"Judgment has already begun," she said. Her voice sent a shiver through him, as if a thousand people had just marched over his grave. He would have sworn had he not known better it was his mother speaking. But he knew that could not be. She'd been dead more than twenty-five years.
The rider tossed the cloth onto the rope near the stake. The fire made the sound of wind pressing against a door as it traveled up the rope, looped over the branch, and plummeted down to the noose. Campbell's hair erupted first, then his shirt. Within a heartbeat, his entire upper body was a torch. Ezekiel could see his open mouth through the flames, watched his body shake and shudder, saw the thin log being knocked to the ground.
The woman's rope caught a second later, another cloth tossed onto it. Unlike Campbell, she made no sound. Her body was still, motionless as the flames ravaged her. An empty shell, delivered into Hell. Where its occupant had gone he had no clue.
Ezekiel knew he'd been wrong. Even enveloped in flames, the rope was plenty strong. Same for the tree limb. And the stake. He watched Campbell's body jerk and twist, watched the fire consume it. Recognized the smell of kerosene and roasting flesh. He tried to close his eyes, but couldn't get them to shut. He felt compelled to face it, compelled to accept that he'd done nothing to stop it. The fact he couldn't have was no comfort. He imagined the painful sensations in his chest to be his soul sagging under the crush of guilt, found himself wishing for the first time ever that he was a slave again. He wondered what he'd done to be singled out for such a horrible punishment as that, one worse than he just witnessed. He knew now for certain these men would not harm him, though he found himself praying they would, praying for any outcome that would not leave him with these thoughts and nothing else. It was as if God had smote this man in the cruelest way conceivable, simply to prove Ezekiel had been wrong about everything he'd ever believed.
The men waited for the hanging bodies to burn out before dumping what was left of the kerosene over the boy and the woman they'd shot. They lit them on fire, then rode off, whipping their horses into a gallop. The man who'd been bitten was the slowest, trailing behind. Ezekiel realized he was in more pain than he had wanted the others to know.
The sun was setting. Ezekiel supposed he should ride into town, tell the Sheriff. That was what he was there for, he knew. To bear witness, to tell everyone what had happened, and why. To let the world know this was not a crime, not a slaughter, but an act of justice. To send a warning.
He tugged his mount back toward his own land instead, shaking and uncertain, the woman's last words echoing through his head.
Judgment has already begun.
His mother's words mixed with those as he glanced one more time in the direction of the departing riders, the last one looking unsteady in the saddle, still hunched over and in pain as he shrunk in the distance. Somehow he knew she'd been right, that somehow, some way, her words were coming to pass. Once it got in the blood, that's when mankind would feel God's wrath.
He stared at the ground, then peered a final time in the direction of the riders, saw the last man crest a hill. The straggler, the man still favoring his arm. The man who'd been bit by a creature more animal than child, the glow of the devil in its eyes.
Knowing was better than not knowing, something he'd never doubted, something he'd always been sure of. But in a part of his soul he rarely listened to, the one untouched by things like pride, he wondered if he might have been wrong about that, too.
Hank Schwaeble is a thriller writer and attorney living in Houston, Texas. Hank's debut novel, Damnable, won the Bram Stoker Award for best first novel. The sequel, Diabolical, is scheduled for release in the summer of 2011.
A graduate of the University of Florida and Vanderbilt Law School, Hank is also a former Air Force officer and special agent for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. He was a distinguished graduate from the Air Force Special Investigations Academy, graduated first in his class from the Defense Language Institute's Japanese Language Course, and was an editor of the law review at Vanderbilt where he won several American Jurisprudence Awards.
Hank is an active member of the Horror Writers Association and the International Thriller Writers Association. In addition to reading and writing, Hank enjoys martial arts, keeping in shape and playing guitar.
—DRIVING DEEP INTO THE NIGHT
by Harrison Howe
The shadows twitched in the hall leading to Sherry's room.
