by John Everson
It crackled well in the fire. As the fire tackled the binding, it gave off a high pitched wail.
The evil little book is screaming, Gretta thought with a smile.
Just reward.
Another Donaldson title was in the bag. The Real Story. It seemed to be about some outer space pirate who captured a nice girl, put this thing in her head, and forced her to have sex with him. Perversion! It quickly joined the other Donaldson titles.
EEEEEEEAAAAAAAAHHHHH, the book keened as its pages quickly blackened, curled and died.
Gretta shivered despite the warmth of the room. It really did sound like screaming. Angry screaming. The fire was getting smoky now, and Gretta realized if she didn’t want black spots on the ceiling and ashes drifting through the house, she was going to have to stop feeding it the books.
But what could she do to destroy these evil things?
Revenge, someone whispered.
Gretta shook her head. She was starting to hear things.
Revenge.
There it was again!
“Who’s there?” she called.
Foul, someone else said. This voice was louder, crueler.
Gretta got up and tiptoed to the hall closet. She kept a hatchet there, for when the bushes out front started blocking the walk. If someone was here, it ought to take care of them too. As she hefted the weapon a voice yelled shrilly:
FOUL FUCKING. Fucking. Fuckingfuckingfucking…
The voice seemed to be all around her. Then a whole clamor of voices began taunting:
FOUL REVENGE! FUCKING! FUCKINGFUCKINGFUCK-INGFOUL! REVENGE!
But no one was there. The kitchen was empty, the bedroom empty, the frontroom – just the books on the floor. And a chorus of wicked reedy voices.
TRASH! Trash. Trashtrashtrashtrashtrash.
“Shut Up!” she screamed, brandishing the ax at the empty room. “I’ll show you trash.”
She brought the weapon down on the pile of novels she’d left on the floor earlier. Yes! This was what she needed to destroy these wicked books.
Bitchhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! The voices screamed as the axe bit through the Clive Barker book and into Anne Rice.
You’re a perfect devil, one screeched.
There was no one here, Gretta realized. These books. They were possessed! They were so evil, devils lived in them!
She went to work in earnest, hacking at the pile. Lifting the ax, bringing it down. Something splashed on her hand and she realized the Rice book, cleaved in half by her third stroke, was bleeding. Wiping wet black ink from her fingers, she noticed that all the books she’d chopped were bleeding. As she watched, the ink ran from the pages, trickling and coagulating into dark, evil pools on the floor.
You think you’re a god, Gretta?
This voice was cold, steely. Not like the teasing, angry voices before.
And this one knew her name.
You want a little lesson in literature, Gretta?
“Who are you?” she yelled, turning slowly about the room in a circle.
Something snapped behind her. She twisted around, ax at the ready. One of the books on the kitchen table had flipped open. Its pages were riffling as if caught in a strong wind. And then, as suddenly as it had opened, it slammed shut. She recognized the book now. It was by that horror writer everyone talked about. She’d read some of his stuff before – disgusting filth filled with “fucks” and gore and sex talk.
“You’re murdering the language,” she yelled at the now-still book. Turning towards the living room again she raised the ax once more. “You’re all murdering the language!”
You want a little lesson in literature, Gretta?
The voice was everywhere.
The good guys always win.
The ax lifted from her hands and Gretta was falling. Falling through an inferno of debauchery. Her body recoiled: her stomach heaved, her bowels opened, her head was exploding.
Hands touched her beneath her skirts, men sucking on other men leered at her; women flogging themselves held out their vile instruments for her to take; blood streaked the sky in violent trails; arms, legs, heads rolled between her legs where crimson smeared faces grinned back; adultery, sodomy, disembowelments were performed on her, under her – she was immersed in filth, filth, filth.
A little lesson in literature, Gretta.
Gretta clawed the floor around her in desperation for the ax. If she could only find it again and still the voice.
Sgt. Gates stomped through the little old fashioned kitchen nook, letting the storm door crash shut behind him. He wasn’t too worried about letting in the dawn chill.
