His Hideous Heart

by Dahlia Adler

  KENDARE BLAKE is the author of several novels and short stories. Her work is sort of dark, always violent, and features passages describing food from when she writes while hungry. She was born in July in Seoul, South Korea, but doesn’t speak a lick of Korean, as she was packed off at a very early age to her adoptive parents in the United States. That might be just an excuse, though, as she is pretty bad at learning foreign languages. She enjoys the work of Milan Kundera, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Bret Easton Ellis, Richard Linklater, and the late, great Michael Jackson. She lives and writes in Kent, Washington, with her husband, their cat son Tyrion Cattister, red Doberman dog son Obi-Dog Kenobi, rottie mix dog daughter Agent Scully, and naked sphynx cat son Armpit McGee.

  RIN CHUPECO wrote obscure manuals for complicated computer programs, talked people out of their money at event shows, and did many other terrible things. She now writes about ghosts and fantastic worlds but is still sometimes mistaken for a revenant. She is the author of The Girl from the Well; its sequel, The Suffering; and the Bone Witch trilogy. She was born and raised in the Philippines and, or so the legend goes, still haunts that place to this very day. Find her at rinchupeco.com.

  LAMAR GILES writes novels and short stories for teens and adults. He is the author of the Edgar Award nominees Fake ID and Endangered, as well as the YA novel Overturned. His most recent novel, Spin, is a teen thriller that combines music with murder, and his middle-grade work The Last Last-Day-of-Summer takes readers on a time-traveling adventure. Lamar is a founding member of We Need Diverse Books, and resides in Virginia with his wife. Check him out online at lamargiles.com, or follow @LRGiles on Twitter.

  TESSA GRATTON is the associate director of Madcap Retreats and the author of the Blood Journals series and the Gods of New Asgard series, coauthor of two YA writing books, as well as dozens of short stories. Though she’s lived all over the world, she’s finally returned to her prairie roots in Kansas with her wife. Her current projects include Tremontaine at Serial Box Publishing, the YA Fantasy Strange Grace, and her adult fantasy novels The Queens of Innis Lear and the forthcoming Lady Hotspur from Tor. Visit her at tessagratton.com.

  TIFFANY D. JACKSON is the author of critically acclaimed YA novels, including the NAACP Image Award–nominated Allegedly, the Walter Dean Myers Honor Book Monday’s Not Coming, and Let Me Hear a Rhyme. She received her bachelor of arts in film from Howard University, her master of arts in media studies from the New School, and has over a decade in TV/film experience. The Brooklyn native is a lover of naps, cookie dough, and beaches, currently residing in the borough she loves, most likely multitasking.

  STEPHANIE KUEHN is a psychologist and an author. She has written five novels for teens, including Charm & Strange, which won the ALA’s 2014 William C. Morris Award for best debut young adult novel. Booklist has praised her work as “intelligent, compulsively readable literary fiction with a dark twist.”

  EMILY LLOYD-JONES grew up on a vineyard in rural Oregon, where she played in evergreen forests and learned to fear sheep. She has a BA in English from Western Oregon University and a MA in publishing from Rosemont College. Her novels include Illusive, Deceptive, The Hearts We Sold, and the forthcoming The Bone Houses.

  having grown up a word-devourer & avid fairy tale lover, it was only natural that AMANDA LOVELACE would begin writing books of her own. so she did. when she isn’t reading or writing, she can be found waiting for pumpkin spice coffee to come back into season & binge-watching gilmore girls. (before you ask: team jess all the way.) the lifelong poetess & storyteller currently lives in new jersey with her spouse, their ragdoll cats, & a combined book collection so large it will soon need its own home. she is a two-time winner of the goodreads choice award for best poetry as well as a usa today & publishers weekly bestseller.

  HILLARY MONAHAN is the author of twelve titles, including the New York Times bestselling horror novel Mary: The Summoning through Disney Hyperion. She lives in Massachusetts with her family of some parts human, more parts fur friend.

