ALECTRYOMANCER
AND OTHER WEIRD TALES
Christopher Slatsky
DUNHAMS MANOR PRESS
Dunwich – East Brunswick – Fisherville
© 2015 Christopher Slatsky
Cover by Jordan Krall
All stories are original to the collection except:
“Corporautolysis” (Arcane anthology)
“The Ocean is Eating Our Graves”(Innsmouth Magazine Issue #15)
“Film Maudit”(Resonator: Lovecraftian Tales From Beyond anthology)
“A Plague of Naked Movies Stars”(standalone DMP chapbook)
“No One is Sleeping in this World’(standalone DMP chapbook)
“This Fragmented Body”(standalone DMP chapbook)
Published by
DUNHAMS MANOR PRESS
67 Dunhams Corner Road
East Brunswick, New Jersey 08816
USA
An imprint of
DYNATOX MINISTRIES
http://dunhamsmanor.com
http://dynatoxministries.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
First Paperback Edition.
Contents
Loveliness Like a Shadow
9
An Infestation of Stars
23
Corporautolysis
33
No One is Sleeping in this World
42
Making Snakes
55
The Ocean is Eating Our Graves
62
This Fragmented Body
77
Tellurian Façade
92
Film Maudit
105
A Plague of Naked Movie Stars
117
Scarcely Have They Been Planted
132
Intaglios
143
Alectryomancer
155
For Andrea, Roman, and August
And an emphatic thank you to Jordan Krall, Paula McAuliffe, Joseph Zanetti, Scott Nicolay, Anya Martin, John Claude Smith, Scott R. Jones, and Matthew Bartlett. You’ve all been influential whether you know it or not.
LOVELINESS LIKE A SHADOW
The face had spread across a wider section of the wall.
Eleanor’s flat possessed an ominous air despite her skepticism towards hauntings, demonic beings, or paranormal nonsense in general. The formation brought to mind the Bélmez Faces, those weird images that appeared on the concrete floor of a house in Spain decades ago. It was unnerving, particularly with all of her sculptures around the flat in various stages of completion. Too many things making eye contact.
She was reminded of her grandmother’s stories about domovoj, house spirits whose antics ran the gamut from protective to diabolical. Eleanor half expected to catch a glimpse of its white hair and eyes glowing like coals in the middle of the night. But those were old world superstitions.
Just a water stain. Faulty plumbing. Accumulated moisture. When the head first began oozing through the wall’s paint Eleanor thought her clay sculptures might be responsible. Maybe mold had survived inside a package of Plastilina clay, oily spores drifting to the walls once she’d started kneading, sculpting, and manipulating the material. When the handyman found a leaky pipe and repaired it she assumed the real culprit had been found.
But that didn’t seem to be the case. The flat’s plumbing probably went back to the Victorian era—must be another old pipe buried somewhere deep within.
This is what you get for packing it all in, jetting off to London to slum in your art studio. Bohemian lifestyle.
Livin’ the expat dream.
The stain was more pronounced this morning. A definite chin, full lips, prominent brow, deep splotches of darkness for eyes, a welter of hair.
One side of the mouth hung lower, a slack-jawed quality that suggested advanced age more than any decreased intellectual capacity. The countenance was gaunt, furrowed cheekbones and a square jaw gave the impression of tight skin over delicate bones.
It bore a vague similarity to her sculptures’ faces.
“Seein’ shit in clouds that ain’t there.” Eleanor said. A dismissive attitude did little to lessen her grim mood.
She’d tried to scrub the mess away when it first appeared, but only managed to smear gray sludge across the cream-colored walls. The face was back by that afternoon. So much for getting her tenancy deposit back.
Nothing had gone according to plan. Every attempt to better her life had resulted in something of equal or greater importance being ruined. Why should this be any different?
Nearly a year gone by and Eleanor was still licking her wounds from the divorce. Marriage struck down by “irreconcilable differences” at the ripe old age of 35—she wanted a child, but Joel refused to allow any obstacle to impede his ascension up the corporate ladder. Eleanor certainly didn’t feel that a daughter or son was necessary to fulfill her personally, but she resented Joel’s emphatic rejection of her wants and desires. He’d made the decision, and though she never had any driving maternal instinct to procreate, her being denied a choice in the matter was the final straw.
So here she was, finally pursuing her own interests and not kowtowing to Joel’s whims. No longer concerned she’d spent years supporting him as he pursued his law degree, while she’d deferred art school to an unspecified future date.
But she’d do anything just to have him back. Work the two jobs again, pretend what he did during the day was more important than what she’d suffered through. Have sex on his schedule. Walk on eggshells around his moods. Toil in silence so he could become a better man.