“Marty? You in here?” he called.
Lieutenant Marty Weis straightened up from his appraising crouch over the body.
“In here, Jack.”
Gates’ feet echoed heavily on the hardwood floor as he entered the room. He whistled slowly, taking in the view. Blood spattered the walls and floor, where the torso of a wrinkled older woman lay amid a pile of shredded, bloodstained books. One of her arms was near the fireplace. A leg poked out nauseatingly from beneath the couch.
“What the hell happened here?” he asked.
“We got a call from a neighbor around 3:20 this morning saying he was woken up by screams,” Marty explained. “I got here at 3:26. There was no sign of forced entry – no evidence that anyone else had been here. And she’s holding the ax that took off her limbs so tight, I can’t pry it out of her hand. She chopped up these books Jack, and then she chopped up herself.”
Jack Gates whistled again. He’d been on homicide investigations plenty – but this one might well go down as the creepiest. Certainly the bloodiest. There were pages from those books stuck to the ceiling and walls – obviously stuck with the woman’s blood.
“What’s that black stuff on the floor?” he asked, pointing to a deep black stain.
“This?” Marty ran a fingertip through the puddle and held it up for Jack to see. “It’s ink! The fire must have melted it right off some of these books – look.”
He held up a piece of one of the lesser wounded volumes and leafed through the pages. Some were pure white, others had dark smears where there might once have been text lines. “I ain’t never seen the like though,” he admitted ruefully.
Jack shook his head. “Archie and Jim are on their way over to help you finish up. I’m going back to the station. Make sure you guys document everything – I don’t want anyone crying foul on this one.”
He noticed a book on the kitchen table.
“Hey, is that the only novel in the place she didn’t hack up?”
“Looks like it,” Marty replied.
Jack picked up the hardcover copy of Stephen King’s The Shining.
“My kid likes this guy,” Jack mused aloud. “Think I’ll take it home for him.”
He shoved the book into one of the wide pockets in his coat and thumbed back at the body of Gretta Dowler.
“I don’t think she’ll mind,” he grinned, trying to dispel some of the horror from the scene. Marty didn’t laugh.
Jack let the storm door smash shut behind him once more.
This story originally appeared in the last issue of one of my favorite magazines in the mid-‘90s, Dead of Night (“Pumpkin Head” was slated to appear in its next issue, which, sadly, never materialized.) For me, this story was an exercise in trying to take an old horror trope and look at it in a new way. And about those special days that all relationships celebrate. Some of us celebrate things a little differently than others, of course…
Anniversary
argaret looked at the calendar rune and tickled her lips with her tongue. Full moon tonight. She’d been pressing her thighs together in anticipation of this day all month long. Charles only came on the night of the moon, and though her body ached for his visits, she knew that once a month, realistically, was all she could handle. There was so much to prepare for – and so much to recover from, afterward.
She made the bed, called in sick
to work – did anyone notice her sick days always coincided with the phase of the moon? – and went to the closet to find what Charles called her “ice cream” outfit.
“Those guys all think you’re a cone waiting to be licked and caressed,” he’d grin, evilly. “But I know better. You’re a tigeress. And I screeeeeem for you!” He’d howl as he said it and she’d strip out of the skin tight catsuit before letting him lay a hand on her.
“You don’t want to be licking the napkin around your cone, do you?” she’d tease.
Staring at herself in the mirror, she could feel her body starting to sweat and moisten, just thinking about Charles. Her average 34 A-cup breasts looked like 36 Cs in the immodest display of the sheer, deep blue suit, and she knew her butt jiggled tantalizingly as she walked, every dip and tuck bouncing. She was not a well-endowed woman, but she made the best possible use of her assets. Of which, she realized staring at her reflection, her hair was currently not. Charles forbade her a shower on the day of the full moon, and her hair hung in flat, lazy twists across her shoulders. She’d dyed it auburn this month for a change and prayed he’d like it. Running her hands through it in a useless attempt at styling, she decided she’d have to rely on her other allure tricks. Charles wouldn’t allow hairspray, either. Made him sneeze.
