•
The sled and you reach the end of the wire. You’re doing fine, not feeling too cold or anoxic. No fainting in sight, the spiders stay away from your eyes, the trip up should be fine. You pull the cord on the tank. Then it is quiet for a few seconds as the air streams into the balloon and the yellow plastic starts to fill up. This is the worst part of the journey. There is nothing to do but take in the view of the hollow gloom around you and the gaping dark below you. On the way down, you fight against the cold current of descent and the increasing pressure. On the way up, you enjoy the view of the flood of bubbles from the balloon and the increasing light as you ascend. Then the depth releases its hold on you, and you are born again into the air and the sun. But that’s more than two hundred and ten meters away in the vertical, a long climb with a merciless angle of ninety degrees. You are literally in too deep. If the main and the back-up balloon don’t inflate, you haven’t got enough air or power in your body to climb back up the pressure well. Then your only hope is the scuba divers watching you further up.
Finally, the balloon plumps up and the sled starts whirring in reverse. You hold on to the thin handles and rise along the wire, relieved to have escaped the deep once again. But this afternoon, against what is possible, against what is natural, the deep senses you, and acts.
•
Something terribly fast rushes out of the darkness below, blurs past you and curls around the inflated balloon. The current of the sudden motion slams against your body, almost takes you away from the sled. Whatever it is swats the ocean’s weight like a fly. You can only imagine the power needed to move at that speed at this depth.
What looks like a giant coil of maroon rope, as thick as your thigh, curls around the yellow plastic. Pale suction cups the size of your fist squeeze out of the red like jellyfish. They look soft and smooth, but you know they hide a circle of knife-like cartilage, nature’s own vagina dentata. If those bowls kiss you, it’s goodbye. Now you want to scream, but you can’t. You can only stare in terror as the arm pulls at the balloon and shakes the sled, stopping your ascent to the light. The coils curl sinuously, almost sensuously, around the balloon, increasing their hold on it.
In the horribly slow thinking of the deep, you realize the arm wants to pull the entire sled into the abyss. You pull out your knife and start sawing at the neck of the balloon to release it. All movement is heavy and painful. Your muscles are not built to fight against the deep. Your heart is blasting and your lungs are on fire. You have no air left for the way up, but the only thing you can think about is getting the sled free.
The yellow plastic rips, releasing a torrent of tiny bubbles into the dusky water. The sled tilts back to the wire. You pull the cord for the backup-balloon. It fills quickly and, with the hold of the tentacle gone, the sled starts screaming up the cord. You hang on and feel the speed take you away; you’re on your way up. But then something cold and ancient wraps itself around your leg and takes hold like a giant anaconda. You don’t have to look to see what it is. You can feel the suction cups dig through your wetsuit and into your leg. The sled bounces and swings. You hold onto the handles as hard as you can and slowly, slowly bury your knife into the red flesh. You really want to scream, but you can’t. The diving reflex is too strong. Your throat and epiglottis have closed shut. All you can see are the black spiders scuttling quickly over your eyes.
•
Some say screaming is embarrassing and shameful, but under the right circumstances, or perhaps the wrong circumstances, screaming is actually liberating. Because there are times and places when you would really like to scream, when you would absolutely love to scream, and feel a great and pressing need to do it, but you can’t.
One of those places is in a coma after terror. If you’re lucky, you’re still breathing on your own, and can gasp and hyperventilate and heave your breast as much as you like, while whatever it is that makes you feel like screaming plays out in your vegetative mind.
If you’re unlucky, however, the centres in your brain responsible for breathing have shut down, been shocked into silence. So, while your mind is screaming loudly, the machine that’s pushing air into your inert lungs and body, thinks breathing steadily and calmly takes precedence over self-expression, and keeps moving in an entirely too-slow pace. Then you can’t scream, however much you want to. You can only stare in horror at whatever is coming at you, stare paralyzed and helpless, and let it happen to you, again and again. But finally, the breathing centers in your brain come back online, you ignore the slow breathing of the machine that’s kept you alive for three weeks, cut yourself free from the net of tubes and wires and needles that are tangling you, and scream and scream! And it is very, very liberating.
