Shock Totem 7: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted

by Shock Totem

  • • •

  Two days earlier, the birth of my daughter’s baby filled me with pride, dread, and relief. Pride that my daughter hadn’t chosen the path of least resistance and opted instead to accept a responsibility that for most teenagers would be a horror. Dread that now there would be an infant in our house, the first in fifteen years, and the normal course of our lives would be disrupted. Relief that the baby was at last here and I would not have that daily reminder of a pregnant, unmarried, teenage daughter walking around the house, and the parental guilt that goes along with that. Maybe my wife and I were somehow bad parents for allowing something like this to happen. Maybe we were too strict. Maybe we weren’t strict enough. Maybe we didn’t tell our daughter the things she needed to know. Maybe, maybe, maybe. But all that ceased to matter when the baby was born and it was discovered that something wasn’t quite right.

  Neveah Alicia Ann Newton weighed in at seven pounds three ounces. She looked exactly like my daughter when she was a newborn. Family and friends gathered and we took turns holding her. She wouldn’t open her eyes. She was shy, we thought. She also refused to nurse. She preferred instead to be wrapped up tight and to sleep. Instead of crying she cooed like a bird. As we held her, we thought the sounds she made were cute. We joked that because our daughter was so close to her cat, that perhaps Neveah was part feline.

  I went home that night believing nothing could possibly be wrong. The hard part was over. My daughter had made it through and a new chapter of her life had begun. My wife stayed at the hospital for our daughter’s sake. Just before bedtime, the phone rang. It was my wife. She was in tears. Neveah was having seizures. A CAT scan revealed signs of bleeding on the brain. She might have spinal meningitis. She had been placed on oxygen. She might have brain damage. They were rushing her to Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital as we spoke. She might not survive the night.

  Take a breath. Think positive. Helpless, helpless, helpless. For the first time in my life I actually asked God for a little favor. It was a simple request. “God,” I said, “please help Neveah. She deserves a shot.”

  • • •

  Next came the long drive. Bigger hospital, bigger waiting room. One by one we went in to see Neveah. Tubes, tape, monitors, so many machines for such a small person. There was a piece of gauze placed over her eyes. Apparently, the infection in her brain made her sensitive to light—even the light that bleeds through the eyelids. She was stable now. She had stopped seizing. They were able to determine from the spinal fluid that she had contracted strep-B, a common bacteria to us, but life-threatening to infant immune systems. They were treating her with penicillin. An MRI was scheduled for the morning to determine the extent of damage, if any.

  That night my wife and I and our daughter went to the Ronald McDonald House to stay for the night, the first of many to come. That night, while getting a late night snack, I saw the four young men outside the kitchen window.

  The following morning I woke up early, grabbed my pad, went downstairs, and in the early morning quiet of the House’s large sunroom, I began writing this down. The original ending went something like this:

  I want this to have a happy ending. I want this to just be a story my daughter will tell Neveah when she’s older.

  Later that day, I asked the volunteer at the House about the four men in the parking lot. I hadn’t seen any of them inside the House. She looked at me and smiled and said, “A lot of strange and miraculous things happen around here. This is truly the house love built.”

  I smiled back, but at the same time a chill ran up my spine.

  Well, that’s a lie. It’s funny the things we cling to, the stories we tell ourselves when we don’t want to face the truth, when we want to avoid that feeling of helplessness. My granddaughter’s life was in the balance and here I was writing some kind of sappy spiritual ending to a story not yet finished.

  Maybe I wanted the four men to be an apparition, four angels sent by God to help Neveah get the shot she deserves. The shot I petitioned for. It would be cool and kind of scary to believe the universe actually operated that way.

  But I’m too much of a skeptic to believe that to be true.

  The truth is I did ask the volunteer in the House about the four young men I had seen. I was told that sometimes Yale divinity students stay at the House. I guess that explained what I saw.

  The truth is sometimes prayers are answered, sometimes not. The truth is helpless comes with the territory. As do tears. As does death.

