by Jim Butcher
“I didn’t do anything to any kid, asshole. You’re fucking crazy, and I’m going to call the cops to throw your goddamn ass in prison or the psych ward.” He was on the offense now and he was snarling, spittle flecking his lips, down to the level of the dogs he made out of stupid bullies. It was a mistake. Snakes are calm, cold. They can be lethal. Not Dirty Harry here, but in general.
“Those kids,” I said, ignoring him. “Skinny, small kids—the kind that bullies see as weak and vulnerable. Those kids with black hair, miserable smiles, they reminded me of your son.”
“My son?” Stunned and worried for the first time since I’d showed up. Mouth hanging open, he sucked in a breath and another; then he questioned in a milder, more calculating tone, “What about my son? You don’t know him. You don’t know anything about him.”
“Shane Callahan.” I reached into my jacket pocket and pitched the last paper at him. I’d printed it off the Internet when I’d been in the library. “Nope, I don’t know him. Nobody knows Shane now. Being dead doesn’t make for an active social life. But I do know about him.”
The article said it all. Seventeen years ago, the coach’s kid runs away, steals his dad’s car, and drives it to Louisville, a city a few hours away. He’s fourteen but no one notices. He doesn’t get pulled over. He ends up at his aunt’s house, saying his dad is too strict. They don’t get along. They fight all the time. It read as “fight” meaning “argue,” but knowing Coach and seeing the picture of his son, in appearance a member of the society of the other dead kids, it was plain that “fight” was “fight.” Add to that the physical difference in size, and “fight” was “my dad beats the living shit out of me.”
Sweet Auntie May, or whatever her name was, didn’t kick him to the curb, but only because she didn’t let him in the house. She slammed the door in his face. Louisville’s a big city. Interstates and overpasses everywhere. Shane had jumped off one of those overpasses into the speeding cars below. He was hit by five of them before the traffic managed to come to a halt. In a coma for a week before he died. A week after jumping that far and being mowed down by five cars . . . Who could say all those bruises and shattered bones didn’t come from that, or if they hadn’t covered up older bruises and breaks? He would’ve been blotched purple and black from head to toe, held together by wire and glue.
“Without Shane around, your toy too broken to glue back together, you had to get new toys. Being a teacher gave you easy access to the toy store. You could even get toys that were like your first and favorite toy. Then what was once tension release became a genuine hobby.
“And now here we are.” I smiled wide, wider, wide enough to wrap around my head, identical to what I’d seen through my kitchen window when I’d been five.
“You don’t understand. . . . You don’t know what stress is like.” He was inching back on his ass as I let my eyes flood red. The shade of freshly spilled arterial blood, I knew. I’d checked in the mirror once or twice.
“I understand,” I assured him, and I felt my gums split and the row of teeth, hundreds and hundreds of bright silver needles, drop through to cover my human ones. “Shane and I, we both have our daddy issues.”
He pissed himself, but there was none of the usual “What— What— What.” They didn’t often get past that to “are you?” Coach didn’t manage a “what.” Didn’t manage a single word. And the snake in him had curled up to hide. It was what it was: a disappointment. It was that jock asshole all over again. A waste of potential entertainment. Predator against predator—that was entertaining. Predator against a bug, and now predator against what I’d thought was a snake but was merely an ill-tempered worm—that was not. I went ahead to provide assistance in getting this show over with.
“Remember when you were a kid?” I asked. It came out as a hiss. When the lion, all of him, came out, I couldn’t pass for human any longer. “How your parents told you the bogeyman would come out from under your bed or slide out of your closet and gobble you up if you didn’t eat your veggies? If you didn’t stop pushing around kids smaller than you? If you weren’t a goood boy?”
I prowled down the steps. “You should’ve listened to them. They weren’t wrong. And you are not a goood boy.” The hiss shifted into the shattering of glass and broken shards ringing against each other. “And I’m your personal bogeyman.” I was on him now, close enough for his panting breath to mingle with mine. I could smell the mint of his toothpaste; the fear flowing from each pore in a waterfall of sweat; the ammonia of where he’d jacked off after instead of before he showered; the fresh, bright tang of blood from where he’d bitten his tongue and gnawed at the inside of his lip, shredding it. “Coooach.” He wouldn’t meet my eyes, wouldn’t look at my face.
“Coooach,” I repeated, the title becoming the metal warp and tearing of a car crash, “be a goood boy. I like goood boys.”
