He received his Masters in Creative Writing at Colorado State University, and currently lives in Denver with his wife, the writer Melanie Tem.
Tem was the winner of the 1988 British Fantasy Award for his story “Leaks”, and his recent fiction has appeared in MetaHorror, Dark at Heart, In Dreams, Narrow Houses, The Mammoth Book of Vampires, Hottest Blood, The Dedalus Book of Femmes Fatales, The Ultimate Frankenstein, The Ultimate Dracula, The Year’s Best Horror Stories and the previous two volumes of Best New Horror, amongst others.
His stories have been collected in the chapbooks Fairytales, Celestial Inventory, Absences: Charlie Goode’s Ghosts and the French volume Ombres sur la route.
An unusual Christmas story, “Taking Down the Tree”—like the other short shorts in this book—has quite a twist in the tale.
SEVEN DAYS AFTER CHRISTMAS AND THE great tree filling the parlor had lost its glory. Nick had stopped watering it three days before Christmas. The branches had turned a drooping grayish-green, so that ornaments were escaping the tree, dropping to the rug with a shower of needles, rolling under chairs where they’d be forgotten until spring. The ornaments themselves seemed to need nourishment during the days following Christmas: brightly colored glass balls faded, metal angels tarnished, garlands unraveled before his eyes. Christmas was over.
The week following Christmas day was the saddest part of the year. Nick knew his family shared this sentiment, but they would never say so. They were as determined as he not to spoil the holiday. His son Joseph had spent the last week lying on his stomach beside the tree, playing with the bright red train set Nick had scoured the city to find. Nick hadn’t minded the trouble—the boy had behaved perfectly this year. Joseph was small for eight, which pleased Nick. Compact and easy to carry. His green pajamas matched his emerald eyes.
Carrie was a bit more substantial—plump rosy cheeks, a satisfying armful. He enjoyed holding her on his lap for the Christmas Eve reading of “The Night Before Christmas.”
Carrie looked up at him now from her usual seat by the fireplace. She smiled thinly and played with the doll which looked exactly like her. Her present hadn’t been difficult to find. All the dolls he’d ever seen looked like her.
“Choo! Choo choo!” Joseph looked up at Nick and laughed. “Choo choo!” he cried again. Tears were rolling down the perfect little boy’s cheeks.
“I know, son, I understand,” Nick said, as he knew he was supposed to say. But he didn’t really understand at all. Nick had a vague impression that something was wrong, but he wasn’t sure what.
“Choo choo!” Joseph cried more loudly, as if in anger. Nick wasn’t sure if this was the sound of laughter or tears.
He left the parlor and went to the kitchen to find his wife. She stood by the kitchen sink, her hands like dead fish in water so soap-filled it resembled cream. She hummed softly a medley of Christmas carols, their individual pieces so brief Nick could not distinguish one from another. He lifted her hands from the water. She stared at him and smiled. Her hands were cracked, her fingers wrinkled incredibly. Nick looked around the kitchen: the turkey carcass on the counter, half-devoured and flyspecked, the stacks of yellowed dishes, the open jars of mayonnaise and salad dressing, the rock-hard platter of stuffing. “Oh, Mary,” he said. “Christmas is over for another year.” She nodded sadly and began humming her tunes again, so disjointed now he was sure she hummed them backwards.
Nick went into the dining room and clapped his hands loudly three times. “Christmas is over! Christmas is over!” he cried. He could hear his children wailing in the parlor. The cries of children made a very unpleasant song.
He could hear his wife sobbing to herself in the kitchen, another sad sound. But Christmas was over. There was nothing he could do. “I’m sorry!” he called. “I’m sorry! But we must put all our Christmas things away!”
Nick brought the empty boxes down from the attic. He cajoled his family into helping him remove the lights and decorations from the tree—carefully, wrapping each piece in tissue and nesting it in its proper box.
He carried the boxes up into the dark attic—an attic so large the boxes filled only one tiny corner, so large he sometimes got lost in it. When that was done he took the naked tree out to the back and shoved it into his wood-chipping machine, grinding it into a fine sawdust mulch for his rose bushes.