She felt guilty for running away from home to pick up the remaining pieces, giving up any pretense of properly mourning the demise of a 15-year relationship. She’d bummed her first cigarettes from him under the bleachers at the Cottage Hollow homecoming game, saw their first R-rated film together after his friends let them in through the theater exit. Got drunk, shoplifted clothes for the first time with him. She’d married her first love.
It didn’t hurt that Joel was gorgeous, even with that wispy attempt at a beard. They’d married young. Her grandparents had spent far too much on that elaborate Russian Orthodox wedding. The newlyweds had such fun with the vykup nevesty gifts. Eleanor hadn’t laughed that much during all their years together.
All that joy and pain was festering inside like malignant cells. Metastasized memories. Maybe it was time to fly back to the states, back to her condo in Pasadena. Cut her losses.
But she was in the U.K. now, and there was no going back. Not until she came to grips with the fact she was alone. There was some liberation in that. She was here to work on her art. That was the only reason she’d left home. The divorce settlement had made the relocation possible. She wasn’t about to give everything up second-guessing herself over a shadow or mold or whatever it was on her wall. She’d come close to throwing in the towel last summer when the unusually muggy weather encouraged the Thames to cough up a particularly nasty insect infestation. Eleanor had no idea why Brits didn’t feel the need to install air cond
itioning or screen doors in every home.
After she’d moved, her U.K. friends did their damndest to cheer her up. Touristy wastes of time, clubs, introducing her to various new age concepts they claimed would alleviate her depression: meditating at Stonehenge, self-actualization techniques, even Wicca. She half-heartedly went through the ritualized motions, but found the concept that she could have any influence on the external world to be so much nonsense. Silly posturing gussied up as profound wisdom.
She had to face the fact that she was never going to get back with her ex. Distancing herself from everything had worked so far. A stone mask of apathy had been beneficial. But she could either be miserable for the rest of her years, or pursue something that made life less of a slog.
A child would have ruined everything, she insisted. But her internal voice wasn’t convinced. She wasn’t sure if she was undecided due to a sincere desire to raise another human being, or an obstinate opinion derived solely from her wanting to defy Joel in the only way she was capable.
She’d discovered a renewed sense of purpose in her art. A spark of hope there. And it just so happened her freedom was predicated on severing all ties with Joel.
Such were the vagaries of life.
After a week of persistent social network messages, Eleanor finally accepted her friend Lydia’s invitation to a gallery showing in Soho. Several artists were scheduled to attend, but Eleanor was mostly looking forward to Vashti’s participation.
Vashti was phenomenal.
Eleanor felt a visceral thrill when she’d first explored Vashti’s art online. Her sculptures tackled controversial issues—when conception began, how consciousness is predicated on the physical brain encased in a physical head with distinct features. Fetus shaped blobs of clay with adult-sized craniums; faces sculpted from soft earth that gave the objects an ontogenical quality; scalps adorned with flowing manes of real human hair. Sculpture was clearly her calling, her faith, her very purpose. Vashti’s creations were designed to confuse and outrage and elicit arguments. And judging by the comments on the site, she’d done that and more.
Eleanor ran her forefinger across the smooth lips of her most recent clay model. Nothing as skilled or interesting as Vashti’s work. No comparison. Just another face. She’d no idea whose it was, but this stranger insisted it take form beneath Eleanor’s hands every time. Again and again. The clay sank slightly under her touch. Organic. The lack of a pulse seemed a mistake. Self-hardening clay should firm up soon enough.
Someone was crying next door.
Eleanor looked out the flat’s only window. Her building was separated by a narrow brick alley, the sole resident a fox living off of leftovers from the bins. The presence of such a creature was endearing, more romantic than the feral opossums and raccoons she encountered back in the U.S. Only two metres separated her window from the window of the other flat. As usual, the tenant’s lights were off.
Eleanor had seen the woman a handful of times since she’d moved in, but only during the day, coming and going on her errands. The flat was always pitch black at night.
She was a tall, graceful, willowy thing. An older woman, though Eleanor had never seen her face without a veil, assuming her age from her posture and the measured, confident way she moved down the street.
There was an elusive, indescribable quality about her—in the vintage yet fashionable clothes she wore, in the luxuriously silver gleam of her healthy hair. Maybe a retired model? An actor who’d decided to spend her remaining years far away from anything resembling wealth or glamour? But the veil and the large demographic of Muslims in Whitechapel made Eleanor consider the religious possibility. But come to think of it, it was unusual she’d only seen the woman with a veil, not a traditional hijab.
A candle flame bobbed inside the flat, much to Eleanor’s surprise. Flickering like a serpent’s burning tongue. This was the first time she’d ever seen any nocturnal presence across the way.
The weeping grew more plaintive, a soul piercing cry that made Eleanor think of the helplessness and despair she felt that moment she was fully aware that Joel was gone from her life.
