The Future of Horror

by Jonathan Oliver

  THEY WENT ON in silence after that. Arbo lengthened his stride, wanting to reach the end of this journey. He was unsettled by the scent of the male who matched him stride for stride. He did not know what to think of the hand that still encircled his wrist like a shackle.

  How frail was the hand of the being he’d chosen to transform into. He realized it when he strove to free himself from Kagawan’s grip.

  “Don’t,” Kagawan said. “This way, they will understand we are together.”

  They passed through the center of the town without stopping or being stopped, and Arbo’s heartbeat quickened as he picked up a scent in the air. It was very faint, but it was enough. His mate was still at a distance, but she was not unattainable.

  Down they went – past a gaggle of ostentatious shelters made out of stone and wood, down along the winding path where dwellings made out of corrugated iron and dried grass stood with their doorways open to the street.

  Impatience rose in him. In his true self, he could stretch his wings and float on the wind currents. In his true form, he would reach his female before nightfall. He looked up at the sky anxiously. His heat would end on the third day and with it all hope of producing offspring.

  THEY STOPPED WHEN they reached the river.

  One of the houses stood open and there were people walking in and out of it. Some were valley dwellers and some had skin paler than Arbo’s palm.

  He tried not to stare because to stare was to draw attention.

  “Aunty Jane,” Kagawan said.

  A female came towards them. She was slender and small-boned, her skin was wrinkled from the sun and she wore a bright red scarf around her head.

  “Aunty Jane,” Kagawan said. “Feed us.”

  “Hungry boy,” the female called Aunty Jane scolded. “And who is this? Is this your girl?”

  As when Arbo had refused to speak to him, red crept up along Kagawan’s neck.

  “I am her escort,” Kagawan said. “She can’t speak, Aunty. But I have decided to go with her and protect her.”

  “Hm,” Aunty Jane said.

  Arbo met her stare with one of his own. Even if he wanted to, he could not find the words to speak to her of his own quest. So instead, he bared his teeth and tilted the edges of his mouth upwards as the other females had done.

  “Come,” Aunty Jane said. “In the back, there is still plenty.”

  After they had eaten, Kagawan made their excuses. Arbo wondered if Aunty Jane could see the true image of him that lay beneath the transformation. Her gaze was curious though and not at all hostile and so he bowed his head and kissed her hands in the same way that Kagawan did.

  “A good girl,” Aunty Jane said. “Seek out her elders, you hear?”

  Kagawan laughed.

  THEY WALKED ON and now that they had rested and had been fed, Arbo felt fresh energy flow through him. They quickly left the valley behind and he raised his head every now and then to catch a whiff of the female’s scent.

  “Over there is Nasagsagi-an,” Kagawan said. “Is that where you wish to go?”

  Arbo followed the direction in which his companion pointed, to where a curtain of white was surrounded by the green of foliage and the black of rock. He could smell the female now. She was there, somewhere on the other side of that waterfall.

  THEIR CLIMB UPWARDS to Nasagsagi-an was not easy. In some places, the ground was still muddy from the rains and the path was slick and slippery.

  Kagawan did not let go of Arbo’s hand and even though he sometimes slipped, he never fell.

  On they climbed. Above them, the blue took on a darker hue. Wind ruffled the stalks of rice and whispered through the tiger grass and Arbo’s nostrils were filled with the sweet smell of Kagawan’s sweat. He wondered what Kagawan would taste like. But grown males of his kind never fed on the flesh of living beings.

  Night flowed around them and the air grew cool. The path leveled out. Someone had laid stones on the clay paths around the paddies, making it easier to walk. It was full dark now and Arbo stumbled as Kagawan came to a stop.

  “We’re here,” Kagawan said.

  Fireflies danced in the glade where Kagawan had come to a stop. Above the cool clean smell of water, Arbo scented her. It was the female he had been seeking. She was very close, and her heat called to him just as clearly as if she had whispered the mating call in his ear.

  Excitement shivered through him and Kagawan turned. Even in the dark, Arbo could see the hot light in Kagawan’s eyes.