  And now for the happy ending...

  It’s been ten days since Neveah entered the children’s ICU. Every day she gets better. Subsequent tests have revealed no permanent damage. She must be a fighter. She must be lucky. She must have an angel looking over her shoulder. Pick whichever belief you’re most comfortable with.

  As I write this she is still at Yale-New Haven. She has another week to go before they release her. She is now breathing and eating on her own. She opens her eyes often and even cries now and then.

  Welcome to the world.

  Kurt Newton’s fiction has appeared in Weird Tales, Dark Discoveries, Shroud, and Shock Totem. His novel, Powerlines, was recently published by Gallows Press. He lives in Connecticut.

  THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING WORSE

  A Conversation with Laird Barron

  by Michael Wehunt

  Horror is easy. It’s everywhere: on your own street or in grainy images of unrest half the world away. There is little need to seek it out. Reading fictional horror can seem like overkill when the actual world is dripping with it. Sure, horror provides an escape from life just as fantasy and science fiction do. But perhaps unique among fiction genres, horror involves facing those terrible realities, processing them into monsters that can bring deep eddies of understanding...all while never quite looking away from the mirror.

  Horror is easy, but truly scaring a reader with fiction, instilling dread that almost comes off the page—that is not easy. If you’ve been drawn to Shock Totem, chances are you’re looking to be creeped out, even in a world that feels like it’s seen it all. And if you’ve read the work of Laird Barron, chances are you’ve already seen something shift in the mirror just as you turn away.

  Barron is a genuine rarity in the world of horror fiction. His words are powerful and they do exactly what he asks of them. For more than a decade, he’s asked them to scare you. To a truly admirable degree, they have in the most inventive ways. He has mastered cosmic horror, to the extent that I’ll blaspheme and make the claim that in many ways he has surpassed the godfather Lovecraft himself. His first two collections, The Imago Sequence and Occultation, are simply brilliant and brimming with some of the most wonderful and effective stories I’ve ever read, regardless of literary reach or genre. The novel The Croning is one of the scariest books you’ll ever read. They all prove his formidable talents.

  But I’ve been intrigued by the facets of the author that go beyond that special gift. Explorations that have recently branched out and become more apparent in his work. Laird was kind enough to answer my burning questions, and he’s provided good reason to be excited by where his work will take us in the future. He also succeeded in reassuring that part of me that always wants something creepy crawling on it.

  • • •

  MW: A lot of ink and pixels have gone toward discussing your Lovecraftian roots, so one can assume you were influenced heavily by H.P. Lovecraft, as well as T.E.D. Klein, Karl Edward Wagner, and the likes. But I’ve always felt your work goes deeper than that, rather than skimming the fat off the Lovecraftian universe. There’s a good bit of hard-boiled noir in your work, as well as a gritty residue of Cormac McCarthy. The latter shares your essence of gorgeous words, bleak worlds, and the devastating use of geography and natural scenery. Could you give us a bit of insight as to your less-known influences, perhaps outside the strictly horror genre?

  LB: Michael, thanks. You have cited three major horror influences, and yes, McCarthy is another whom I
greatly admire. Crime, noir, thrillers, westerns...these genres are ingrained in my style and influence the thematic elements of my core work. This is the stuff I devoured as a kid. I’ve mentioned Louis L’Amour and Zane Grey, Martin Cruz Smith and John LeCarre. But William Goldman’s Marathon Man and Control figure in there, as does Falling Angel by Hjortsberg and Smilla’s Sense of Snow by Høeg. During my teens and early twenties it was John D MacDonald, Donald Westlake, and Lawrence Block. The Horse Latitudes by Ferrigno is another favorite, and one that taught me how noir can swerve into horror and science fiction territory. These days I’m blown away by Gillian Flynn. She melds crime and psychological horror like nobody’s business.

