Her baby’s cries echoed through the house, and then ended abruptly.
Her eyes fluttered open briefly at the sudden silence, before falling shut once more. Her mouth watered. Yes, she was tired, but she was also hungry. With this last thought, her stomach growled.
A Note To Readers
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Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I must thank my wife for her unending support. Being a writer is so often a solitary profession, and inspiration strikes unannounced, sometimes requiring me to drop everything to jot a note into my phone, or embarking on a long and arduous research trek through Google and the unending web. She puts up with all of it, and that speaks volumes.
Thanks, also, are owed to my fans for their unwavering support. The generosity shown by readers like Kate Martyniouk and KC Santo, as well all of my other wonderful Patreon supporters, help make my work possible with their monthly pledges.
I also owe a great bit of thanks to Stephanie Embry, who beta read this book. Her encouragement and suggestions helped shape this novel at a crucial moment, and her insights were invaluable.
Shay VanZwoll, owner and operator of EV Proofreading, edited this manuscript and cleaned up an awful lot of my errors. Any mistakes that remain are entirely my fault, I assure you!
Making this entire endeavor look absolutely superb is Kealan Patrick Burke, whose beautiful cover art graces this book. In addition to being an awesome artist, Kealan is also a Bram Stoker Award winning horror author, and he’s funny as hell to boot. The man is an extraordinarily over-gifted threat to us all. Still, I encourage you to check out his books. Sour Candy is a personal favorite and was my first introduction to both his literary chops and his graphic design skills. If you haven’t read his work yet, that novella is a mighty fine place to start.
Finally, many, many thanks to you for reading my work. I hope we meet again soon.
About the Author
Michael Patrick Hicks is the author of the science fiction novels Convergence, an Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award 2013 Quarter-Finalist, and its sequel, Emergence, as well as several horror titles, including his most recent novel, Mass Hysteria.
His work has appeared in several anthologies, and he has written for the websites Graphic Novel Reporter and Audiobook Reviewer, in addition to work as a freelance journalist.
In between compulsively buying books and adding titles that he does not have time for to his Netflix queue, he is hard at work on his next story.
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BONUS STORY
MICHAEL PATRICK HICKS
About Consumption
You Are
Reclusive chef Heinrich Schauer has invited six guests to a blind twelve-course tasting menu.
What You Eat
While snow blankets the isolated Swiss valley surrounding his estate, the guests feast eagerly, challenging one another to guess at the secret tastes plated before them.
This Meat Is Murder
As they eat, each guest is overtaken by carnal appetites, unaware of their host’s savage plans...or of the creature lurking below.
One thing is clear: There is more on the menu than any of them have bargained for.
HEINRICH SCHAUER DREW THE blade across the smooth, silky flesh, his face set with concentration. His eyes were narrowed in focus as the knife’s tip found thick bone, slicing down at an angle and then across, separating the soft tissue. His fingers pressed into the fatty outer layer, holding the meat still, as his blade sliced with surety and carved free a long strip of meat.
Marveling at the ugly creature lying prone before him, Schauer promised that not a bit of it would go to waste. He had a generous menu planned, the courses incomparable to anything he had ever created.
Setting the meat aside, he turned his attention to the network of tentacles along the beast’s flanks. They, too, were smooth, unlike those of, say, an octopus. While it lacked suckers, the heavy musculature was striated into narrow but pronounced gills. Moving away from the base, the flesh tapered to a jagged point, the thick tentacles ending in a jagged, vicious array of stingers.
Again, the knife bit in, piercing the hide and releasing a milky fluid as he separated the stingers from each long appendage. When he was finished, twelve evenly cut stingers stood atop the counter, their gray skin glistening beneath the white lights. While he doubted their digestibility, the stingers would make for a rather dramatic element in the main course’s plating.
He took stock of the rest of the monstrosity, formulating plans for each of the evening’s dishes, giving new weight to his previously fluid ideas.
The creature was fatty, but well-muscled. Its meat would be nicely marbled, and the back fat would be excellent for pan-frying. Tentacles lent themselves to numerous methods of preparation, and he immediately found himself mentally flicking through dozens of recipes: battered and fried, stewed with saffron and smoked paprika, or perhaps a preparation more classically Asian, with coconut milk and ginger, or stir-fried with scallions and ginger. He smiled as he struck upon the ideal recipe, one that he had always found to be charming with squid. The recipe would work rather nicely, and even provide a bit of levity as the meal got underway.
Yes, that was it, then. Hors d’oeuvres of deviled…devil? He smiled tightly at the small bit of humor as he wiped his hands clean on a dishtowel.
He prepared the broiler and oven, his ingredients neatly arranged, ready to begin.