  “You feel it too,” Kagawan said.

  And just like that he drew Arbo into his embrace.

  AS IF SENSING Arbo’s confusion, Kagawan’s lips were soft and teasing. His teeth nipped and his tongue licked until Arbo could not keep himself from opening up.

  Heat rushed through Arbo as Kagawan’s taste flowed onto his tongue. His female was nearby, she was waiting and yet Kagawan’s need awakened a response in him. A whisper of memory came to him, but even as he reached for it, it faded in the heat of Kagawan’s urgency.

  Kagawan’s arms pressed him closer and he could feel a throbbing at the base of his spine. Warmth pooled there, and a sense of waiting.

  “Let me,” Kagawan’s voice was hot in his ear.

  They sank to earth, and Kagawan’s fingers were plying and playing over his breasts and the length of his legs and the warm place between that was lush and moist.

  “Open,” Kagawan whispered.

  There was a quick jolt and he felt Kagawan inside him. A high keening wail escaped Arbo’s lips. Kagawan was a presence that throbbed and pulsed in his clasping heat. He was conscious of Kagawan’s breath, of the smell of betelnut on him, of the bittersweet taste of Kagawan’s tongue, of Kagawan’s mouth on his chest and of something electric passing from himself to where Kagawan’s presence was a living thing that pushed and tugged at his other senses.

  He inhaled the scent of blooming nightflowers, crushed grass, stirred up earth, Kagawan’s sweat and the sweat of this form he had taken on, and then above all that, so strong it drowned everything else, the hot fecund scent of his mate.

  AFTERWARDS, KAGAWAN GATHERED Arbo close and spoke promises of rites and sacrifice and pigs and chickens. His words slurred into one another and before long he fell asleep.

  Arbo pushed away from the sleeping male. He stood and stared down at the body that had been joined to his. He could feel the wetness of Kagawan’s release between his thighs and the scent of their joining still lingered in the air.

  But now, an urgency overtook him. His mate was near and it was the height of his heat and hers. With a last glance at Kagawan, he stretched himself to his full height.

  Ruwaaarrr...

  He called to her now and on the heels of his call came her reply.

  IT WAS CLOSE to midnight when Arbo found her. She had built her nest in the arms of a great banyan and it was only after he’d taken to the air that he sighted her.

  She sighed and opened her arms as he descended. Her talons extended in greeting and he sank into her embrace.

  He was overcome by the musk of her heat, and when she pierced his skin, he was too caught up in exaltation to feel any pain. Over and over, she pierced him and over and over he spent himself until her scent changed and he knew with certainty that she would bear his young.

  He was still in a frenzy when she split him open. He did not flinch when she tore his flesh to shreds.

  This was part of the cycle. His heart and his liver would nourish her and their young. His skin and his intestines would line the nest. His bones, his talons, his wings would become part of her shelter while she waited for the young ones to be born.

  In his final throes all he knew was ecstasy.

  EARLY IN THE morning, Kagawan arose. He looked around for the girl, but he could not find her. He called, but she did not come.

  Perhaps she had gone to relieve herself.

  He waited and then he searched all around the waterfall.

  When he found no trace of her, he dec
ided to return to the valley. Perhaps she had not understood his intention to marry her. He had never felt such a complete and profound joining as what he had had with her.

  For many days, he searched. At first, he went to Injuti, but she looked at him as if he were the one gone mad. And when he asked in Hungduan, they knew nothing of a girl who could not speak. Everywhere he went, he asked, but no one knew anything of her.

  “Let her go,” they said to him.

  “She bewitched you.”

  “She was a spirit.”

  “She was Nahipan.”

  He grew silent and withdrawn and whenever the valley dwellers saw him, he was always headed towards Nasagsagi-an.

  “I must find her,” became his constant litany.

  He didn’t notice when the change came upon him. He didn’t see the lengthening of his nails, the broadening of his hands, the way his fingers were turning into talons.

