Who Buried the Gravedigger.

  CP: NEVAH. And you can't make me!

  For more information about Cherie Priest, visit www.cheriepriest.com

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Daydreams by Lavie Tidhar

  Lavie Tidhar's (www.lavietidhar.co.uk) stories have appeared in Sci Fiction, Chizine, Postscripts, Dark Wisdom, Clarkesworld Magazine and many others.

  To Vered Tochterman

  Grotesqa

  Dreams that came true! How to bring back objects from a dream! How to bring the dead back to life! The only journal that tells the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth! Fulfil the potential hidden inside you! You too could control your dreams—and we'll tell you how!

  Table of Contents:

  Introduction, The Editor

  Fiction: Where the Waters Meet, Lior Tirosh

  Article: Creating a Plot, or, How to Plan That Perfect Dream, Part II, G Heshvan

  Fiction: The Wolfmen of Tel-Hannan, Liat Tamuz

  Profile: Raphael of the REM—A Day Dreamer?

  Fiction: The Passion Knights of the Purple Planet, Nimord Yanshuf

  Fiction: War in Zero-G, Vladimir Teva

  Article: Why the Government is Lying to You, The Editor

  And so on.

  * * * *

  He leafs through the journal, feeling a little uncomfortable, the painting on the cover showing a woman with long purple hair who is wearing a metallic-looking brassier that doesn't quite cover her impressive breasts. Her hands are raised, a horrified look on her face. A bug with too many eyes rises above her, its feelers erect.

  Grotesqa. He leafs ahead, it's better that way, so that the other shoppers won't be able to see the cover and so identify the kind of stuff he is reading. He skips Lior Tirosh's Where the Waters Meet. Tirosh's stories never do it for him. No plot.

  He likes G Heshvan. He has a dry, slightly pedantic tone, but he is never dull. And the things he writes work—he remembers again the dream two weeks before, the one he planned with the help of the article, with a complex adventure plot where he single-handedly rescued Sweden's virginal volleyball team on an island swarming with zombies. Would be interesting to see what Heshvan has to say in part two.

  But he skips the article, skips the next two stories, and reaches at last the profile of the man who is always without a surname. Raphael. Just Raphael. He begins to read the article, and the other shoppers pass by him quietly so as not to disturb him.

  * * * *

  In a world where dreams are out of control, one man is known as the protector of the waking world. A man whose name is a government secret, as is the exact location of his bedroom. He is known only by his code-name: Raphael. The man who broke the Deaf Statues Conspiracy and eliminated the Frog Dreamers Network. The man who brought the REM unit—Rapid Eye Movement, The Dream Police, whatever you want to call it—to national and international acclaim. Raphael, now in his seventies, still active. We met up with him in an undisclosed location, somewhere near where Yokne'am once was...

  Grotesqa: You are known all over the world as an exceptional dreamer and an untiring fighter for a stable reality.

  Raphael: Thank you.

  Grotesqa: Is it true that you personally know Tommy Gold, the new James Bond?

  Raphael: Well, look, they said there would never be a Jewish Bond, but there you are. A few years ago I met the Broccoli family in some mass dreaming event for charity in Los Angeles, and when I heard the role was available again I called them and it is possible I mentioned Tommy, who at the time was making movies, I'm sorry to say, almost pornographic. We
ll, you have to make a living somehow; working for the REM isn't exactly a picnic either.

  Grotesqa: What did they say?

  Raphael: In those movies? There wasn't really much dialogue, you know. There was a lot of moaning involved. I didn't know if it was a shiv'ah or a dirty movie.

  Grotesqa: The Broccoli Family.

  Raphael: Ah, of course. They agreed with me that Bond needed a new face, a change of direction, something to grab the youth again, something radical. So first I said, “Forget MI5, that whole British thing hasn't worked for years, why not make him a Mossad agent?” I asked them. Besides, no Bond was truly English. And of course, Tommy is ideal for the role. They could see that straight away.

  And so on.

  * * * *

  The man returns the journal to the shelf. He leaves the shop empty-handed and walks up the street. The siren still sounds, ensuring no one sleeps during the day, that reality will remain stable at least for the duration of business hours. He almost doesn't notice the noise. Once on the pedestrian street, he orders a coffee and sits in the shade, looking at the passers-by. He is pleased—excited, to tell the truth. Soon...

  No. He needs to relax. He drinks from the coffee and lights a cigarette. That's what the government wants. For you to stay awake, awake, awake, and then sleep so heavily that you won't dream.

  He drinks from the coffee and the cup melts, pours together with the coffee onto the pavement, and with it the coffee shop, the ancient waitress, the cobblestones, the sky. They pour into a black hole that grows and grows until it swallows everything.

  * * * *

  Raphael woke up.

  The middle of the night. Darkness pouring in through the window. What was it?

  What?

  He was seventy. Seventy! And totally senile! And, what? A Jewish Bond?

  He smiled in the darkness. Here, proof that it really was a dream.

  A dream.

  What did he dream about?

  The man in the shop. The journal. What's a journal? Which one? He couldn't remember, and that worried him.