I patted his cheek as he began to cry. It was inevitable, the crying.
“Coooach, telll meeee . . .”
I gave him one last pat, almost cheerful in its reassurance.
“Where do you keep your shovel?”
He didn’t try to run. He did try to crawl across the avocado green living-room carpet, as god-awful as the urine color of the stairs. He’s packed on more weight than I’d guessed, I thought as I dragged him with one hand around his neck through the house, toward the garage.
What a chore.
I could’ve shot him. Broken his neck. Torn open his throat. Gated him a hundred feet up in the sky and watched him fall as his son fell. But I didn’t. I thought about all the graves dug because of him. I thought of lonely kids taking their lonely lives or having them taken from them, and how they were in those graves. I wondered whether they were lonely there. I didn’t know. I thought Coach should have the chance to find out. It was the best way of fixing what he’d done over and over, and what I hadn’t done years ago.
I dug the grave and put him in it.
I buried him.
Alive.
Then I waited by it in case the snake inside him woke up, tried to worm and wind its way out through the soil. I was curious, too. Could you hear screams from six feet under? I’d wrapped him in plastic that I’d found in the garage with the shovel. I didn’t want one scream filling his mouth and airway with dirt, asphyxiating him in minutes. Kid killers don’t get off that easily. I didn’t hear anything, though, and he was screaming. That was unavoidable. The stench of terror on him, even through the plastic, had been profound when I’d kicked his wrapped body into the grave. Welcome to the other side. The boy you drowned. I was willing to bet he had felt the same terror.
It was a long night. I played solitaire on my phone. Marked Mr. C. off my list. Added that new word I’d learned to a file. I was a monster, but I tried to be an educated one. Now and then. Yeah, it was a damn long and boring night when I could’ve taken two seconds, shot the son of a bitch, and been home. I didn’t regret it. Slow suffocation wasn’t a comfortable way to die, but Mr. C. had earned it. Earned his own long night of screaming, and when the air finally ran out, he’d earned that agonizing trip into the infinitely longer night.
No, I didn’t mind the lost hours.
I didn’t regret not choosing one of the other ways to make him pay.
One with my gut and instinct, I felt good.
I felt certain.
I felt right.
And this time . . .
I didn’t change my mind.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Kevin J. Anderson isn’t always serious. Yes, he has published 130 books, fifty-four of which have been national or international bestsellers. He has more than twenty-three million copies in print in thirty languages. He has won or been nominated for numerous awards, and he’s best known for giant science fiction or fantasy epics such as his Dune or Hellhole novels with Brian Herbert, or his Saga of Seven Suns or Terra Incognita books. They told
him he couldn’t be stupid, but he proved them wrong with the Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I., series. He has published four full novels in the series—Death Warmed Over, Unnatural Acts, Hair Raising, and Slimy Underbelly—and numerous short stories (many collected in Working Stiff), all featuring a detective who is back from the dead and back on the case. He intends to resurrect the character yet again for a new novel.
Erik Scott de Bie is a thirtysomething speculative fiction author, game designer, hand-to-hand combat enthusiast, and all-around geek. He has published novels in the storied Forgotten Realms, his World of Ruin epic fantasy setting (Shadow of the Winter King, Shield of the Summer Prince, and the forthcoming Mask of the Blood Queen) through Dragonmoon Press, as well as for Broken Eye Books (Scourge of the Realm) and the Ed Greenwood Group, aka Onder Librum (Hellmaw: Blind Justice, Storm Raven, among others). His short work has appeared in numerous anthologies and online, and he is the author of the multimedia superhero project Justice/Vengeance (including fiction, spoken word, and comics), of which Vivienne Cain is one of the title characters. In his work as a game designer, he has contributed to products from such companies as Wizards of the Coast and Privateer Press, and he is a lead creative consultant on Red Aegis from Vorpal Games. He is also entirely too tall. Check out his Web site, erikscottdebie.com; he can also be found at facebook.com/erik.s.debie, and on Twitter: @erikscottdebie.