  I’M THE LADY OF GOOD TIMES, SHE SAID

  HELEN MARSHALL

  When I saw Helen Marshall reading from her story ‘Blessed’ at the World Fantasy Convention in 2012, it struck me that she read like a poet – the pacing and voice she employed highlighting the lyrical cadences of her tale. This encounter with Helen’s fiction lead me to purchase a copy of her debut collection, Hair Side, Flesh Side (ChiZine Publications, 2012) which in turn lead me to ask to her to contribute a story for this anthology. What follows is a weird road story filtered through the sensibilities of the poets of the Beat Generation – a hauntingly original piece, marking Helen out as one of genre’s fast-rising stars.

  IT’S BARELY PAST midnight on the crumpled asphalt ribbon of Route 66, west of Ash Fork, just past the bridge at the Crookton Road exit on Interstate 40.

  We’re in an old, beat-up Studebaker Champ, and disaster is playing like a love song on the radio.

  Carl rides shotgun.

  You wouldn’t like Carl much. Not many apart from Juney do, but Juney’s got a blind spot for hard luck cases and Carl’s the most hard luck case of all, not counting myself. I know Carl. I bailed him out the time he beat up that girl for short-changing him at the 7-11. The cops told me they had to haul him away, screaming, “For a two-buck tip, you better show me your cock-chafing titties, you little whore!”

  I never told Juney about that. We aren’t much the kind to keep secrets, but he’s her brother, and I spent enough nights on the couch in the early years to know when to let a thing go.

  The lady of the Ill Wind Blowing, indeed.

  So Carl’s riding shotgun and I’m in the driver’s seat, because I sure as Hell wouldn’t let him touch the fucking steering wheel. Even now.

  Carl’s angry. You can tell by the way he’s grinding his teeth – been doing that since he’s a kid, I imagine, so’s now they’re small and smooth like pebbles, rubbed down to raw little nubblins that hurt him to chew, but he does it anyway.

  The other way you can tell Carl’s angry is the Colt. He’s got it trained on me. He’s draped an old U of A football jersey (rah rah, Wild Cats, huh?) over the barrel. Only we two know there’s a gun under it.

  But I know. Yes, I do.

  It’s my Pappy’s Colt. Same one he used to renovate the back of his skull when I was seventeen. I don’t like guns. Must be the only fella in Mojave Country who don’t, but once you’ve seen what a Colt does, what it’s made for – which is turning a living, breathing human bean into ground chuck – well, the shine goes off fast.

  Juney and Carl were raised different. Carl’s been shooting beer cans out in the desert since he was five. I seen him at his place with an old air rifle he musta got as a kid. He could pump it just right to pop a fly outta the air, leave him stunned but whole. Kept ’em in canning jars until they suffocated, bumbling like a drunk up against the glass.

  Carl knew guns. He knew where I kept the Colt, and I only kept it for Juney. So she’d feel safe. That’s a laugh now.

  Carl’s shifting the gun. I can’t see under the shirt, but I can feel instinctively – hair on the back of my neck prickling with sweat – that he’s got his finger on the trigger. He’s stroking it. My skin crawls because he could be masturbating for all I can see, that wet gleam in his eyes and his tongue darting out like a lizard’s between his chafed lips.

  He’d be crazy to pull the trigger now. I’ve got my hands on the wheel and we’re clocking over sixty, it’d kill us both. But that look in his eyes? He don’t give a damn. That’s what scares me.

  So we drive.

  I can feel the barrel trained on me. I can see the twitch of his finger. Clutch and release. Clutch and release.

  It’s past midnight. Nothing but grassland and the odd thicket shape of juniper bushes jumping in the glow of the headlights. The blue gloom of buttes in the distance. Faded neon signs. We pass the ruins of Hyde Park (‘Park Your Hide Tonight at Hyde Park!!’) and I wonder if that’s what Carl has in mind.

  I try not to think about that, just feel the road underneath me, the scream of the engine. I am almost relaxed. I can feel my body unspooling the way the road does.

  It’s a mistake.

  Carl senses it, his body goes rigid and he grins a mad dog grin. He’s been baking in the sun for too long.