  MARIEKE NIJKAMP was born and raised in the Netherlands. A lifelong student of stories, language, and ideas, she spends as much time in fictional worlds as she does the real world. She loves to travel, roll dice, and daydream. Her #1 New York Times bestselling debut novel, This Is Where It Ends, follows four teens during the fifty-four minutes of a school shooting. Her sophomore novel, Before I Let Go, is a haunting young adult murder mystery set during a cruel Alaskan winter. Marieke is the editor of the YA anthology Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens (FSG) and the writer of The Oracle Code (DC Ink).

  CALEB ROEHRIG is a writer and television producer originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Having also lived in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Helsinki, Finland, he has a chronic case of wanderlust, and can recommend the best sights to see on a shoestring budget in more than thirty countries. A former actor, Roehrig has experience on both sides of the camera, with a résumé that includes appearances on film and TV—as well as seven years in the stranger-than-fiction salt mines of reality television. In the name of earning a paycheck, he has: hung around a frozen cornfield in his underwear, partied with an actual rock star, chatted with a scandal-plagued politician, and been menaced by a disgruntled ostrich.

  FRAN WILDE’s novels and short stories have been finalists for three Nebula Awards, a World Fantasy Award, and two Hugo Awards, and include her Andre Norton– and Compton Crook–winning debut novel Updraft, its sequels Cloudbound and Horizon, her 2019 debut middle grade Riverland, and the Nebula-, Hugo-, and Locus-nominated novelette The Jewel and Her Lapidary. Her short stories appear in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Tor.com, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Shimmer, Nature, and the 2017 Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror. She writes for publications including The Washington Post, Tor.com, Clarkesworld, io9, and GeekMom. You can find her on Twitter, Facebook, and at franwilde.net.

  Acknowledgments

  An anthology is by its very nature a group effort, and enormous thanks are due to everyone who made this one happen. Thank you, Victoria Marini, for all your work finding His Hideous Heart the perfect home at Flatiron, and Sarah Barley, for taking on the collection of my dreams and helping me turn it into an anthology of beautiful nightmares.

  Thanks, too, to everyone who helped take a raw manuscript and turn it into this gorgeous volume, including but surely not limited to Bryn Clark, Melanie Sanders, Emily Walters, Lauren Hougen, Devan Norman, and of course, Jon Contino and Keith Hayes for the most striking cover I could never have imagined.

  Huge thanks are also due to everyone at Macmillan who produced and marketed the magnificent audiobook—Matie Argiropoulos, Samantha Edelson, Emily Dyer, Brisa Robinson, Mary Beth Roche, Robert Allen, and Brian Ramcharan.

  I am grateful for the work of all those who’ve studied Poe before me, and especially to the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, Project Gutenberg, and Benjamin F. Fisher.

  Anthologies are complicated beasts, and I’m exceptionally grateful to experienced editors Marieke Nijkamp, Katherine Locke, Saundra Mitchell, and Jessica Spotswood for their guidance. You’re all wise, brilliant, and I’m grateful to each of you for not only helping me as needed but for either giving me a chance as an author or bravely accepting me to be your editor.

  Much love to the friends who’ve patiently helped me find my balance these last couple of years as I walked on unsteady feet, especially Lindsay Smith, Maggie Hall, Emery Lord, Melissa Albert, Becky Albertalli, Sona Charaipotra, Candice Montgomery, Rebecca Coffindaffer, Sharon Morse, Jess Capelle, Tess Sharpe, Anna-Marie McLemore, Eric Smith, AK Furukawa, and of course the aforementioned Marieke and Katie. Thank you to Tara Dairman, Lauren Morrill, and Heidi Heilig for the safe and helpful Facebook spaces you’ve created, and to everyone on Twitter who’s listened to me babble about this book and Grey’s Anatomy and macarons and stuck around anyway. I’m especially grateful to Twitter for indirectly making this whole thing happen, thanks to a certain someone. (I’m pretty grateful to her, too.)

  To my family, than
k you for endless love and support, and for being excited for each and every new venture as it comes. Micah, you may share your mom with so many things and so many imaginary people, but you are the panda of my heart, and I love you even more than you love Elmo. Yoni, this is my seventh time getting to use this space to talk about how much I love and appreciate you, and I only seem to get worse at it. Thank you for all the cookies and Sunday mornings.