His family waited for him to tell them what to do.
He showed them the holiday cards that needed to be removed from the window frames, the wreaths over doorways, the special table cloth embroidered in holiday motifs that needed to be folded.
Nick was closing and taping a box when Carrie’s gray kitten strode by. He reached down and lifted the cat, pulled off its head, removed its legs, and threw the mass into the top of the box. He closed the flaps and taped them.
“Bye, kitty,” Carrie said softly.
They all followed him as he carried the last box to the attic. Carrie walked close, whispering to her kitten inside. Joseph marched, now and then shouting “Choo! Choo!” at the top of his lungs. Mary trailed, blank-faced, taking the steps with exaggerated care.
In the attic it was cold and empty and Nick felt as if he were about to be devoured by the dark. He wanted to hurry, to put this Christmas behind him. So he grabbed Mary more roughly than he intended, broke her into two and then into four and then into eight and filled a bright blue sack with her, her blonde hair floating to the top.
Carrie wanted to be with her cat and, after arguing about how there wasn’t room, the indulgent father gave in, and bent and flattened her until she fit, but barely.
“Choo! Choo!” Joseph cried. “Choo! Choo!”
“Always the trouble maker, Joseph. You do this every year!”
“Choo! Choo!” Joseph screamed and ran.
But it was all a game. After chasing him and catching him, Nick jerked and ripped his little boy into so many pieces that Nick was quite sure Joseph would look very different come Christmas of next year.
“Choo choo,” Nick said softly to the last box of Christmas, before shoving it back into the darkest corner he could find.
DOUGLAS CLEGG
Where Flies Are Born
DOUGLAS CLEGG’S early career included being an underwear model, a busker in Paris in the early 1980s, a magazine features writer and a professional cowboy on the rodeo circuit. He wrote his first novel, Goat Dance, in 1987 and it was published two years later to excellent reviews. He has been a full-time novelist since, although, as he reveals, “I still manage to rope the dogies now and then; and I still swim daily, study yoga and shadow box.”
A resident of Southern California, he has also found time to write four more books—Breeder, Neverland, You Come When I Call You and The Dark of the Eye—and his short story, “People Who Love Life”, was reprinted (from Scream Factory magazine) in the anthology Quick Chills II: The Best of the Small Press.
“Where Flies Are Born” is only the author’s second published short story. We await the rest of his career with what Lovecraft used to call “dread suspense”.
THE TRAIN STOPPED SUDDENLY, AND ELLEN sat there and watched her son fill in the coloring book with the three crayolas left to him: aquamarine, burnt sienna, and silver. She was doing this for him: she could put up with Frank and his tirades and possessiveness, but not when he tried to hurt Joey. No. She would make sure that Joey had a better life. Ellen turned to the crossword puzzle in the back of the magazine section to pass the time. She tried not to think of what they’d left behind. She was a patient woman, and so it didn’t annoy her that it was another hour before anyone told the passengers that it would be a three hour stop, or more. Or more, translating into six hours. Then her patience wore thin and Joey was whining. The problem with the train, it soon became apparent, was one which would require disembarking. The town, if it could be called that, was a quarter mile ahead, and so they would be put up somewhere for the night. So this was to be their Great Escape. February third in a mountain town at thirty below.
Frank would find them for sure; only a day’s journey from Springfield. Frank would hunt them down, as he’d done last time, and bring them back to his little castle and she would make it okay for another five years before she went crazy again and had to run. No. She would make sure he wouldn’t hurt Joey. She would kill him first. She would, with her bare hands, stop him from ever touching their son again.
Joey said, “Can’t we just stay on the train? It’s cold out there.”
“You’ll live,” she said, bringing out the overnight case and following in a line with the other passengers out of the car. They trudged along the snowy tracks to the short strip of junction, where each was directed to a different motel or private house.
“I wanted a motel,” she told the conductor. She and Joey were to be overnight guests of the Neesons’, a farm family. “This isn’t what I paid for,” she said, “it’s not what I expected at all.”
“You can sleep in the station, you like,” the man said, but she passed on that after looking around the filthy room with its greasy benches. “Anyway, the Neesons run a bed-and-breakfast, so you’ll do fine there.”
