Shock Totem 2: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted

by Shock Totem

  And no, you could put bamboo slivers under my fingernails and you won’t get out of me exactly what titles I’m talking about. ‘Cause, ya know, it’s all just my opinion anyway.

  JB: What about e-books and Kindle, all that? I’m not a big supporter of that stuff, but I’m old school...I like tangible products I can keep on a shelf.

  JN: Same here. I wouldn’t even know how to turn one on. Personally, I prefer the look, feel, and even the smell (yeah, I said it) of a real book.

  JB: What new writers are you into? Anything made you stand up and say “Wow!” lately?

  JN: Unfortunately, no. I wish I could say otherwise. Actually, I take that back. There is one, but he’s been doing this a few years so he’s not a new writer by any means: I will say that everyone should be reading Greg Gifune. It’s a crime that guy’s not on the New York Times Bestseller Lists.

  JB: Greg Gifune...that the only one? Do you tend to re-read older faves then?

  JN: John Little’s a hell of a talent. Same for Chris Conlon. Brian Singleton. Okay, you pried a few more names out of me.

  Actually, yes...these days I do tend to just go back and re-read old favorites. Or new books from those old favorites...case in point, I’m currently reading Speaks the Nightbird, by Robert R. McCammon, and it’s nothing short of spectacular. I can’t believe I waited so long to read it! I let the fact that it’s a period piece keep me away, believe it or not. I can’t put this down. I read Volume 1—which is just shy of 500 pages—in approximately 48 hours. And now I’m rockin’ and rollin’ through Volume 2.

  Highly, highly recommended. This guy’s been away for too long. Mr. McCammon is still one of the very best, and I can’t wait to read everything in this series of his (subsequent books connected to Nightbird being Queen of Bedlam and the just-released Mr. Slaughter).

  JB: What is in your future? Any big news from the Newman camp?

  JN: Yeah, man. Hopefully at the time this interview goes to print we’ll be very close to seeing two new books from me. Publication has been delayed on both of them for a while, but they should finally be available any day now. The Forum is coming from Cemetery Dance Publications—it’s a novella about an online message board for serial killers. Possibly the most fun I’ve ever had writing. And then there’s my long-awaited new novel Animosity (An American Horror Story), from Necessary Evil Press.

  And hopefully I can get my ass in gear and sell another one soon—the novel I’m working on right now, Ugly As Sin, is very, very close to completion. It’s not horror (I’m calling it “white trash noir,” actually), but readers who dug Midnight Rain should dig this one, too—in fact, a lot of the story takes place in the town of Midnight, North Carolina, and a few familiar faces from Rain might just show up here and there.

  JB: Here is your soapbox...step up carefully and rant away...about anything.

  JN: I don’t really have anything, man. You know me—I’m not a soapbox kinda guy.

  I’ll just leave it at this: If folks are still buying limited editions at all (hey, prove me wrong, please!), I’d like to urge ‘em to check out my new novel Animosity, when it’s finally released, hopefully soon. I think readers will really dig my “love letter to the horror genre,” as I like to call this book. It’s a very personal story to me, my take on how the “normal people” see those of us who dig this “spooky stuff,” and I can’t wait to hear what you guys think about it. Check it out!

  SWEEPERS

  by Leslianne Wilder

  Manhattan. They bought the island for beads and built it up into a forest of steel and glass.

  I used to spit in executives’ Cobb salads at the cafeteria, listen to them talk about eating little companies, and look out over their shoulders at all the buildings spiking up, gray, white, and shining, like they were going to poke holes in the sky.

  They made up that word, you know: sky-scraper. They had a contest. Some old guy who loved Beowulf sent it in and said that’s what the Vikings would have called them.

  You never think how everything is going to change forever, and even when it does, you always believe tomorrow it will go back to how it was before. Some days I still wake up and believe it. We were lucky. There’s a kitchen here, and we’re high enough up.