The room itself, as still as a held breath, as silent as a tear slipped down a pale cheek. Nothing there to speak of Sherry's fight against the sadness that overwhelmed her life. It resided even in her hollow smiles when she greeted those who came to her door. Then, the memory of a breath, stirring the air in the hidden world of Sherry's room.
She called out.
Dev stepped onto the porch and knocked softly. He took a deep breath, like an Olympian diver on the end of the board, hands clenching around the bunched stems of a dozen cellophane-wrapped roses. He knocked again. Then he turned the knob, opened the door and stepped into the small house.
Sherry's breath seemed to stir the air, her scent on his nose hairs. How many times had he drifted down this dark place, knocking on her door, pressing himself into her curves, feeling every pore on her skin and bud on her tongue?
But tonight was different. Tonight it was as if she were calling to him, drawing him to that room. He couldn't recall having intentions to come here tonight; one moment he was on his way home from work, the next he was in the floral shop with just enough cash in his back pocket to cover the cost of twelve long-stemmed roses.
The cellophane crackled between his fingers. Rose petals swirled past his knees. Thorns pricked at his fingers, drawing blood.
She seemed to be here, right in front of him, drawing him through the threshold and down the hall. She oozed from the dark pockets in the corners, lightless patches that appeared to hold the very essence of her. Her voice curled into his ear canal. But not his name. Never his name. She never wanted names.
But tonight he would tell her. He would slip it into her ear while they lay together. Tonight was love.
Heads turned when Dev stepped into the room.
Sherry said:
There's no names in this room. Only me. I'm Sherry. Sweet like wine. Taste like wine. You'll get drunk on me, but I don't need your name. You keep it. There are no names in my room. I hear names and it's over. You get your money back and you go. I love you when you're here, you love me when you're here, but you go when you're done. And don't touch the pictures in the hall.
Howard watched the house, dropping cruller crumbs onto the mound of his belly. Sugar sparkled on his lips. His leg jerked, the way it always did when he was nervous, rubbing against the steering wheel. He practiced in the rearview mirror.
"I love you."
"I love you."
"I love you."
He sounded lame and desperate, silly and sincere, but he hadn't had much time for practice. He couldn't even recall driving here. It seemed one moment he'd been home, half-asleep in front of the TV, and the next he was in his car.
He looked in the rearview mirror and said, "I love you." Maybe she would smile. Maybe she would say she loved him, too. Maybe that was why it felt like she was calling out to him without even knowing his name, just her voice reaching out to him, only him. Was that love? Howard thought it must be.
No one did the things she did to him. You had to love someone to do that.
He was forty-six years old and had never known love. He lived with his mother in his childhood home, slept in the same bed he'd wet as a child, the same bed he'd sprawled on to read comic books, the same bed in the same spot under the window for over four decades. If you moved the bed the paint on the wall behind it would be lighter than the rest of the room; the bed's feet leaving divots in the rug, maybe worn all the way through the carpet to the floorboards beneath. Forty years of water marks that slipped in past the sill and left tracks down to the baseboard.
>
He finished the cruller and got out of the car before he'd even swallowed it, wiping sticky sugar granules from his fingertips. He was sweating though it was cold.
"I love you."
He left his wallet in the console. Tonight there would be no money. Tonight was love.
"My name is Howard," he whispered. "I love you, Sherry."
In the dark, he thought he heard her answer. Bellowing her name, he charged the house.
Framed faces stared sadly from their places on the hallway walls. Sherry would say these were her "heroes". None of her visitors knew what she meant. Sometimes she smiled when she said it, a wistful twist of the mouth, eyes downcast. No one knew who was in the pictures. In some there were kids; in others, adults. Maybe Sherry had the man's eyes, the woman's slope of forehead. She's on a porch with a young man, arm linked in his. They are happy. A thousand questions, but no one asked. Sometimes Sherry would run her fingers lightly over the photos as she led them to her room. Sometimes she'd be crying.