The Nessons arrived shortly in a four-wheel drive, looking just past the curve of middle age, tooth-rotted, with country indelibly sprayed across their grins and friendly winks. Mama Neeson, in her late fifties, spoke of the snow, of their warm house “where we’ll all be safe as kittens in a minute,” of the soup she’d been making. Papa Neeson was older (old enough to be my father, Ellen thought) and balder, eyes of a rodent, face of a baby-left-too-long-in-bathwater. Mama Neeson cooed over Joey, who was already asleep. Damn you, Joey, for abandoning me to Neeson-talk. Papa Neeson spoke of the snowfall and the roads. Ellen said very little, other than to thank them for putting her up.
“Our pleasure,” Mama Neeson said, “the little ones will love the company.”
“You have children?” Ellen winced at her inflection. She didn’t mean it to sound as if Mama Neeson was too old to have what could be called “little ones.”
“Adopted, you could say,” Papa Neeson grumbled, “Mama, she loves kids, can’t get enough of them, you get the instinct, you see, the sniffs for babies and you got to have them whether your body gives ’em up or not.”
Ellen, embarrassed for his wife, shifted uncomfortably in the seat. What a rude man. This was what Frank would be like, under the skin, talking about women and their “sniffs,” their “hankerings,” Poor Mama Neeson, a houseful of babies and this man.
“I have three little ones,” she said, “all under nine. How old’s yours?”
“Six.”
“He’s an angel. Papa, ain’t he just a little angel sent down from heaven?”
Papa Neeson glanced over to Joey, curled up in a ball against Ellen’s side, “don’t say much, do he?”
The landscape was white and black; Ellen watched for ice patches in the road, but they went over it all smoothly. Woods rose up suddenly, parting for an empty flat stretch of land. They drove down a fenced road, snow piled all the way to the top of the fenceposts. Then, as they turned up another road, she saw the large white farmhouse, with a barn behind. We better not be sleeping in the barn.
Mama Neeson sighed, “hope they’re in bed. Put them to bed hours ago, but you know how they romp . . .”
“They love to romp,” Papa Neeson said.
The bed was large and she and Joey sank into it as soon as they had the door closed behind them. Ellen was too tired to think, and Joey was still dreaming. Sleep came quickly, and was black and white, full or snowdrifts. She awoke, thirsty, before dawn. She was half-asleep, but lifted her head towards the window: the sound of animals crunching in the snow outside. She looked out—had to open the window because of the frost on the pane. A hazy purple light brushed across the whiteness of the hills—the sun was somewhere rising beyond the treetops. A large brown bear sniffed along the porch rail. Bears should’ve frightened her, but this one seemed friendly and stupid, as it lumbered along in the tugging snow, nostrils wiggling. Sniffing the air; Mama Neeson would be up—four thirty—frying bacon, flipping hotcakes on the griddle, buttering toast. Country Mama. The little ones would rise from their quilts and trundle beds, ready to go out and milk cows or some such farm thing, and Papa Neeson would get out his shotgun to scare off the bear that came sniffing. She remembered Papa’s phrase: “the sniffs for babies,” and it gave her a discomforting thought about the bear.
She lay back on the bed, stroking Joey’s fine hair, with this thought in her mind of the bear sniffing for the babies, when she saw a housefly circle above her head; then, another, coming from some corner of the room, joining its mate. Three more arrived. Finally, she was restless to swat them. She got out of bed and went to her overnight bag for hairspray. This was her favorite method of disposing of houseflies. She shook the can, and then sprayed in the direction of the (count them: nine) fat black houseflies. They buzzed in curves of infinity. In a minute, they began dropping, one by one, to the rug. Ellen enjoyed taking her boots and slapping each fly into the next life.
Her dry throat and heavy bladder sent her out to the hallway. Feeling along the wall for the light switch or the door to the bathroom—whichever came first. When she found the switch, she flicked it up, and a single unadorned bulb hummed into dull light.