EACH OF THE SIX had received a plain white envelope in the mail, bearing only their name and address, with no return address shown. Each envelope had been sent locally and bore their town’s own postmark, with a pre-paid postage rate printed upon it in local currency. Inside, a three-by-four cream cardstock, the typeface simple and unadorned, providing the barest, most pertinent information.
Chef Heinrich Schauer Invites
You To a Twelve-Course Tasting Meal
On the Appointed Date and Time:
Sunday, January 8 @ 8PM
46.559° N, 8.561° E
The guests arrived separately at a Swiss manor situated in a vibrant green field near Lago di San Carlo in the Leventina Valley. To reach the lakeside estate, each of them had navigated through the winding roads of the Gotthard Pass and the Devil’s Bridge, named so due to the hazardous River Reuss, which quickly flooded with the spring rains and snow melt from the surrounding Lepontine Alps and led to many drownings between April and May.
Legend said that a Swiss herdsman had found the Reuss so difficult to pass that he wished the devil would build a bridge. The devil agreed, but only in exchange for the soul of t
he first to cross. The herdsman agreed and sent across one of his goats. This trickery angered the devil, and he drew forth a rock to smash the bridge. Before he could collapse the structure, an old woman drew a cross on the massive stone, preventing the devil from lifting it.
Now, gathered around a great oak dining table, the six sat in silence beneath dimmed, golden light cast from an ornate – bordering on repulsively gaudy – chandelier. In keeping with the evening’s dinner theme, each guest had been issued a unique demon’s masquerade mask.
One woman wore a red ochre mask with square eyeholes and horn-like hooks on either side that reached down across her cheekbones and, at the top, roped off into a half-dozen points. Another, worn by a male, was the more traditional horned devil disguise.
The third, another woman, wore a leather devil jester mask, while the fourth was adorned by a golden mask with red glittery accents and fat, black, downward-curving tusks.
The fifth’s was an odd, earthy bit of macabre: a wooden mask, covered in a shiny black lacquer. The left eye was a smooth triangular cut, whereas the right was more irregular, uneven, lending weight to the shifting imbalance inherent in the mask itself. Above where his left eyebrow would be, the wood was raised into pointy shards. As those rough-hewn bits migrated to the right, the wood roughened further, taking on the appearance of black bark. The bark gave way to raven feathers and thin, stiff roots, and – if one examined it closely, where the bark curved up across his forehead – there, hidden in the coarse folds, was the keen black shine of a raven’s eye. On the lower half of the mask, above his lips, were white ornaments that upon closer inspection appeared to be sliced teeth.
The sixth mask was pure white, with giant horns that coiled up, over, and around that man’s head, as if he had been fitted with a ram’s skull.
A fire warmed the dining room, the occasional loud pop of an exploding knot echoing across the cathedral ceiling. That, and snifters of brandy and glasses of warm, mulled red wine, helped to warm their bones. Silently, they sipped, watching the snow fall beyond the window. Soot-colored sky had given way to inky darkness, the moon hidden by a thick screen of clouds. The wind howled, sending a curlicue of white powder past, the temperature quickly dropping into single digits.
Occasionally, a few of the guests made eye contact and nodded politely, their lips creasing into thin imitations of a smile, but none attempted to raise a conversation or make small talk. Strangers to each other, their faces largely hidden and with only their mouths exposed, several enjoyed the anonymity and escape from the usual. What little could be seen in their eyes made one thing plain – all were outcasts.
A waitress, dressed in a black button-down shirt, a black vest, and black slacks, her face hidden behind a sheer black widow’s veil, a raven tricorn mourning hat perched atop her head, circulated around the table, refilling their glasses.
Standing at the head of the table, she said, “If I may have your attention. Thank you. Your first course will be deviled tentacle. The meat was rubbed with a mixture made of Dijon mustard and Worcestershire sauce, coated in bread crumbs and olive oil, and then broiled to perfection.
“Chef Schauer welcomes you with the utmost warmest regards, and hopes that you will enjoy the evening. Your dishes will be ready soon.”
Finished, she nodded politely and then presented a crisp turn as she took her exit. The diners nodded expectantly, mouths already watering.
One, the man in the ram’s horn, raised an eyebrow, leaning into the group conspiratorially. “Squid?”
The woman seated across from him, wearing the red ochre mask whose arrangement of horns and hooks made it resemble melting wax, tilted her head, her lips turning downward in thought. “Could be octopus.”
“Mmm,” he said appreciatively. He recalled a dish of jjukkumi gui garnished with cucumber that he’d eaten in Singapore. The baby octopus had been marinated in soy sauce, red chili pepper paste, rice wine, sugar, garlic, ginger, and sesame oil. “Guess we’ll soon see.”