At the vanity in the corner of the bedroom she applied a heavy coat of electric red lipstick to match her nails, and lined her eyes in sooty black. She was ready.
First stop was the K-Mart. More than a few graying heads turned her way in shock as she paraded through the white-tiled aisles. To any close stare she was stark naked in a coat of blue spray paint. An old woman stood fingering a fuzzy pink nighty in the underwear department and happened to look up as she passed. The nighty dropped to the floor. “Young lady,” a scratchy high-pitched voice chased her. There was a strong element of chastisement couched in those two simple words. Margaret glanced over her shoulder and flashed a crinkle-eyed look. “You keep your man your way and I’ll keep mine my own way,” she smiled sweetly.
God, she hated people, she thought, picking up a white cotton tank. Confront them with the truth – a human body, un- or thinly veiled – and they went to pieces. Religions had been built on hiding the truth of the human form. Laws had been passed on how it should be shielded and where it could be kissed. Human beings lived in denial of what they were, and she hated them for it. She knew what she was, and she was unashamed.
Shaking her head, she took the cotton tee and matching bottoms, grabbed a box of popcorn, and went to the register. A high school-aged girl with braces and plastic framed glasses rang her up, pausing every few seconds to stare at her chest when she thought Margaret wasn’t paying attention. “Yeah, you’ll have them soon,” she thought wickedly. “And you’ll bind them and hide them and offer them in trade for a chain noosed around your lover’s neck. Happy hookering, hon.”
Striding purposefully from the store, she drove to a park nearby. The sun shone golden bright through the trees as she tossed handfuls of popcorn to the pigeons. They crowded her feet, scrambling over each other in their haste to eat. Others swooped down from the trees periodically, disturbing the complex pecking order of feeding. “Whoever pecks the most ruthlessly rules the dinner table,” she thought, and wondered if she and Charles stood at the top of the food chain.
A pickup pulled into the parking lot a few yards away, and a middle-aged man stepped out. He was maybe 5’6, white, looked like a going-to-seed blue collar. Handleable. With a deliberate stretch, Margaret put her hands on the back of the bench, thrust out her chest, and spread her feet far apart on the ground. Within seconds the man answered the call.
“Mind if I sit down?” a tremulous voice asked. She did her best Madonna. “Sit or spit, I don’t care,” she answered, calculatedly bored. It was best not to act too forward – only look that way. She felt his weight settle onto the end of the bench, but didn’t look at him.
There were only the noises of the scuffling birds for a few moments, and then he tried again.
“Um, my name’s Bill,” he said. She turned to meet his gaze. “Hi Bill.”
“You, uh, come out here and feed the birds a lot?” he pressed on.
“Now and then.”
“Married?” he braved.
“No.”
Quiet again. Probably time to help him a little.
“You want to toss some,” she offered, holding out the bag of popcorn.
His face lit and he slid closer to her.
“Sure.”
It barely took an hour. Bill was an electrician, supposed to be at a job site. But sometimes, he admitted, he came here during lunchtime, looking for “company.” She got the impression he didn’t care what kind, as long as he got off. He let it slip that he was married, while his eyes massaged her chest and crotch guiltily.
“Sometimes,” she said, “I like a little company, too.”
She stretched, put her arm around his shoulder and trailed a nail down his biceps. He stiffened, and then looked at her face in unveiled lust. She leaned over, kissed him, and then stood.
“Want to come back to my place?”
It wasn’t always this easy, but it was never that hard.
She led him by the hand down the stairs through the basement and into a nearly bare room. The walls were black painted cinder block, the floor black tile. A white vinyl couch stood out in violent contrast in the room’s center.