  Of course, biggest thanks of all go to everyone whose words comprise this volume and whose incredible work speaks for itself. Kendare, Rin, Lamar, Tessa, Tiffany, Steph, Emily, amanda, Hillary, Marieke, Caleb, and Fran, thank you for your passion and your talent and for every shiver and smile and gasp and wince. And Edgar, thank you for the beautiful work you’ve made of people who do ugly things, for the Gothic legends of my teenage dreams, and for writing stories and poems that forever continue to inspire.

  Without further ado, Dear Reader, here are those very same stories and poems that inspired ours, and I hope they hold the same dark, thrilling, and enduring magic for you.

  The Original Tales

  Metzengerstein

  Pestis eram vivus—moriens tua mors ero.

  —MARTIN LUTHER

  Horror and fatality have been stalking abroad in all ages. Why then give a date to this story I have to tell? Let it suffice to say, that at the period of which I speak, there existed, in the interior of Hungary, a settled although hidden belief in the doctrines of the Metempsychosis. Of the doctrines themselves—that is, of their falsity, or of their probability—I say nothing. I assert, however, that much of our incredulity (as La Bruyere says of all our unhappiness) “vient de ne pouvoir être seuls.”

  But there are some points in the Hungarian superstition which were fast verging to absurdity. They—the Hungarians—differed very essentially from their Eastern authorities. For example, “The soul,” said the former—I give the words of an acute and intelligent Parisian—“ne demeure qu’un seul fois dans un corps sensible: au reste—un cheval, un chien, un homme meme, n’est que la ressemblance peu tangible de ces animaux.”

  The families of Berlifitzing and Metzengerstein had been at variance for centuries. Never before were two houses so illustrious, mutually embittered by hostility so deadly. The origin of this enmity seems to be found in the words of an ancient prophecy—“A lofty name shall have a fearful fall when, as the rider over his horse, the mortality of Metzengerstein shall triumph over the immortality of Berlifitzing.”

  To be sure the words themselves had little or no meaning. But more trivial causes have given rise—and that no long while ago—to consequences equally eventful. Besides, the estates, which were contiguous, had long exercised a rival influence in the affairs of a busy government. Moreover, near neighbors are seldom friends; and the inhabitants of the Castle Berlifitzing might look, from their lofty buttresses, into the very windows of the Palace Metzengerstein. Least of all had the more than feudal magnificence, thus discovered, a tendency to allay the irritable feelings of the less ancient and less wealthy Berlifitzings. What wonder, then, that the words, however silly, of that prediction, should have succeeded in setting and keeping at variance two families already predisposed to quarrel by every instigation of hereditary jealousy? The prophecy seemed to imply—if it implied anything—a final triumph on the part of the already more powerful house; and was of course remembered with the more bitter animosity by the weaker and less influential.

  Wilhelm, Count Berlifitzing, although loftily descended, was, at the epoch of this narrative, an infirm and doting old man, remarkable for nothing but an inordinate and inveterate personal antipathy to the family of his rival, and so passionate a love of horses, and of hunting, that neither bodily infirmity, great age, nor mental incapacity, prevented his daily participation in the dangers of the chase.

  Frederick, Baron Metzengerstein, was, on the other hand, not yet of age. His father, the Minister G____, died young. His mother, the Lady Mary, followed him quickly. Frederick was, at that time, in his eighteenth year. In a city, eighteen years are no long period; but in a wilderness—in so magnificent a wilderness as that old principality, the pendulum vibrates with a deeper meaning.

  From some peculiar circumstances attending the administration of his father, the young Baron, at the decease of the former, entered immediately upon his vast possessions. Such estates were seldom held before by a nobleman of Hungary. His castles were without number. The chief in point of splendor and extent was the “Palace Metzengerstein.” The boundary line of his dominions was never clearly defined; but his principal park embraced a circuit of fifty miles.

  Upon the succession of a proprietor so young, with a character so well known, to a fortune so unparalleled, little speculation was afloat in regard to his probable course of conduct. And, indeed, for the space of three days, the behavior of the heir out-heroded Herod, and fairly surpassed the expectations of his most enthusiastic admirers. Shameful debaucheries—flagrant treacheries—unheard-of atrocities—gave his trembling vassals quickly to understand that no servile submission on their part—no punctilios of conscience on his own—were thenceforward to prove any security against the remorseless fangs of a petty Caligula. On the night of the fourth day, the stables of the Castle Berlifitzing were discovered to be on fire; and the unanimous opinion of the neighborhood added the crime of the incendiary to the already hideous list of the Baron’s misdemeanors and enormities.