A little girl stood at the end of the hall, too old for the diaper she wore; her stringy hair falling wildly almost to her feet; her skin bruised in several places—particularly around her mouth, which was swollen on the upper lip. In her small pudgy fingers was a length of thread. Ellen was so shocked by this sight that she could not say a word—the girl was only seven or so, and what her appearance indicated about the Neesons . . .
Papa Neeson was like Frank. Likes to beat people. Likes to beat children. Joey and his black eyes, this girl and her bruised face. I could kill them both.
The little girl’s eyes crinkled up as if she were about to cry, wrinkled her forehead and nose, parted her swollen lips.
From the black and white canyon of her mouth: a fat green fly crawled the length of her lower lip, and then flew toward the light bulb above Ellen’s head.
Later, when the sun was up, and the snow outside her window was blinding, Ellen knew she must’ve been half-dreaming, or perhaps it was a trick that the children played—for she’d seen all of them, the two-year-old, the five-year-old, and the girl. The boys had trooped out from the shadows of the hall. All wearing the filthy diapers, all bruised from beatings or worse. The only difference with the two younger boys was they had not yet torn the thread that had been used to sew their mouths and eyes and ears and nostrils closed. Such child abuse was beyond imagining. Ellen had seen them only briefly, and afterwards wondered if perhaps she hadn’t seen wrong. But it was a dream, a very bad one, because the little girl had flicked the light off again. When Ellen reached to turn it back on, they had retreated into the shadows and the feeling of a surreal waking state came upon her. The Neesons could not possibly be this evil. With the light on, and her vision readjusting from the darkness, she saw only houseflies sweeping motes of dust through the heavy air.
At breakfast, Joey devoured his scrambled eggs like he hadn’t eaten in days; Ellen had to admit they tasted better than she’d had before. “You live close to the earth,” Papa Neeson said, “and it gives up its treasures.”
Joey said, “Eggs come from chickens.”
“Chickens come from eggs,” Papa Neeson laughed, “and eggs are the beginning of all life. But we all gather our life from the earth, boy. You city folks don’t feel it because you’re removed. Out here, well, we get it under our fingernails, birth, death, and what comes in between.”
“You’re something of a philosopher,” Ellen said, trying to hide her uneasiness. The image of the children still in her head, like a half-remembered dream. She was eager to get on her way, because that dream was beginning to seem more real. She had spent a half-hour in the shower trying to talk herself out of having seen the children and what had been done
to them: then, ten minutes drying off, positive that she had seen what she’d seen. It was Frank’s legacy: he had taught her to doubt what was right before her eyes. She wondered if Papa Neeson performed darker needlework on his babies.
“I’m a realist,” Papa Neeson said. His eyes were bright and kind—it shocked her to look into them and think about what he might/might not have done.
Mama Neeson, sinking the last skillet into a washtub next to the stove, turned and said, “Papa just has a talent for making things work, Missus, for putting two and two together. That’s how he grows, and that’s how he gathers. Why if it weren’t for him, where would my children be?”
“Where are they?” Joey asked.
Ellen, after her dream slash hallucination slash mind-your-own-business, was a bit apprehensive. She would be happy not to meet Mama Neeson’s brood at all. “We have to get back to the train,” she said. “They said by eleven.”
Papa Neeson raised his eyebrows in an aside to his wife. “I saw some flies at the windows,” he said. “They been bad again.”
Mama Neeson shrugged her broad shoulders. “They got to let them out at times or they’d be bursting, now, wouldn’t they. Must tickle something awful.” She wiped her dripping hands on the flowerprint apron, back and forth like she could never get dry enough. Ellen saw a shining in the old woman’s eyes like tears and hurt.
Joey clanked his fork on his plate; Ellen felt a lump in her throat, and imaginary spiders and flies crawling up the back of her neck. Something in the atmosphere had changed, and she didn’t want to spend one more minute in this house with these people.
Joey clapped a fly between his hands, catching it mid-air.
“Mama’s sorry you didn’t see the kids,” Papa Neeson said, steering over a slick patch on the newly plowed road.
“But you’re not.” Ellen said. She was feeling brave. She hated this man like she hated Frank. Maybe she’d report him to some child welfare agency when she got back to the train station. She could see herself killing this man.
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