  There are pumps under the city. The guys who worked them might still be down there, floating in little rooms. I know they didn’t wear white lab coats, but that’s how I imagine them: suspended upside down next to control panels like astronaut scientists, beside open valves of rainwater and sewage.

  The smell was the worst part. The city always smelled—too many cars, too many people, too much garbage for it not to. I guess if you’re born here you never notice, but I always felt like it burned the inside of my nose. When the water started rising it was worse. It brought up the sewers. It drove up all the rats. There were so many it sounded like the walls were screaming and tearing themselves apart. The radios told us to stay where we were. Rescuers would come. For a while we looked out and tried to pretend it was Venice. We drank all the wine when the power went out. I spit in the executives’ cups, and they talked about insurance stocks. Cara and I had sex on the cold stove. We decided it didn’t matter if we got fired.

  The helicopters never came. The batteries ran out. The water kept rising. And the smell got worse.

  We didn’t recognize the bodies for what they were; we were too high up for that. We pressed our heads against the glass and looked down at what looked like cereal that had sat too long in milk. Everyone below us swelled and floated, and even from a spike piercing heaven, you could see there were too many for all of them to come to the surface. The streets weren’t wide enough for the rising tide of dead.

  Some cried and wiped their eyes with hundred dollar ties. Some jumped. They dropped down into the soup of everything that had been, and where they hit they left little black holes where they dragged the bodies down with them. Then the holes closed up.

  Cara talked about God—not like I’d ever heard before. Most people talked about redemption and making life easier when they quoted the bible. Cara talked about locusts, and frogs, and firstborn children. She said terror of God is the beginning of all wisdom. I miss her. I wish she hadn’t given up. The ovens here are so big and she was always small. I thought she’d gone to explore, or to look at the stars. She held the propane tank to her like an infant, and she shut the door.

  The water sucked up the tenements and the walk-ups. By the third day the bridges were gone. The guys who had been to school said it didn’t make sense. There wasn’t this much water in the world. Our bead-bought island city turned into sky-scraper dots, and the people below us moved in and out on the tide. It looked like someone was trying to make a puppet show of traffic. Glass and trash and human remains went east and west. We put Cara out into it. There weren’t any flowers left. I folded up a silk napkin for her to hold and I cried when we let her go.

  The executives turned their briefcase lives inside out, and we made fires to cook everything before it went rancid. We got sick, and the food ran out anyway. The executives talked about eating each other. I guess it wasn’t far from what they did before. There weren’t any little companies left, only little people.

  I won’t do it, no matter what it comes to. I don’t like them, but we’re all still humans.

  The water is only a few floors below us now. I’m too tired to catch the gulls and pigeons anymore. I think of Cara and Jesus and I wonder if one of those birds was to land with an olive branch, would I still try to hit it with my pan?

  The dead people went away slowly, day by day. Maybe it was the fish, maybe the tide, but the water seems cleaner now. The city is diluted out of it, like it had never been.

  You can’t see to the bottom, but you can see down a ways.

  I’ve been watching. I think I’m the only one that’s seen the sweepers. They don’t have any bones, from the way they curl through the broken glass. I wonder if they brought the water, or if the water brought them. They make their own
blue-pink light, like blind fish that live at the bottom of the ocean, and they have hundreds of arms. They touch everything. I don’t know if they’re eating, or if they’re searching. I wonder if they can taste us on the city’s bones. I wonder if they know about the beads and the newspaper contests, about the little companies. About all the terror and sins. About Cara. About me. I watch them and I can’t decide.

  Maybe that’s what they came for.

  Leslianne Wilder hails from Austin, Texas. She recently left the corporate world to write, paint, and deliver pizza. This is her first published work of fiction.

  THE RAINBOW SERPENT

  by Vincent Pendergast

  In the time of your grandfathers’ grandfathers, Rainbow Serpent woke. He moved across the land, gouging out the creek beds and pushing up the hills. When he was hungry he fed on giant kangaroos and wombats. When he was tired he slept at the bottom of the billabongs. He fought with the sun, he brought on the rain. For Rainbow Serpent, everything was good.