  MW: And speaking of other genres, I find that your work has recently embraced more fully those shades of noir, hard-boiled protagonists, crime, etc. The horror is still there, but it doesn’t seem quite as much the driving force; that is to say, creeping the reader out isn’t, perhaps, your main priority these days. What are your thoughts on the horror genre today, and your place in it? What has drawn you away from both the pure, unspeakable terror of cosmic horror and scaring people in general? Do you think you’ll ever leave it behind entirely?

  LB: It’s not appropriate for me to speculate upon my place in the field. I love the genre. Horror traditions inform my technique. The field is vital at the moment. The old masters such as King, Straub, and Barker continue to produce at a high level. Joe Hill, Sarah Langan, and Stephen Graham Jones, and a dozen others, are ready to take the torch. There is more quality dark literature coming out than I can reasonably keep up with. This might be a golden age of darkness.

  I won’t abandon the literature of horror or the fans I’ve gained in writing horror. I’m a morose, morbid guy and the macabre is my friend. There will be more horror novels, more collections.

  Crime fiction attracts me, as do thrillers and noir. I also love the weird à la Aickman, Cisco, and Jackson. These elements have always been present in my stories. Arguably, many of my tales are three quarters crime/noir and the remainder is where the black fantastic seeps in. Regardless, there’s a razor thin line separating the darkest noir and full-blown horror. It’s only natural that I’d want to stretch myself as a writer, and to expand my audience. I love the Spenser series, and Smith’s immortal Arkady Renko. One-offs such as McDonald’s The Damned, and Flynn’s Gone Girl, or McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men energize me. I want to try my hand at that. I will.

  MW: Pretty early in your career you seemed to be developing your own mythos in Washington State. The Black Ram Lodge, the dolmen and caves in “Mysterium Tremendum” and “The Men from Porlock,” just to name a few, were revisited with different characters and even different historical periods. That dolmen even seeped into your novel, The Croning. I think fans appreciate that woven world-building. Do you still plan to set stories/novels in this mythos? Just your cosmic horror efforts? The “not so much horror” stuff?

  LB: In the past I’ve said something to the effect that I’m veering away from the explicitly Lovecraftian mode. However, that doesn’t mean I intend to abandon the genre. Some of this will be set in the same universe I’ve created over the years. If not the Children of Old Leech or terrors from the Black Guide, then something worse. There is always something worse.

  MW: Creepy! Speaking of which, above I mentioned that one could gather that you’ve grown slightly less concerned with “creeping the reader out.” When I tell people about your work, the one thing I invariably mention is that of every author I’ve ever read, you’re the one who consistently, truly writes horror well at a visceral level. I’m talking skin-crawling, dread-inducing, disturbing, feel-something-in-the-dark-behind-me type of writing. While it would be exciting to read a novel by you that, hypothetically, doesn’t have a shred of horror in it, I would miss that quality in your work. I’m talking not so much about the overall blanket of horror here (as I did above) but that specific quality of creepiness. We trust your literary talents to take you where you want to go, however. How do you feel about that brilliant creepiness and the possibility of lessening it as you explore other avenues? What creeps you out? And what about other genres, so to speak, draws you in the same way?

  LB: Crime and suspense do it for me. Pulp westerns and noir do it for me. I enjoy mysteries and procedurals. Perhaps this new material of mine will serve as a contrast for current readers who’ve journeyed with me to the dark reaches of reality. Ultimately, the exploration of other genres allows me to expand my audience. That’s not to say the new work will entirely lose touch with the disturbing or the unnerving. I’m working on some pieces concerning a protagonist named Jessica Mace. One of those, “LD50,” flirts with the horror genre and if you check it out, you’ll get a glimpse of my approach to injecting the macabre into crime/thriller narratives. Mace’s ongoing saga sees her pitted against the ineffable and the monstrous. In its own way, her tale is as spooky as anything I’ve done.

  What frightens me? Madness. Deep water. The immensity of space whirling above my head on an icy night. The inconstancy of friends and lovers.