"We're sorry, the customer you are trying to reach is not in service. Please—"
Phil snapped his phone shut and tossed it onto the passenger seat, next to the gift box the saleswoman had wrapped for him. He was almost there, anyway. She had her phone disconnected, so what. She would be there. She was always there, in that room at the end of the hall. She'd meet him at the front door and they'd go down the hall—too narrow to walk side-by-side, her in front, reaching behind to lead him by the hand—and into her room. Sherry's room. Blood surged in his veins.
He told Jenny he'd be right back, just going to the store for baby formula, and some part of him seemed to believe that's exactly where he had been headed, but before he knew it he was traveling east, toward Sherry's house.
He couldn't catch a green light along the Boulevard.
The night carried her to him: the smell of her, the sound of her. If she knew his name, he imagined he'd hear it now, his name in her voice. The thought aroused him, and so he pushed harder on the gas pedal.
He strummed his fingertips against the steering wheel, chanting "Fuck fuck fuck" every time a light turned from yellow to red. "Fuck fuck fuck."
She would be there. She was always there.
Tonight she had to be there.
Tonight he was going to make her his. He'd profess; propose, if he had to. The night lay heavy with possibility, almost a tangible thing, like a wool blanket or a thick overcoat. Tonight he'd tell her his name and he'd make her his.
He flipped open his cell, dialed her number.
"We're sorry, the customer you are—"
Sherry's room is shadows. It holds her in its walls; the feel of her melded into the paint, the trace of her footprints in the rug, the smell of her sex on the sheets, of her blood in the air. Sherry's room is empty, yet it is not still.
There were a few diamond rings on the dresser, glinting like razors scattered in the sun. Her clothes—expensive gifts, Sherry never had to buy her own clothes—were strewn around the room, draped on the bedposts and along the floor. One middle-aged man with a graying goatee and a thin, sharp nose was holding a sequined shirt in his hands and pressing his face into it, sucking up her scent. Weeping.
"Where is she?" Dev asked. The man who had opened the door for him just stared blankly, a gun dangling in one hand, his eyes red-rimmed.
"Not here," the goateed man said, lifting his face from her garments. His voice was flat. He kept staring at a dark spot on Sherry's wall.
Dev took some wilted flowers out of the vase by her bedside, unwrapped the cellophane from his, and put them inside. Petals lay strewn across the top of the night table. Already his roses looked droopy; they'd be dead by morning.
There was another man, kneeling by the bed as if in prayer, face pressed to bloody sheets.
The goateed man cried out Sherry's name.
Dev spun, snatched the gun from the hand of the man who had let him in, stuck the barrel in his mouth, and blew all thoughts of Sherry out through the top of his head.
Howard wept, pressing cruller-scented fingers to his eyelids. He said, "Why?" over and over again. No one would love him the way she did. No one. He wept until it seemed his eyes would melt. Then he stumbled down the narrow hall, shoulders brushing against Sherry's pictures. They swayed on their hooks.
He found the kitchen. The knife drawer.
He carried what he took from the drawer back to Sherry's room. It seemed right, it seemed just, somehow, that he do it there. He was still crying when he gutted himself on the floor beside her bed.
A sigh filled Sherry's room; a whisper of satisfaction. Her name caressed the air.
Phil let his gift, forgotten, tumble from his hands to the floor. The person he had been trying to reach was not here, not anywhere. He stood in her room, ignoring the others who ran their hands over her things, cried for her, stared off into space as if watching her undress once more. His mouth worked but no sound came.
He went to her closet, her clothes hung on misshapen wire hangers. He found a hook with a dozen belts hanging from it. He took them down, strung some together and hung himself from the light over Sherry's bed. He choked and gasped for nearly ten minutes, his shoe soles tangling in bloody sheets, plaster dust drifting down like autumn snow.
Sherry's room lay empty. Just shadows like the thoughts of her, smeared on the walls. Soft echoes of her memory in the wallboard, the rug, the bedposts. From the bloody razor on her nightstand, to the stains on the worn carpet on either side of the bed, to the dried tears streaked into the pillowcases.
Nothing moved. In the hall, her heroes stared down like stern fathers over misbegotten sons, smudges of her trailing fingerprints on the glass.