  Then people came.

  • • •

  Gavin wasn’t going to make it.

  He knew, but he ran anyway. His boots hardly touched the pavement as he flew along, past afternoon shoppers with their trolleys, past kids swinging their bags, his lungs ready to pop. He held the gun inside his flapping jacket, close to his hammering heart.

  The last person in line stepped on the bus.

  Gavin raised his arm, waved, but the folding doors closed and the bus pulled out.

  Gavin staggered the last few steps to the shelter wall and pressed his forehead to it as the bus rumbled past, filling the air around him with noxious exhaust. He breathed it in, coughed and spat. The driver had seen him, he knew it. The bastard had been looking right at him. Gavin pushed away from the wall with a disgusted grunt, leaving a sweaty face print on the bus timetable. He tried to wipe it clean with his arm, but its plastic covering was melted and bubbly, the paper underneath ruined. Little shits and their cigarette lighters.

  Two more buses came, the Kiama and the Shellharbour. An hour after that, Gavin was still waiting.

  • • •

  Things were different a month ago. Sure, there were problems, there were always problems. But Gavin was a reasonable man, and he dealt. He dealt with it a whole week before he was banging on her door.

  She opened it just wide enough to peek out. “What do you want?”

  “Just to talk. We can still talk, right?”

  “No,” Cindy said. “Not anymore.” She closed the door. Two seconds later it was open again. “You never wanted to talk when I wanted to, when we needed to, and just because you suddenly—”

  Gavin took a deep breath. Gavin kept his cool.

  “—don’t really want to talk anyway,” she said, “you just want to fight.”

  “Just give me a minute. A minute.” The door stayed open. “I have a lot to say.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes now! Christ.” She almost slammed it, he saw it in her eyes, but he resisted the impulse to push his way in. Breathed. “Look, I thought we could go in and—”

  “It’s too late, I’m sorry.” Her lips tightened. “Actually, I’m not sorry. It’s too late, Gavin.”

  Fuck. “Is he here?”

  “Who?”

  “You bloody well know who!”

  The door closed.

  He slammed his fist against it. “Tell him to come out!” Nothing. “Get out here or God help me I’ll do something!” The click of the lock. “Fuck!” He kicked the door, his foot jarring from the impact. He was so angry he shook, but he got it under control with a couple more kicks. Fine. Not a problem. He could deal.

  • • •

  He heard its engine before he saw it, a deep animal-like growl. The bus was brand new, painted in bright reds and yellows and greens. It pulled up to the stop, doors swinging open.

  Gavin stuck his head in. “Are you going to Wollongong?”

  The ginger driver grinned at him. “We sure am, son. Hop aboard.”

  “About bloody time,” Gavin muttered as he pawed through his pockets for change, handing over what he had. “Look, that’s all I’ve got,” he said, steeling himself for a spat. He wasn’t taking any noes today.

  “Exactly the right price,” the driver said with a smile that split his face ear to ear like an accordion. He handed Gavin his ticket.

  He made his way to the back of the bus, passing the handful of people on board—an old woman, a middle aged couple with grocery bags, a guy wearing a Donald Duck T-shirt. They each smiled at him and he in turn avoided their eyes. Once he was sitting he took off his leather jacket and tucked it in the space between seat and wall, the gun snug inside.

  Up front the driver twisted around, pulling something from his top pocket. He cupped it to his mouth and blew a low musical note. A harmonica? He played a tune, something jazzy, his hands opening and closing over his mouth. A fucking harmonica. Gavin looked at the other passengers, wondering if this was some joke, but they were all smiling wide, going along. The driver finished with a long warble and they all clapped. Gavin grunted.

  The driver grinned. “Well then, let’s get started.”