  MW: Another thing you do exceptionally well is folklore, incorporating it into your work, whether through the occult or through simply nailing authentic period pieces. How does the past factor into your worldview?

  LB: Folklore, fairy tales, and mythology were staples in my house during childhood. I believe in the fundamentals. I believe in tradition. I believe in learning the rules in order to bend them, break them, remake them.

  MW: If you had to choose one Barron short story as a favorite, which would it be and why?

  LB: “Parallax” from my first collection. It’s a science fiction story, a weird tale, which I wrote in response to the infamous Scott Peterson trial. My take on the mutability of reality, the paradox of time and existence. Took about nine months to complete that novelette and it consumed me, burned me up. It has never received much attention, but from a technical perspective it’s probably the most technically ambitious piece I’ve attempted.

  MW: What are some upcoming works that best represent your new direction (if “new direction” is what you consider it)?

  LB: I think of this as an expansion, a process occurring in addition to what I’ve concentrated on in the past. My latest collection was written just prior to my current foray into crime and suspense territory: The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All is directly in the wheelhouse of my readership and it’s a synthesis of the two earlier collections. A rogues’ gallery of hard-bitten men and women beleaguered by forces alien and occult. Those stories reprise and crescendo what I’ve done these past twelve or so years. As for the really new stuff...first up is an Alaska-themed collection, working title of Ardor, that I’m putting the finishing touches on. Everything references the 49th state in some way. You’ll encounter a bit of cosmic horror, crime, a couple of suspense/thrillers, a slasher. The whole thing is saturated with weirdness. It’s a stark collection of stories. The prose is leaner and harder than what I’ve used in the past. There are a lot of dogs.

  The other major project is a crime novel. I can’t reveal much about it at the moment except that I’ll be handing it in late this summer, or early fall. It’s dark and violent. Men who are forces of nature collide. I’m hoping it’s the beginning of a series.

  MW: You mentioned your new collection, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All. In closing can you give us a release date for that?

  LB: The collection will be out in mid-August on Night Shade Books.

  MW: Good, that’s just around the corner. Laird, thank you for your time and your insight.

  LB: It was my pleasure, Michael.

  THE GATES OF EMILE PLIMPKIN: THE GRAVEDIGGER’S LEGACY

  by S. Clayton Rhodes

  “Whosoever is unclean by the dead shall be put outside the camp, that they defile not the camp in the midst of which the Lord dwells.”

  —Numbers 5:2

  -1-

  The first trip through the Gate of Remembrance, the name by wh
ich Emile Plimpkin eventually came to think of it, took him completely unawares. He had been tending vegetables in the modest garden he’d planted in early spring—something he did out of pure joy, rather than vocation, as his family had left him reasonably well off—when he noticed something amiss.

  While Emile stood, leaning onto his walking stick, he noticed a brief shimmering around the edges of the white clapboard garden gate. It could have been a flash of lightning for all he knew, for the day was gray and the clouds swollen with the promise of rain, but he didn’t think an approaching storm was the answer. This had been more like the sparkling a jewel will make when light hits its many facets than heat lightning.

  Emile wiped perspiration from his brow, spanked garden sod from the knees of his trousers, then walked toward the gate. He unlatched it, then stepped through to investigate the cause of the inexplicable luminescence.

  What he saw next caused his heart to fairly leap into his throat. Following a flash of white and the sensation of cold air blasting through his body, the dirt lane he expected to see beyond the gate, as well as the ancient and familiar sycamore with its broken boughs, was not there. Instead, a scene foreign to his eyes asserted itself...a landscape of stone markers. Monuments of every size and shape topped hillocks and filled dips of the rolling verge, and the scabrous claws of dead elms scrabbled at the myopic eye of a pallid sun. This did not seem to Emile to be the country in which he’d been born and bred but another entirely. It was a land comprised wholly of dead denizens who slept the eternal sleep beneath mile upon mile of bleached marble markers as far as one could see.