Fossil Lake II:
The Refossiling
Copyright © 2015 Sabledrake Enterprises
All rights reserved
1st Edition – Spring, 2015
Cover Design by Stephen Cooney Copyright © 2014
Dinosaur images by KeithBishop © 2007
Published by Sabledrake Enterprises
Edited by Christine Morgan
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Dedication
For the dinosaurs.
Don’t be an extinction-denier
Copyrights ©
Foreword by Brian Keene, © 2014
The Lake, by Edgar Allan Poe, © 1827
Ricky’s Summer Vacation, by A. Stinky Cat, © 2014
Fetch!, by Ken Goldman, © 2014
Perfect Ten, by Scott R. Jones, © 2014
Bruce Too, by Jodi Lee, © 2014
Dark Operator, by Clayton Chandler, © 2014
Blind Date, by David Neilsen, © 2014
Music Hath Charms, by Mark Orr, © 2014
Leviathan, by Richard Leavesley, © 2014
The Tub and Takahashi, by Gregor Cole, © 2014
Signs, by John M. McIlveen, © 2014
Hellhole Fishing, by Stanley Webb, © 2014
Returning Magic to the Kingdom, by Brian M. Sammons, © 2014
The Author as Fossil, by James Ebersole, © 2014
The Surface Beneath, by Michael Burnside, © 2014
Beyond the Boneyard Gate, by Alicia Austen, © 2014
Critter Marrow, by Patrick Lacey, © 2014
My Beloved, by J.M. Northwood, © 2014
Bloodbound, by William Andre Sanders, © 2014
Trapper Keeper, by A. Stinky Cat, © 2014
Lady Ghost, by Edward Martin III, © 2014
Innocent Passage, by Randy Attwood, © 2014
Frozen in Stone, by Doug Blakeslee, © 2014
The Body in the Lake, by Peter Sutton, © 2014
Gods and Mice, by Bruce Boston, © 2014
The Sea is in my Blood, by Deborah Walker, © 2014
Harmless, by Uncle Don, © 2014
Retirement Home, by K.H. Koehler, © 2006; formerly published in the collection
Tales for 3 O’Clock in the Morning.
Playing Games, by Kerry G.S. Lipp, © 2014
The Incident in Central Village, by Doug Rinaldi, © 2014
Forest of Borth, by Claire Smith, © 2014
Nickolaus Passionate and the Children of Ereshkigal, by John Goodrich, © 2014
Red Ochre, by Mary Pletsch, © 2014
Dollmaker, by Alan Loewen, © 2014
Secrets in the Soil, by E.S. Wynn, © 2014
First to One Hundred, by S.L. Dixon, © 2014
The Unspeakable Confession of Dicky Rashone’s Dog, by Lorenzo Passion, © 2014
A Far Southern Land, by D.J. Tyrer, © 2014
They Say Gloria’s Still in the Lake, by Michael Penkas, © 2014
Blessedly Offended, by Shaun Avery, © 2014
The Nightmare Lake, by H.P. Lovecraft, © 1919
Table of Contents
Foreword by Brian Keene
The Lake, by Edgar Allan Poe
Ricky’s Summer Vacation, by A. Stinky Cat
Fetch!, by Ken Goldman
Perfect Ten, by Scott R. Jones
Bruce Too, by Jodi Lee
Dark Operator, by Clayton Chandler
Blind Date, by David Neilsen
Music Hath Charms, by Mark Orr
Leviathan, by Richard Leavesley
The Tub and Takahashi, by Gregor Cole
Signs, by John M. McIlveen
Hellhole Fishing, by Stanley Webb
Returning Magic to the Kingdom, by Brian M. Sammons
The Author as Fossil, by James Ebersole
The Surface Beneath, by Michael Burnside
Beyond the Boneyard Gate, by Alicia Austen
Critter Marrow, by Patrick Lacey
My Beloved, by J.M. Northwood
Bloodbound, by William Andre Sanders
Trapper Keeper, by A. Stinky Cat
Lady Ghost, by Edward Martin III
Innocent Passage, by Randy Attwood
Frozen in Stone, by Doug Blakeslee
The Body in the Lake, by Peter Sutton
Gods and Mice, by Bruce Boston
The Sea is in my Blood, by Deborah Walker
Harmless, by Uncle Don
Retirement Home, by K.H. Koehler
Playing Games, by Kerry G.S. Lipp
The Incident in Central Village, by Doug Rinaldi
Forest of Borth, by Claire Smith
Nickolaus Passionate and the Children of Ereshkigal, by John Goodrich
Red Ochre, by Mary Pletsch
Dollmaker, by Alan Loewen
Secrets in the Soil, by E.S. Wynn
First to One Hundred, by S.L. Dixon
The Unspeakable Confession of Dicky Rashone’s Dog, by Lorenzo Passion
A Far Southern Land, by D.J. Tyrer
They Say Gloria’s Still in the Lake, by Michael Penkas
Blessedly Offended, by Shaun Avery
The Nightmare Lake, by H.P. Lovecraft
A Preview of Fossil Lake III: Unicornado
About the Contributors
NICKY AND THE UNICORN
(AN INTRODUCTION)
Brian Keene
Came the day Nicky had sex with a unicorn.