“I like to pretend it’s night when it’s day,” she explained when he looked in dawning fear at the oddly decorated room. His suspicions evaporated when the blood rushed from his head to his cock as she knelt at his feet. She stripped them both, moving her supple body sinuously around his thickening waist and wrinkled rear. Laying him to the couch, she twisted and turned atop him, rubbing every inch of herself on his skin. No baths, and the scent of the man she’d brought him, that was what Charles asked. Smells drove him wild. But she would not let the “other man” enter her. When he began to grow anxious for the act, she slid from the couch and worked him with mouth and hands as his own beefy palms grabbed and kneaded her flesh.
This was always the hardest part for her. Having to touch some disgusting strange man in the unclean places. She was not turned on by this – rarely did she pick up a man to whom she was sexually attracted. But she did this for Charles. She thought of the first time they’d met, when in her forward passion she’d reached inside his jogging pants in the very same park she’d picked Bill up in. Charles had kissed her lightly, and with a firm hand, had pulled her probing fingers from his crotch.
“I can only cum beneath the light of a full moon,” he said softly. She was not convinced – other women just hadn’t been as skilled as her, she thought somewhere deep in her lust-clouded brain. His eyes looked sad as he watched her ego-deflating, vain attempts to prove him wrong. But filled with stubborn pride – and a telling, nagging wetness between her legs – she stuck out her chin and challenged, “Then visit me on the night of the full moon.”
His strong features both grinned and frowned at that invitation. “I will,” he promised.
She laughed inside now at her foolish naivety in extending that offer. She knew he had struggled not to accept – he’d liked her, and knew what would come of such a tryst. But ultimately, he had lost his internal battle. At her doorstep, 8 p.m. on the night of the moon he had appeared, a thin wiry man in a black t-shirt and jeans. He’d brought her roses and asked if she’d reconsidered her invitation. In answer, she’d leaned into his body, inhaling his musky, woodsy, animal scent and inserted her tongue between his lips. In moments, they’d been naked and rutting on the couch in the living room.
Beneath her absent ministrations she felt the warm stream that signaled an end to her duty. As Bill groaned in ecstasy, she reached a hand beneath the vinyl cushions searching for the chain. She needed a new couch, she thought. The cushions were cracked with age and scored with scratches. Her hand grasped what she was looking for. With a fast pull and snap, s
he efficiently cuffed Bill’s right arm to the couch.
“Huh?” he exclaimed and grabbed for her with his free hand. She skipped easily out of his reach, watching in sad amusement as his cock deflated instantly. “What are you doing? Let Me Go!” he ordered in false bravado.
There was fear in his voice, but nothing like the tremors that would shake it as the day wore into night.
“Sorry Bill, but I need you tonight. Get some rest, why don’t you.”
Ignoring his angered yells and curses, she picked up the clothes that littered the floor and left the room. The door clicked shut to leave Bill in blackest darkness. His bellows diminished to murmurs as she climbed the stairs to wait for the night.
When the doorbell rang at eight, Margaret was ready. Dinner was in the fridge, a crisp medley of carrots, spinach, lettuce, onions and other vegetables. The house was spotless – her only means of passing the time between locking up her guests and meeting her lover in the evening was to clean. You could eat off her floors. And maybe they would tonight, she thought entertaining erotic designs. Maybe he would spill the salad across the tile and feed each chopped vegetable to her with his lips.
Her body pulsed with anticipation as she crossed the room to let him in. She wanted this night to be perfect – it was their first anniversary. A carafe of deep ruby wine rested on the coffee table – his favorite vintage. She wore only the thin cotton underwear she’d bought this afternoon.
“Margaret,” he whispered, admiring her near naked figure from the stoop. He held out a bouquet of red roses. She took them and pulled him inside. “Your hair is beautiful,” he complimented, warming her to the bone.
“I need you so bad,” she said, staring up into his face. He had those eyes that shifted, looked green one moment, brown the next. His face was smooth, but sharply drawn. She leaned to kiss him, and in her hurry, caught the roses between their bodies. “Ouch,” she jumped and stepped back. A thorn had pricked her thigh. A thin line of red ran from the puncture to a crimson tear.