Or the soul crushing terror from one of her bouts of sleep paralysis. The disorder had recently returned, reinvigorated by the increased stress in her life.
She was about 5 when she’d first experienced it. Sleeping on the bottom bunk, her older sister snoring up top. A thin naked woman had settled on her chest, a coiled weight, loose skin slopping over her ribs onto the floor. Wild confusion of hair trembling in the air like shock lines around a comic strip character’s head. A stunningly beautiful face. Mask of someone else’s mask. All that hair whipping and hissing with blind aggression.
And Eleanor unable to move a muscle. A slab of breathing marble.
But she was an adult now and no longer feared any nocturnal visitations. She understood the physiology of sleep disorders, knew that it was a biological thing. Explainable. Not a strange entity visiting from some nameless place. Xanax would keep the phantom entity at bay.
She held her breath to better hear the cries from the other flat, but just as quickly as it had started, the weeping was silenced.
Eleanor had lunch with Lydia, then swung by Sainsbury’s on the way back home. She was glad to be in and out of the grocery store quickly; the place was a crowded madhouse. A sea of faces all blending together into a uniform expression of dumbfounded petulance and irrational rage. Cold granite, moronic countenances.
Her shopping trolley was jostled by the tiniest of obstacles on the rutted sidewalk. Grocery bags rustled, glass clinked. London’s aging infrastructure was often in the back of her mind, as was the recent spate of exploding pavement—a consequence of worn electrical cables bursting underground when it rained. All those kilometers of passages down there to facilitate the sewage systems running into Battersea for processing. So many transportation tunnels allowed countless possibilities for disaster underfoot.
The mysterious neighbor’s front door was ajar.
She must be home then. Hadn’t Eleanor been living here long enough for introductions? Sure, Londoners were more private than tourists from the states, and Eleanor risked stepping over politeness into ugly American territory, but it would be rude of her not to officially greet a neighbor.
She left her trolley on the sidewalk and knocked on the door.
Nobody answered. She tilted her head to the door’s gap. Nothing. No voices or footsteps, no sound or movement whatsoever.
“Hello? I’m your neighbor. Eleanor. You left your door open.”
Silence.
Eleanor entered the dim flat. It was completely unfurnished. No pictures on the walls, no gewgaws adorning the windowsill where she could see into her own home a metre away. She felt as if she were retracing her steps, going back over ground already covered. But that couldn’t be the case. She’d never been in this flat before.
She opened one of the two closed doors. It was a bathroom. No toiletries or towels. Even the toilet paper dispenser was empty. She closed the door and went to investigate the other room.
The wood floor creaked in protest when she stepped inside.
The ceiling was high and narrow, the room longer than expected. A tall, thin window at the end allowed enough gray light to enter for Eleanor to see that the walls were decorated with various shades of small oval patterns. Wallpaper even covered the ceiling.
A train rattled by on the Hammersmith line, its lights brightening the room briefly. The wall’s ovals had blond and black hair. Some wore glasses.
The wallpaper wasn’t decorative.
Thousands of photo booth snaps and passport pictures. Just the faces stapled and glued to every available surface. Strangers looking down, frozen like stone busts in an abandoned gallery. They even covered the back of the door. Eleanor instinctually averted her gaze from the cut out heads.
A small box sat in the corner of the room. She’d known the box would be there. But that couldn’t be. There was no way she could have known
.
She removed the lid. It was filled with mutilated photos, driving licenses, passports from various countries. She stuck her fingers inside, moved the clipped papers and bits of plastic around.
There was something at the bottom. She pulled out a journal, then another. Some with burgundy faux leather covers, others black and tan or shiny red plastic. She riffled through one. It was in French. Another in Japanese. She was quickly becoming uncomfortable with all of this. She placed them back in the box, at the bottom, beneath everything. On a whim she reached back in and withdrew a glossy mauve journal. She opened it to a random page.
4/11
I write this knowing that if you haven’t already had a butchers at what’s hanging from the attic’s rafters, you will soon enough. I can only imagine your expression—maybe a spot of exasperation at not being able to identify just what it is, mingled with curiosity over how something that size managed to crawl all the way up there.
I know you’re all impatient chivvy along types, and I’ve refrained from complaining about that particular trait over the years. I’ll keep this brief. It’s time to burn bridges and I mean to do so in a spectacular fashion. I do intend to let the cat out of the bag.
Well, not a cat exactly is it?
Eleanor heard sobbing.
The exhausted, hopeless cry of someone who’d lost everything that mattered. Hysterical yet constrained gasps that spoke of death and love. Something in the voice gave acknowledgement to the fact that nothing in life was worthwhile, cowardice the only reason they continued living. Eleanor had heard her own voice sound so very similar, on far too many occasions, since leaving her home and family.
She closed the journal. Buried it with the others.
Alectryomancer and Other Weird Tales Page 1