It didn’t end well. At least for Nicky. The unicorn had a grand time.
But I’m not here to talk about that. Instead, I’m here to talk about this book, and tell you a bit about how it—and its predecessor—came to be.
The Internet is a wonderful thing. Some of you who are reading this may have grown up with it all your lives, running in the background. As a result, perhaps you take it for granted, the way the generations born after the invention of electric light or refrigeration the automobile or pasteurization did with those benefits. For you, the Internet is always there. It’s always been there, running in the background. Some of the rest of you, like myself, probably remember when the Internet first became available to be. I sure do. Windows 2.0 running on a Magnavox 286 with a dial-up modem. It took about twenty minutes for a single website to finish loading, and there were only four dedicated to horror fiction—Horror Net, Gothic Net, Masters of Terror, and Chiaroscuro.
Obviously, things have improved since then.
We turn on our computers, phones, video game consoles, or (increasingly) televisions, and the Internet is there, connected as surely and quickly as the illumination that comes with the flicking of a light-switch. It allows friends and family to stay in touch instantly, no matter how many miles separate the
m in the real world. It provides information to anyone who needs it—a wealth of information; health, politics, history, geography, pop culture. It allows us expression and creativity. It is used to form friendships, businesses, and even love. It aids commerce, wealth, and human understanding.
But it also allows assholes into our lives.
Bullies, trolls, sociopaths, and assholes existed before the Internet came along, of course, but it was never so easy for them to infect our lives. Before the Internet, maybe you dealt with them at school or at work, but they were localized—confined to a geographic location. With the Internet, they can abuse anybody, regardless of the physical distance between them.
There is one asshole in particular, a sociopathic little troll well-known to writers, editors, publishers, and some readers of horror, bizarro, and science fiction. This individual—we’ll call him “Nicky”—fancies himself a writer, but he is not. What he is is vile, loathsome, repugnant, incoherent, racist, sexist, homophobic, misogynistic, abusive, unhygienic, incompetent, and many other adjectives, none of which are complimentary. For almost two decades, this individual has stalked, harassed, threatened, slandered, libeled, and abused a vast number of professionals, including but not limited to myself, Ramsey Campbell, Poppy Z. Brite, Clive Barker, Cherie Priest, Darren McKeeman, Mary SanGiovanni, David Niall Wilson, Janrae Frank, Nick Mamatas, Angelina Hawkes-Craig, Michael Rowe, Monica J. O’Rourke, Kevin Lucia, Ellen Datlow and dozens—literally dozens—more. His various offenses have included false allegations of “plagiarism” against his perceived enemies, as well as threatening to burn their homes down, have them beat up by imaginary street gangs, and, in one particularly heinous case, threatening to kidnap their children.
What was their crime? What did these individuals do to deserve such rancor? Simple. They were female. Or gay. Or rejected one of his stories. Or refused to buy one of his self-published books. Or suggested that he shouldn’t threaten to rape people.
Despite his Internet infamy, he still manages to prey on the unsuspecting, particularly minors. In addition to fancying himself a writer, he also plays at being a publisher. He has a long track record of accepting submissions from young, novice writers—often teenagers—and then not paying them or outright publishing them without permission. When called on it, he responds with more vitriolic threats and abuse.
But a strange thing has happened over the last decade. Strangers whom might never have interacted with each other have been brought together by this individual’s retarded reign of terror. Partnerships have been formed. Friendships have been forged. Careers have been kick-started. All because people found out they shared a common denominator—they’d ended up on an asshole’s radar.
This anthology, and its predecessor, the original Fossil Lake, were also birthed from that chaos. Both books came about because a number of their contributors, as well as their editor and the publisher, had been among the asshole’s targets.
You’ll note I didn’t say victims. That’s because to be a victim, one must be victimized. One must give in to terror, and bow to abuse. But despite the number of people who have indeed been terrorized and abused by this diseased munchkin, every one of them has triumphed and come out the other side better for it. Logically, he should be a reverse Midas. Everything he “touches” should turn to shit. That’s his intent and his hope. But instead, most of the people he’s touched have instead spun gold out of the slime he left behind.
And that’s more magical than any unicorn.
Welcome back to Fossil Lake. I hope you enjoy your visit.
Brian Keene
December 2014
THE LAKE
Edgar Allan Poe
In spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wide world a spot
The which I could not love the less—
So lovely was the loneliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
And the tall pines that towered around.
But when the Night had thrown her pall
Upon the spot, as upon all,
And the mystic wind went by
Murmuring in melody—
Then—ah, then, I would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.
Yet that terror was not fright,
But a tremulous delight—
A feeling not the jewelled mine
Could teach or bribe me to define—
Nor Love—although the Love were thine.