She returned his smile, the muscles in her face more relaxed this time. Not the prudish affectation of a thin-lipped smile he had received earlier. This one was warmer, and as she sipped her brandy, her face growing warmer, her eyes steadily made more contact with his. When he blushed, she laughed at him, a pleasant sound.
Moments later, small, square white dishes were laid before each diner. The tentacles had been sliced into inch-thick circles of meat, the breading a perfect honey brown, as promised by their waitress. Chopped chives garnished the plate, giving the meal a warm, earthy color.
After she finished chewing, the second woman spoke. “This is…” she began, but paused to seek out the right word.
“Strange,” the woman in the melting wax mask said.
“Strange, definitely, but delicious.”
“It’s not octopus,” Ram’s Horn said.
“Not squid, either,” one of the other men said.
Ram’s Horn stabbed at another piece of meat, chewing it slowly. The breading and tentacle separated in his mouth, and he let the pulped flesh rest against his tongue, studying the flavors.
He could pick up the sour-sweet Dijon and the tang of Worcestershire, but beneath that was an odd heated-earth flavor. A certain sour note, an almost dusty taste, but not quite the flavor of mold. Not any type of blue cheese, he was sure. Still, he couldn’t quite place it, even as an acidic, peppery taste lingered at the back of his throat.
“I’m stumped,” he said.
His dining companions agreed, yet despite the peculiar profile of the starting dish, they found it compulsively intriguing and pressed on.
Chef Schauer was known for his eccentricities in the kitchen. He enjoyed surprising his guests with odd combinations, typically keeping the main ingredient a secret from them until after the final dish had been served.
Schauer had a stable of guests that he enjoyed feeding and sampling recipes on. He was rather proud that no two diners had ever shared a meal, constantly rotating his invitations and ensuring their anonymity. While he could not prevent a bit of table talk, guests were discouraged from speaking too openly of themselves or their affairs. The sole focus, they all knew, was the meal.
As with many of his previous tasting meals, Schauer centered the affair with certain macabre fetishes. Food, he believed, was a celebration of death. Eating was a morbid affair, albeit an ultimately enjoyable one. Meals gave sustenance to the eater, but at the expense of another organism’s life. Every dish was a complicit act of murder, regardless of whether or not one’s personal view of morality and politics allowed them to view it as such.
Schauer, however, was cognizant of the inherently vicious and violent nature of the cycle of life. He demanded a respectful mourning of that passing, a funereal elegance to the act of consumption.
“That was very good, thank you,” the man in the wooden mask said. The waitress gave a small nod as she collected his plate. His eyes followed her as she walked their plates back to the kitchen.
Although none of them knew each other, they had each been invited to previous meals by Schauer in the past. Each time, the location and their company had been different, and while none of them had ever been to this particular property before, a relaxed repose settled across the table. Small talk had begun, food and drinks had been had, and their guards were dropping, slightly.
No one asked after anyone’s business, nor did any of them trade information or volunteer details of their lives. Instead, they took turns guessing at what the meat in their first dish had been.
“I don’t think it was tentacle at all,” the woman in the leather mask said. “I’m Irene, by the way.” She did not offer her last name, as that would have been a violation of house rules.
“Noel,” Ram’s Horn said. “I don’t know what that was. I know what it wasn’t.”
“I’m ruling out any sort of cephalopod. Coraline.” She scratched at her cheek, her slender fingers reaching beneath the lines of melting wax.
“A mushr
oom of some sort? The dish reminded me a bit of chanterelles. And, yeah, I’m Laura.” She gave a small wave, then readjusted her mask by grasping the downward-curving tusks.
“Joseph,” said the man wearing the standard devil horn’s masquerade mask. He clicked his tongue against his upper palate. “And I’m ruling out mushrooms.”
“Hi, all. Name’s Peter. I don’t know what the fuck that was, but I enjoyed it.”
“Impeccable,” Irene said, turning her head to meet Peter’s eyes. He gave her a perfunctory smile, which she quickly dismissed.
“What do you think, Coraline?” Noel asked. “What was it?”
She shrugged her shoulders, shaking her head side to side. “The meat was smooth, no suckers on it, so, definitely not octopus. And I agree, it definitely wasn’t mushrooms, although the texture seemed somewhat similar. The flavor was earthy, and the meat was chewy.” She puffed her cheeks out, at a loss. “I just don’t know.”
“We have eleven more dishes to figure it out,” Joseph said, a wicked grin plastering his face.
In short order, six bowls of consommé were served. The broth was a luxuriant brown, and a single toasted sesame cracker floated in the center, a sprinkle of grated cheese encircling it.
“Gruyere,” Peter said.
“But the broth. I’m getting that same earthy taste. Musky, almost.”
“Ashes,” Noel said.
The five other diners held the broth in their mouth, their eyes considering.
Mass Hysteria Page 18