•••
Berit Ellingsen is a Norwegian literary and speculative fiction author. She is also a science journalist and has a dark past as a game, film and music reviewer. Her fiction has or will appear in various online literary journals and in print anthologies, most recently in The Subterranean Literary Journal, OverClock Zine and Zouch Magazine. Berit admits to pining for the fjords when abroad. Her debut novel, The Empty City, is inspired by the philosophy of nonduality.
Nightmare
By Wenona Napolitano
Darkness gripped me like a ferocious lion,
ripping and shredding apart helpless prey.
Reaching out, I begged you to stay.
But you left and my soul started crying.
My fears slowly took me over.
Nightmares set in, taking over sweet dreams.
My heart stops when I wake and drown in screams,
Lonely without a comforting lover.
Once, I drank in the dreams and dreamed the wine
that flowed over satiny cherubs’ wings.
I could hear my guardian angels sing.
Sweet voices soared to eternity’s time.
Now I can no longer feel my own soul.
I just hear the wind blowing in my mind.
My sweet seraphim are no longer kind.
Angry devils tear me, leaving a hole.
With trembling hands, I drink the poisoned wine
That will forever stop bad dreams in time.
•••
Wenona Napolitano is a freelance writer, poet and the author of The Everything Green Wedding Book. Her specialty areas include: natural health, green living, gardening, crafts, and wedding planning. When not writing, Wenona loves to spend time with her family, craft, garden, and go on treasure hunts at local antique stores, flea markets and yard sales. To relax, she loves nothing better than to curl up with a good book. Contact her at: [email protected].
Copyright Acknowledgments
Amanda C. Davis, “A Fixer Upper”. Copyright © 2011 Amanda C. Davis.
Orrin Grey, “Seventh Picture”. Copyright © 2011 Orrin Grey.
Don D’Ammassa “Housebound”. Copyright © 2011 Don D’Ammassa.
Paul Jessup “Stone Dogs”. First published in Glass Coffin Girls, 2009. Copyright © 2009 Paul Jessup. Reprinted with permission from the author.
Bobby Cranestone, “The of City Melted Iron”. Copyright © 2011 Bobby Cranestone.
Ryan Harvey, “The Shredded Tapestry”. Copyright © 2011 Ryan Harvey.
Colleen Anderson,“Obsessions”. First published in Ancient Deaths, Grand Deaths & Past Lives and the 2001 World Fantasy Convention CD ROM anthology, both 2001. Copyright © 2001 Colleen Anderson. Reprinted with permission from author.
Gina Flores, “Desideratum”. Copyright © 2011 Gina Flores.
James S. Dorr, “Victorians”. First published in Gothic Ghosts, 1997. Copyright © 1997 James S. Dorr. Reprinted with permission from the author.
Desmond Warzel, “New Archangel”. First published in Shroud, 2009. Copyright © 2009 Desmond Warzel. Reprinted with permission from the author.
E. Catherine Tobler, “The Snow Man”. Copyright © 2011 E. Catherine Tobler.
Alexis Brooks de Vita, “In His
Arms in the Attic”. Copyright © 2011 Alexis Brooks de Vita.
Ann K. Schwader, “The Ba-Curse”. Copyright © 2011 Ann K. Schwader.
Nelly Geraldine García Rosas, “Hitomi”. Copyright © 2011 Nelly Geraldine García Rosas.
Martha Hubbard, “I Tarocchi dei d’Este”. Copyright © 2011 Martha Hubbard.
Joshua Reynolds, “Elizabeth on the Island”. Copyright © 2011 Joshua Reynolds.
Jim Blackstone, “Dark Epistle”. Copyright © 2011 Jim Blackstone.
Maria Mitchell, “Broken Notes”. Copyright © 2011 Maria Mitchell.
Mary E. Choo, “The Malcontents”. First published in Volume 32.2, Speculations, of Room Magazine, 2009. Copyright © 2009 Mary E. Choo. Reprinted with permission from the author.
Jesse Bullington, “Liminal Medicine”. Copyright © 2011 Jesse Bullington.
Leanna Renee Hieber, “At the Doorstep”. Copyright © 2011 Leanna Renee Hieber.
Sarah Hans, “Frozen Souls”. Copyright © 2011 Sarah Hans.