Sherry's voice faded. Rose petals curled like dead spiders atop her dresser. A dozen voices cried out for her, and then the room, satiated, fell silent. For a brief moment, there was only the fading light of Sherry's hidden worlds, and then that, too, was gone.
Harrison Howe came wailing into the world 45 years ago (and hopes to be much quieter when he leaves it), perhaps intent on having his voice heard right from the start. He is the author of R.I.P., a YA zombie novella published by Coscom Entertainment, 2009, and a dark poetry collection, THE VOICE OF HIS BROTHER'S BLOOD: CRYING, eTreasures Publishing, 2006, which became available in print and to Kindle readers in 2008. He has published numerous short stories and poems in various print and online publications. He is also the editor of DARKNESS ON THE EDGE: Tales Inspired by the Songs of Bruce Springsteen, which was released in early 2010 by PS Publishing.
Harrison currently resides in North Carolina with his incredibly supportive wife, two children, and what could unofficially be the world's oldest living beta fish.
—IN THE RED
by Charles Colyott
It comes in fits and spasms, erupting across the pages in droplets and sprays. Points intermingle into lines and curves. Lines and curves intertwine into symbols the mind transforms into sounds. Symbols gather and align, changing from sounds to ideas.
It is a kind of magic, really, when you stop to think about it. . .
***
Everyone wants to know how it started. Well, it began like this—standing at the mail box, I opened the letter and read the short, form response. Sadly, it said, Forizons Magazine had to pass on my story.
I thought of the piece and ran through it in my mind; was the magic somehow incomplete? I closed my eyes and saw each word. Each part of the formula was whole—everything was correct and perfect.
It was a simple thing to crumple the paper. I threw it into the ditch by the mailbox and walked away. When someone's job is to pass judgment upon the work of others, they lose their own magic. I don't write for them. Their corporate mindsets and their soulless publications don't produce art. They smother it and kill it and dance around its grave.
They only buy what's safe. I know this. If they'd accepted it, that would only have proved my writing was shit.
***
I did not t
ell Maureen. Her broken record nagging was feeble and tiresome long before it ever left her mouth.
There was no art in that woman at all. . .not back then, at least.
She sat there at her table, leaning over her new presentation with a rogue strand of hair in her eyes, her hands stained with smears of paint; I felt nothing but a sort of numb disgust.
Tomorrow she would roll up her clean lines and sanitized colors. She would slip the fruits of her labors in a cardboard tube. In time, it would be the backdrop for some corporate hack's mind control ad program to sell more toothpaste or detergent or—god forbid—feminine hygiene products.
The checks, she said, cashed just the same.
And we're back to that again.
'Why won't you just talk to them?' she'd say.
'With practice you could write reams of ad copy in your sleep,' she'd say.
Ever wonder why they call it 'copy,' I'd say.
I am not a copier, I'd say.
I am a revolutionary.
I write from my soul.
'Your soul doesn't pay the bills,' she'd say.
And, right on schedule, she'd turn away, maybe knock some of her paint over for emphasis, and stomp off to the bed room.
I don't have to tell you that she slams the door, do I? You hear it in your head even though the words aren't there.
That's part of the magic.
***
Years ago, on Maureen's advice, I joined a writer's group. She'd gotten the idea from some marketing book somewhere. Not only was it valuable to share and critique each other's work, she said, but it was a tool for promotion. As if sitting in the cafe of some chain store, once a month, circle-jerking with these morons was time well spent.
One of the first pearls of wisdom I received from them was 'Know your audience'. Looking around the group, I knew enough to know that this wasn't it—an obese, pink-haired old nag with a penchant for syrupy romance stories, an ill-kempt professor type with hair jutting out discordantly from his scalp and a shirt tail always just escaping the wooly prison of his giant fuzzy sweater (he wrote shitty, masturbatory poetry, of course), and a large-breasted soccer mom with twin interests in young adult fiction and our rumpled professor's disheveled old cock.
Horror Library, Volume 4 Page 9