  Off got the couple at Minnamurra, at Shellharbour so did Donald Duck, each giving their cheerful farewells. At each stop the driver would take out that harmonica of his and play, just a couple seconds of tune, and those remaining would clap and laugh like he was a fucking seal performing tricks. Gavin leaned against the window and shut his eyes. Freaks.

  It was catching up with him, the whole damn thing. He glanced at the jacket. Cindy. He grimaced and pushed in harder against the seat. He wasn’t going to sleep, he was far too worked up for that, but still...the glow of the setting sun orange through his eyelids, the gentle hum of the engine. Moments like these he could almost forget...

  The bus jerked to a stop and Gavin’s eyes shot open. They were in Dapto, arsehole of the South Coast. The doors creaked opened and a girl in a school uniform stepped on. She chatted with the driver as she paid for her ticket, then turned to the aisle. Her eyes met Gavin’s and she smiled. He looked away, focusing on the U2 badge on her backpack.

  They pulled out, drab fibro houses left behind. The driver was blowing a soft tune, one hand on the wheel. Gavin closed his eyes. Just resting his eyes.

  • • •

  Rainbow Serpent took no notice of people, for a while. Not much meat on their bones and hard to catch. They ran from Rainbow Serpent no matter the form he took or the song he sang. He soon grew bored of them.

  But people were clever.

  They spread, they changed the land. They caught Rainbow Serpent’s favorite prey with their weapons. They made fire and burned the forests and the grasslands. They made their camps by his billabongs, drank from his creeks. Soon all that was left for Rainbow Serpent were the little kangaroos, the little wombats. And the people.

  • • •

  Gavin woke, blinking rapidly to work out the gummy feeling under his lids. It took a few seconds of foggy confusion to remember where he was and then he shot upright, one hand snatching for the jacket. It was still there. Outside, the sun sat on the escarpment. He couldn’t have been asleep for long.

  The old lady a couple seats down noticed, turned around, and gave him a kind smile. “Where are you headed, dear?”

  He hesitated before answering. Not because he didn’t want her to know—what did that matter?—but because the last thing he wanted right now was to get into a convo with some old bat about her grandkids and the price of milk in Port Kembla. He glanced outside again, trying to work out where they were, but one stretch of cow pasture looked about the same as any other. Stuff it. He turned to her. “Wollongong. Are we near?”

  “No, dear. Still half way to go.

  He sank back. Time passed. They went by more cows, more sheep, little outcrops of suburbia among the paddocks, houses crammed together, making like a patchwork quilt.

  More time passed.

  A few more cows. />
  Fuck this.

  Gavin was getting fidgety, fingers sneaking back time and again to caress the cool leather of his jacket no matter how he tried to will them still. This was taking way too long. At last he shuffled over and stepped into the aisle. There was a metallic crumpling as his boot came down. Junk covered the whole bottom of the bus, deep enough that he couldn’t see the floor. Frames of glasses, wrist watches, belt buckles. Thousands of little bits of metal. This bus was filthy. Making his way to the front was like walking on a shifting carpet of beetles, gripping the chairs for support, each step followed by a crunch. Eventually he reached the driver.

  “Back behind the yellow line, please,” the driver said without taking his eyes off the road.

  “How far are we from Wollongong?”

  “About half way now. Just coming to Dapto.”

  Gavin looked out the windscreen. He was right, they were pulling up beside a cluster of familiar fibro houses. The doors creaked open and a girl in a school uniform stepped up, U2 badge on her backpack. She smiled brightly at Gavin as she passed. “Only half way to go,” she said, and took her seat.

  Gavin looked around, confused and not sure why. “Thanks,” he mumbled, and clambered back over the junkpile.

  • • •

  “Look, I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t turn to look at him, just kept walking.

  “I’m sorry about the other day. I got...you know how I get. It’s been bad for me.”

  She didn’t speak. He’d waited outside her store for hours, and now she wouldn’t even speak to him?