Jim C. Hines is the author of more than fifty published short stories and a dozen fantasy novels, the first of which was Goblin Quest, the humorous tale of a nearsighted goblin runt and his pet fire-spider. Actor and author Wil Wheaton described the book as “too f***ing cool for words,” which is pretty much the best blurb ever. After finishing the goblin trilogy, he went on to write the Princess series of fairy tale retellings, followed by the Magic ex Libris books, a modern-day fantasy series about a magic-wielding librarian, a dryad, a secret society founded by Johannes Gutenberg, a flaming spider, and an enchanted convertible. He’s also the author of the Fable Legends tie-in Blood of Heroes. Jim is an active blogger about topics ranging from sexism and harassment to zombie-themed Christmas carols, and won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 2012. He has an undergraduate degree in psychology and a master’s in English, and lives with his wife and two children in mid-Michigan. You can find him online at jimchines.com.
Tanya Huff lives in rural Ontario, Canada, with her wife, Fiona Patton, two dogs, and, as of last count, nine cats. Her thirty novels and seventy-five short stories include horror, heroic fantasy, urban fantasy, comedy, and space opera. She’s written four essays for BenBella’s pop-culture collections and the occasional book review for the Globe and Mail. Her Blood series was turned into the twenty-two-episode Blood Ties, and writing episode nine allowed her to finally use her degree in Radio & Television Arts. Her latest novel was a new Torin Kerr book, Peacekeepers 1: An Ancient Peace (2015), and her next will be Peacekeepers 2: A Peace Divided (2017). She can be found on Twitter @TanyaHuff and on Facebook as Tanya Huff, and she occasionally blogs at andpuff.livejournal.com. Four collections of her short stories as well as six of her older novels are available pretty much wherever e-books are sold.
Seanan McGuire writes a lot of things, including two ongoing urban fantasy series (October Daye and InCryptid), uncounted works of short fiction, and everything published under the name “Mira Grant.” She lives in California in a crumbling old farmhouse that she shares with her enormous Maine Coons and her collection of creepy dolls. When not home, she can be found at conventions, comic book stores, and Disney Parks. We’re still not sure where that last one came from. Seanan regularly claims to be the vanguard of an invading race of alien plant people, and has thus far given little reason for people to doubt her on the matter. Keep up with her at seananmcguire.com, or on Twitter as @seananmcguire.
Kat Richardson is the bestselling author of the Greywalker novels, as well as a small tantrum of short fantasy, science fiction, and mystery stories. She is an accomplished feeder of crows.
Web sites: katrichardson.com and greywalker.com
Facebook: facebook.com/Kat.Richardson.Writer
Twitter: @katrchrdsn
G+: plus.google.com/111032806480382192972
International bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes under a variety of pen names, from Kris Nelscott in mystery to Kristine Grayson in romance and several others, and is a decorated writer in fiction. In 2015 alone, she won the Anlab award for Best Science Fiction Short Story, given by the readers of Analog magazine, for her short story “Snapshots.” Her novel The Enemy Within won a Sidewise Award for Best Alternate History (long form). Her novel Street Justice, written under her Kris Nelscott pen name, was nominated for a Shamus Award for Best Paperback Original Private Eye Novel. She published a lot of books in 2015, finishing her bestselling, award-winning Anniversary Day Saga in June, and publishing three books in the Interim Fates series under her Kristine Grayson pen name. She also takes part in the quarterly Uncollected Anthology of urban fantasy fiction, published online. In 2016 Baen Books published Women of Futures Past: Classic Stories, a highly anticipated anthology featuring stories by the women of science fiction. With John Helfers, she has edited The Best Short Mysteries of the Year through Kobo Books. The inaugural volume has just appeared. Along with her husband, Dean Wesley Smith, she acts as series editor for a bimonthly anthology magazine, Fiction River. To find out more about her work, please go to kristine kathrynrusch.com and sign up for her newsletter.
Lucy A. Snyder is a four-time Bram Stoker Award–winning writer and the author of the novels Spellbent, Shotgun Sorceress, and Switchblade Goddess. She also authored the nonfiction book Shooting Yourself in the Head for Fun and Profit: A Writer’s Survival Guide and the story collections While the Black Stars Burn, Soft Apocalypses, Orchid Carousals, Sparks and Shadows, and Installing Linux on a Dead Badger. Her writing has been translated into French, Italian, Russian, Czech, and Japanese editions and has appeared in publications such as Apex Magazine, Nightmare magazine, Pseudopod, Strange Horizons, Steampunk World, In the Court of the Yellow King, Shadows Over Main Street, Qualia Nous, Seize the Night, Scary out There, and Best Horror of the Year, vol. 5. She writes a column for Horror World and has written materials for the D6xD6 role-playing game system. In her day job, she edits online college courses for universities worldwide and occasionally helps write educational games. Lucy lives in Columbus, Ohio, and is a mentor in Seton Hill University’s MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction. You can learn more about her at lucysnyder.com and you can follow her on Twitter at @LucyASnyder.