Mary Cook, “The Forgotten Ones”. Copyright © 2011. Mary Cook.
T. S. Bazelli, “Nine Nights”. Copyright © 2011 T. S. Bazelli.
Meddy Ligner, “Vodka Attack!”. Copyright © 2011 Meddy Ligner.
Berit K. N. Ellingsen, “The Ascent”. Copyright © 2011 Berit K. N. Ellingsen.
Wenona Napolitano, “Nightmare”. Copyright © 2011 Wenona Napolitano.
About the Anthologists
Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s stories have appeared in publications such as Fantasy Magazine, The Book of Cthulhu, Evolve 2 and Shine: An Anthology of Optimistic Science Fiction. She co-edited the anthology Historical Lovecraft together with Paula R. Stiles. Find her at silviamoreno-garcia.com.
•
Possessing a quixotic fondness for difficult careers, Paula Stiles has driven ambulances, taught fish farming for the Peace Corps in West Africa and earned a Scottish PhD in medieval history, studying Templars and non-Christians in Spain. She has also sold fiction to Strange Horizons, Writers of the Future, Jim Baen’s Universe, Shine, Futures, Black Gate’s “Warrior Woman” issue, and other markets, as well as a co-written supernatural mystery novel, Fraterfamilias. She is Editor in Chief of the Lovecraft/Mythos ‘zine Innsmouth Free Press. You can find her on Twitter (@thesnowleopard) and Facebook, or at: http://thesnowleopard.net.
Other Innsmouth Titles
Historical Lovecraft
Historical Lovecraft, a unique anthology blending historical fiction with horror, features 26 tales spanning centuries and continents. This eclectic volume takes the readers through places as varied as Laos, Greenland, Peru, and the Congo, and from antiquity until the 20th century, pushing the envelope of Lovecraftian lore. William Meikle’s inquisitor tries to unravel the truth during a very hostile questioning. Jesse Bullington narrates the saga of a young Viking woman facing danger and destruction. E. Catherine Tobler stops in Ancient Egypt, where Pharaoh Hatshepsut receives an exquisite and deadly gift. Albert Tucher discovers that the dead do not remain silent in 10th century Rome. These are tales that reimagine history and look into the past through a darker glass. Tales that show evil has many faces and reaches through the centuries. Tales that will chill your heart.
•
Fraterfamilias
French artist Paul Farrell kills four people in Paris and walks into a hail of police fire at JFK Airport. A Russian history professor and shaman with a dark secret steals the body. Police on both sides of the Atlantic are on the case, but they each have secrets of their own. And a powerful enemy watches from the shadows, one who could destroy them all. This is Fraterfamilias, an urban fantasy thriller now available in print and as an e-book.
•
Find more information about these titles at InnsmouthFreePress.com
Table of Contents
Introduction
Dwellings & Places
A Fixer-Upper By Amanda C. Davis
The Seventh Picture By Orrin Grey
Housebound By Don D’Ammassa
Stone Dogs By Paul Jessup
The City of Melted Iron By Bobby Cranestone
The Shredded Tapestry By Ryan Harvey
Lovers & Desire
Obsessions (or Biting Off More Than One Can Chew) By Colleen Anderson
Desideratum By Gina Flores
Victorians By James S. Dorr
New Archangel By Desmond Warzel
The Snow Man By E. Catherine Tobler
In His Arms in the Attic By Alexis Brooks de Vita
Objects & Mementos
The Ba-Curse By Ann K. Schwader
Hitomi By Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas
I Tarocchi dei d’Este By Martha Hubbard
Elizabeth on the Island By Joshua Reynolds
Dark Epistle By Jim Blackstone
Broken Notes By Maria Mitchell
Ghosts & Death
The Malcontents By Mary E. Choo
Liminal Medicine By Jesse Bullington
At the Doorstep By Leanna Renee Hieber
Frozen Souls By Sarah Hans
The Forgotten Ones By Mary Cook
Nine Nights By T. S. Bazelli
Vodka Attack! By Meddy Ligner
The Ascent By Berit K. N. Ellingsen
Nightmare By Wenona Napolitano
Copyright Acknowledgments
About the Anthologists
Other Innsmouth Titles
Candle in the Attic Window Page 30