Death was in that poisonous wave,
And in its gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his lone imagining—
Whose solitary soul could make
An Eden of that dim lake.
Ricky’s Summer Vacation
A. Stinky Cat
FETCH!
Ken Goldman
Look at him watchin’ me, like that canine understands every word I say. Probably feels what I’m feelin’ too. I’d put my last dollar on it.
“Do ya understand what I’m sayin’, Giddy? Hey, do ya , boy?”
He’s a real good dog, my Gideon is. Call it a cliché if you must, but these fourteen years my yellow Lab has been this old man’s best friend. More than any two-legged creature I know, Giddy understands fidelity ain’t only what comes outa fancy stereo speakers. This dog would lay down and die for me if he believed that’s what I was askin’ of him. ‘Course I’d never ask that of a companion what’s meant so much for so long. That fidelity thing, well, it goes two ways, you know. And there ain’t much left besides my Giddy I can truly call my own.
“Ain’t that right, boy? There’s a good dog ...”
Yeah, he’s old, I know that, and probably not long for the world. I try not to think about that ‘cause I’ve suffered more than my share of loneliness. Since Mattie passed on I could do a chapter or two on solitude, ‘specially livin’ in Jasper’s north woods by ol’ Fossil Lake. When the snow flies in Jasper you may not see a living soul for weeks on end, and those whisperin’ pines offer up their own brand of seclusion. But I won’t bore you with no sob stories, being fortunate to live so many years with one fine woman. Ol’ Gid, he misses her too, that’s a fact. More than one occasion I found him whimpering in his corner after sniffing around Mattie’s side of the bed.
“Yeah, Giddy. I know, I know. I loved her too.”
Now, Gideon’s being a Labrador, what he knows best to do is fetch. That can mean anything and ever’thing he finds ‘long the lakeside, if you know the retrieving ways of canines. He certainly recollected enough from back when we two hunted quail before my damned arthritis kicked in. It ain’t unusual for this dog to bring into my cabin some dead sparrow or maybe a ‘coon he’s discovered sloshing inside my trash. So, one afternoon he carries in what I believed were a dead squirrel. ‘Cept the damned thing weren’t dead, not dead at all, and once out of Gideon’s jaw that rodent near tore my place apart, darting about the cabin like some creature possessed. But I couldn’t reprimand my dog, not when he was merely followin’ what instinct God give him. Fact is, in the midst of the chaos that squirrel caused before it finally crashed through my front window to freedom, in the midst of all that, I laughed ‘til I was near hoarse. For the good time he provided that day, Gideon earned himself a steak dinner. Understand, laughter don’t come ‘round too often, so these days I take it wherever I find it. Gideon, he’s got this knack of fetching me a good many smiles.
“But then a few weeks ago you brung in somethin’ just plain crazy, didn’t you, boy ...?”
“What you got there, pal?” I asked when Giddy delivered his bounty right at my toes. At first I’m thinking here’s just some discarded piece of rubbish ‘cause it weren’t alive nor moving. But when I give her a closer inspection my blood near froze.
It was a bone. A large bone. All intact, too, like maybe someone’s arm or what used to be an arm but with no hand ‘tached. ‘Course, if it was an arm that meant it were human. So I asked, “‘Where’d y
ou find this, boy?’”
His tail’s wild motion indicated Gideon had himself a secret he intended to keep.
That was the end of it, or so I thought. Don’t ask me why, but I decided to hold on to that shank of bone, believing I’d discover just where it come from if I did. So I put it in my freezer like last winter’s supply of venison, not really certain what else to do with it. I might’ve forgot about it entirely had Gideon not kept sniffin’ around where I’d placed it, as if that animal known more than he was letting on. But the Lord, He chose to keep most of his creatures inarticulate, and at least for the time being I decided to include myself in that particular category. See, I’d no intentions sharing Gideon’s find with no one, and since no one was pretty much who I talked to in Jasper, that presented no headaches.
Next day Gideon brings me the second of his gifts, his tail in full spin like he had some revved up motor inside his ass. Dropping this new treasure again at my feet, he’s jumping all over me to assure I give his latest discovery the once over right then and there. There was no denying it now. This latest chunk of remains was once someone’s hand, five fingers all present and accounted for, but the meat on them digits had been licked clean.
Human ...
“Is this the Twelve Days of Christmas, then?” I asked my companion. only half joking. Evidently Giddy had been to a spot near the lake he knew and remembered well. I carried that skeletal hand over to the freezer, held it against the first bony chunk Gideon had retrieved.
“My furry friend, I do believe we have ourselves a match.”
Sometimes a man finds himself doing what he knows others would consider more than a little odd. But a man what lives alone long as I have, he learns how his instincts owe damn little to what other folks might think. I pulled my nail gun from the shelf, dug out a couple of long thin pegs that wouldn’t do much bone splinterin’, and I fastened them two bony bastards together at the wrist. Laugh if you want, but I always like to sing while I work ‘cause it takes the edge off that moment.
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