  But during the tumult occasioned by this occurrence, the young nobleman himself sat apparently buried in meditation, in a vast and desolate upper apartment of the family palace of Metzengerstein. The rich although faded tapestry hangings which swung gloomily upon the walls, represented the shadowy and majestic forms of a thousand illustrious ancestors. Here, rich-ermined priests, and pontifical dignitaries, familiarly seated with the autocrat and the sovereign, put a veto on the wishes of a temporal king, or restrained with the fiat of papal supremacy the rebellious sceptre of the Arch-enemy. There, the dark, tall statures of the Princes Metzengerstein—their muscular war-coursers plunging over the carcasses of fallen foes—startled the steadiest nerves with their vigorous expression; and here, again, the voluptuous and swan-like figures of the dames of days gone by, floated away in the mazes of an unreal dance to the strains of imaginary melody.

  But as the Baron listened, or affected to listen, to the gradually increasing uproar in the stables of Berlifitzing—or perhaps pondered upon some more novel, some more decided act of audacity—his eyes were turned unwittingly to the figure of an enormous, and unnaturally colored horse, represented in the tapestry as belonging to a Saracen ancestor of the family of his rival. The horse itself, in the foreground of the design, stood motionless and statue-like—while, farther back, its discomfited rider perished by the dagger of a Metzengerstein.

  On Frederick’s lip arose a fiendish expression, as he became aware of the direction which his glance had, without his consciousness, assumed. Yet he did not remove it. On the contrary, he could by no means account for the overwhelming anxiety which appeared falling like a pall upon his senses. It was with difficulty that he reconciled his dreamy and incoherent feelings with the certainty of being awake. The longer he gazed, the more absorbing became the spell—the more impossible did it appear that he could ever withdraw his glance from the fascination of that tapestry. But the tumult without becoming suddenly more violent, with a compulsory exertion he diverted his attention to the glare of ruddy light thrown full by the flaming stables upon the windows of the apartment.

  The action, however, was but momentary; his gaze returned mechanically to the wall. To his extreme horror and astonishment, the head of the gigantic steed had, in the meantime, altered its position. The neck of the animal, before arched, as if in compassion, over the prostrate body of its lord, was now extended, at full length, in the direction of the Baron. The eyes, before invisible, now wore an energetic and human expression, while they gleamed with a fiery and unusual red; and the distended lips of the apparently en
raged horse left in full view his sepulchral and disgusting teeth.

  Stupified with terror, the young nobleman tottered to the door. As he threw it open, a flash of red light, streaming far into the chamber, flung his shadow with a clear outline against the quivering tapestry; and he shuddered to perceive that shadow—as he staggered awhile upon the threshold—assuming the exact position, and precisely filling up the contour, of the relentless and triumphant murderer of the Saracen Berlifitzing.

  To lighten the depression of his spirits, the Baron hurried into the open air. At the principal gate of the palace he encountered three equerries. With much difficulty, and at the imminent peril of their lives, they were restraining the convulsive plunges of a gigantic and fiery-colored horse.

  “Whose horse? Where did you get him?” demanded the youth, in a querulous and husky tone, as he became instantly aware that the mysterious steed in the tapestried chamber was the very counterpart of the furious animal before his eyes.

  “He is your own property, sire,” replied one of the equerries, “at least he is claimed by no other owner. We caught him flying, all smoking and foaming with rage, from the burning stables of the Castle Berlifitzing. Supposing him to have belonged to the old Count’s stud of foreign horses, we led him back as an estray. But the grooms there disclaim any title to the creature; which is strange, since he bears evident marks of having made a narrow escape from the flames.”

  “The letters W. V. B. are also branded very distinctly on his forehead,” interrupted a second equerry, “I supposed them, of course, to be the initials of Wilhelm Von Berlifitzing—but all at the castle are positive in denying any knowledge of the horse.”