Fantasy author Anton Strout was born in the Berkshire Hills, mere miles from writing heavyweights Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, and currently lives in the haunted corn maze that is New Jersey (where nothing paranormal ever really happens, he assures you).
He is the author of the Simon Canderous urban fantasy detective series and the Spellmason Chronicles for Ace, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Anton is also the scribbler of short, mad tales published in a variety of anthologies.
The Once & Future Podcast is his latest project, where he endeavors as Curator of Content to bring authors to listeners’ ear holes one damned episode at a time.
In his scant spare time, he is a writer, a sometimes actor, sometimes musician, occasional RPGer, and the world’s most casual and controller-smashing video gamer. He currently works in the exciting world of publishing and, yes, it is as glamorous as it sounds.
Rob Thurman is the New York Times bestselling author of the gritty urban fantasy series the Cal Leandros Novels: Nightlife, Moonshine, Madhouse, Deathwish, Roadkill, Blackout, Doubletake, Slashback, Downfall, Nevermore; the contemporary fantasy series the Trickster Novels: Trick of the Light and The Grimrose Path; the technothrillers Chimera and its sequel, Basilisk; and the paranormal thriller All Seeing Eye. The author is also included in anthologies such as Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner’s Wolfsbane and Mistletoe; Martin H. Greenber
g and Russell Davis’s Courts of the Fey; and Faith Hunter and Kalayna Price’s Kicking It. For sample chapters of all books, videos, and downloadable wallpaper, or to contact the author, see robthurman.net.
ABOUT THE EDITORS
Jim Butcher is the author of the Dresden Files, the Codex Alera, and a new steampunk series, the Cinder Spires. His résumé includes a laundry list of skills that were useful a couple of centuries ago, and he plays guitar quite badly. An avid gamer, he plays tabletop games in varying systems, a variety of video games on PC and console, and LARPs whenever he can make time for it. Jim currently resides mostly inside his own head, but his head can generally be found in his hometown of Independence, Missouri.
Jim goes by the moniker Longshot in a number of online locales. He came by this name in the early 1990s, when he decided he would become a published author. Usually only three in one thousand who make such an attempt actually manage to become published; of those, only one in ten make enough money to call it a living. The sale of a second series was the breakthrough that let him beat the long odds against attaining a career as a novelist. All the same, he refuses to change his nickname.
Kerrie L. Hughes has edited fourteen anthologies in addition to Shadowed Souls; these include Maiden Matron Crone, Children of Magic, Fellowship Fantastic, Dimension Next Door, Gamer Fantastic, Zombie Raccoons and Killer Bunnies, A Girl’s Guide to Guns and Monsters, Love and Rockets, and Westward Weird with DAW; Chicks Kick Butt with TOR; and Hex in the City, Alchemy & Steam, and Haunted with Fiction River. She has published eleven short stories: “Judgment” in Haunted Holidays; “Geiko” in Women of War; “Doorways” in Furry Fantastic; “Travelers Guide” in The Valdemar Companion; “Bog Bodies” in Haunting Museums; “Pennyroyal” in The Courts of the Fey; “Corvidae” in The Beast Within 2; “World Building: Magic Systems” in Eighth Day Genesis: A Worldbuilding Codex for Writers and Creatives; “Do Robotic Cats Purr in Space” in Bless Your Mechanical Heart; “Give a Girl a Sword” in Chicks and Balances; and “Healing Home” in Crucible: All-New Tales of Valdemar. She has also cowritten with her husband, John Helfers, “Between a Bank and a Hard Place” in Texas Rangers; “The Last Ride of the Colton Gang” in Boot Hill; “The Tombstone Run” in Lost Trails; “Bucking the Tiger” in Risk Takers; and “’Til Death Do Us Part” in Last Stand. Kerrie has also been a contributing editor on two concordances: The Vorkosigan Companion and The Valdemar Companion. You can follow her at geekgirlgoddess.com, on Twitter as @kerrielhughes, and on Facebook using her full name, Kerrie Lynn Hughes.