  “Enough,” he says. “Pull over.”

  “Hey, man,” I try but my lips have gone dry. My throat is raw. “Hey.”

  “Don’t shit with me, Smiley. Just pull over the fucking car.”

  “I can explain,” I start. The line sounds funny in my own head.

  “Sure,” he says. “Sure.” But he’s got that grin and I don’t think he gives two shits about what I’m going to say. He wants this. I’m used to reading people. You can’t sell a man what he don’t want in his heart, whether it’s God, a Cadillac, or pills for the perfect boner. A man wants what he wants.

  I’m releasing the gas and the car starts to shake as we pull off the asphalt. There’s nothing out here but sage and sky and the road and us – him with the Colt and me with one shot at selling him something it’s clear he don’t want to buy.

  Otherwise...

  Otherwise...

  I’ll be ground chuck when that damned Arizona sun turns the road into the world’s hottest grill.

  “I’m the lady of Good Times,” she told me. “I am the lady of Turn Up the Heat, Boys.”

  Here goes.

  I DIDN’T MEAN to cheat.

  I know that’s what every cheater since Eve met the snake claims, but it’s no less true. I didn’t mean to cheat on Juney. The only defence I got is I’m human, I’m human, and what executioner ever gave a damn for that old song and dance?

  Let me try again.

  I only saw a ghost once before this all got started. That was the night Pappy died. Don’t even know if it was real. When you’ve seen a man’s grey matter splashed over the concrete you’re bound to dream any number of things in the small hours.

  I was lucky. What I saw was kinder that I had any right to expect. Which is to say I woke up to find Pappy standing at the foot of my bed. Some younger version, it must have been. He still had the head of hair my mammy fell in love with. Whatever bad news come to him later in life – pulling the skin around his eyes with the fish hooks of too much worry – it still hadn’t found him yet.

  There he was. Some shadow of him slivered by the wedge of light from the hall come sliding into the room.

  “G’night, Smiley,” he said. Just that. He grinned a sweet old grin at me like he had, I imagine, when I was a babe rolling around in the crib.

  “G’night, Smiley,” he said, and then he was gone.

  I’M THINKING THIS, but somewhere else I am stumbling through sand and cholla. The night smell of creosote is heavy. I don’t know where Carl is leading me.

  Carl is everything that I have ever been afraid of in the world. Ugly and brutal. A man who comes into the world with his fists balled and plans on going out the same way.

  Maybe it’s the same for him, though. Maybe I am everything he is afraid of. A man who
smiles. A man who had the shit kicked out of him but still knows how to whistle a tune. A man who could make his sister happy – Looney Juney, he called her. God.

  A man who could make her cry too. I admit it; I broke her heart more than once. Poor Juney. The only person in the world who had found a way to care for him, and a sumbitch like me has the thread of her love cat’s-cradling between my fingers. God, he must have had that hardon of hate for a long time.

  And right now I am thinking that maybe I deserve this. That’s the thing. Right now I am thinking maybe he has a right to put a bullet in me.

  I NEVER SAW another ghost but Pappy until three months ago.

  It started off with a sound like crying. Wailing, really. I thought maybe it was a bobcat in heat – some critter, maybe, with tire treads crushing half himself. Nothing left to do but cry his grief to the night.

  Juney and I had never had kids. We talked about it, well, years ago, but it had never got much past talk. One of the ways I broke her heart, I guess, though I still think maybe I did her a favour. My parents had got unlucky with me – they couldn’t afford a kid, but Mammy had grown up in the light of Jesus so once I had taken hold in her belly there wasn’t much for it. But one was enough. Whatever they got wrong that night they never got wrong again.

  So I wasn’t much used to the sound of babies crying, which is why I’d been thinking about some dying thing.

  Juney didn’t hear it. She worked the night shift at Dunkin’ Donuts, and I didn’t ever see much of her til the sun started in.

  I didn’t think much on it, but then it happened again. This time it weren’t crying. It was singing. A drunk’s tune. A little of this, a little of that. But sad.