Dark Things IV

by Stacey Longo

  Cobb showed her how to surf-cast and taught her how to filet a fish. She’d tried this on her own in the past, but would invariably end up with a bony mess. He pointed out mushrooms and berries to avoid as they hiked the trails; she was eager to learn how to live off the land. When deer season opened up, she crouched with him in his deer stand, waiting silently for a young buck or fattened doe to wander down the path. She was a crack shot, and Cobb praised her; he patiently demonstrated how to hang the doe she’d bagged, letting the blood drip down towards the snout so as not to spoil the meat. She spent hours in the kitchen, perfecting her venison stew; Cobb invited some of the locals to her tiny apartment to taste her wares. She, trying to fit in, be a part of the small, tight-knit (if slightly odd) community; but there was always a look, or a comment by an islander, to let her know that although she had stuck it out so far, she still didn’t belong.

  There was a chill in the air the morning that Jess showed up to the grocery ten minutes late, her cheeks still flushed from the moments that she had been outside running down the back stairs from her apartment to the rear entrance of the store. She rubbed her hands together and walked back to the deli, where the store manager was prepping it for the day.

  “Sorry I’m late, boss,” she offered, heading to the coffee pot to pour a cup. “The power must have gone out last night, ‘cause my alarm never went off.”

  “I need to talk to you, Jess,” her manager said, a steely edge to his words. “I have to lay you off for the winter. I thought there would be a place for you here, but the store can’t support this many employees.”

  “This many?” Tears welled up in Jess’s eyes. “There are three of us! What am I supposed to do?”

  Her manager shook his head. “I can give you ‘til Saturday in the apartment. That way you’ll have time to pack before the ferry comes.”

  “But—what about today? Do you want me to work my shift?” Jess was hurt and confused.

  “I’ve got your shift covered. You can go back upstairs and start packing, Jess. I’m sorry,” he added, a half-hearted afterthought.

  Jess wandered to the front of the store, where she saw a young blonde girl with a ponytail behind the register. One of the locals’ daughters, she realized. She had been fired so the island could support their own.

  Jess left the store, hot tears blurring her eyes, and left to find Cobb. He had stayed on his boat last night, as he often did when she had to work early, and she went down to the west dock to see if he was up and fishing yet. The old wooden boat was painted a deep hunter green, and was tied up to a faded gray pier with warped boards. She approached the boat slowly, a growing dread forming in the pit of her stomach. She could hear faint groaning sounds coming from below deck, and for a moment, the eyes in the dunes flickered in her mind.

  She stepped on deck cautiously, not wanting to make a sound to alert the creature below of her presence. The groaning grew louder, and Jess shuddered—no mortal creature was capable of these guttural noises.

  She crept to the door that led below deck, and slowly crept down the stairs. It took a moment for her eyes to focus on the shapes in the room; she recognized Cobb, naked, pumping steadily, a head of frizzy gray hair entwined in his fingers. Jess thought she recognized the woman, the bartender at the local bar. It was from this woman that the groaning sounds came; she was howling and moaning intermittently as Cobb kept his rhythm going. Jess slapped her hand to her mouth quickly, afraid to make a noise, and backed up the stairs slowly, turned, and fled.

  Jess ran down the beach, her quiet place, hot tears streaming down her face. She would never fit in here. Her employer had rejected her; now her boyfriend was sleeping around on her with a local. Everyone she turned to—her parents, her brother, her lover—was telling her she wasn’t wanted in their world. If they didn’t want her, she mused, slowing her pace to a jog, well, she could give them a reason, at least. She wasn’t a bad person. But she could be.

  She was taking Saturday’s ferry, so she invited half the island to her apartment Friday afternoon. Jess no longer cared enough to be humiliated by the fact that she was throwing her own going-away party. She cooked all day, getting permission from her former manager to use the grocery’s deli stove and cooking pots to make vats of her specialty stew. She had plenty of beer on hand, a sure guarantee that people would show up. A large crowd of mostly strangers filtered in and out of her apartment; she was embarrassed at how few faces she knew after living on the island for six months already.

  “Where’d Cobb get off to?” Phil asked her, sipping an ever-constant beer. She smiled thinly. Cobb, or what remained of him, was scattered to the sea. She had agreed to go hunting with him yesterday afternoon, never letting on that she knew about his nooner with the bartender. She’d waited until they were deep in the brush, and then slit his throat with his own filleting knife. She’d used one of his own deer hangers to drain the blood out of his body before skinning and processing the meat. Her muscles still throbbed from the effort, but all in all, the stew had come out smelling delicious.

  “Guess he decided he couldn’t take it out here anymore,” Jess shrugged. “Eat up!”

  Jess stopped by the local paper on her way to the ferry dock the next morning. It was a foggy sunrise, and the newspaper office hadn’t opened yet. She left a copy of her stew recipe tucked in to the box outside the office door. She figured that the mushrooms she’d added to the stew were just about kicking in this morning; she had been careful to select only the mushrooms with white gills—death caps, Cobb had called them on their nature hikes. She whistled as she pulled her pink-wheeled suitcase to the ferry dock. She figured she could move on to someplace new, maybe find a place where the locals weren’t so cold and mean. She was a people person, after all.

  About the author:

  Stacey Longo is a writer, wife, horror fan, and comic book enthusiast living in Connecticut. She is the author of a weekly humor column titled “On Island Time” that appeared in the Block Island Times from 2000-2006, as well as several short stories which have appeared in such fine publications as the Litchfield Literary Review, Shroud, and The Works. When she is not horrifying her family and friends by turning them into flesh-eating zombies in her stories, she enjoys spending time with her husband, Jason, and two cats, Wednesday and Pugsley.

  The Dimensionator

  By Sean Graham

  Steam carriages, lined up wheel to wheel, filled the cobblestone streets, their hot exhaust rising into the night air and coating the evening in a layer of white gossamer. Costumed revelers danced around them toasting the occupants and making general merry. Jack-o-lanterns lined the curb, candle flames flickering like tongues behind their eyes. Warren strode along the sidewalk dodging masked children and admiring the shop-front decorations—cotton cobwebs, witches’ brooms, and white sheets hanging from twine. Candy littered the walkway.

  He read the invitation for the tenth time. Warren had not seen Godfrey since Edith passed almost three years ago. It was too uncomfortable. But they had been friends once and he supposed he somehow owed the man a visit. It might ease Warren’s guilt.

  Up ahead two white-cloaked constables rounded the corner, the red crosses swaying from their necks like Poe’s pendulums, and Warren took a hasty left into an alley. The damnable buggers. He was in no violation, had his papers, but there was nothing to be gained by tempting fate; why pull the tiger’s tail? Emerging on the other side of the alley, he hailed the first rickshaw that passed and was soon on his way at a clip. Besides, the breeze would do him good and he had walked enough in his lifetime. The night air was thick with threatening rain and he was already a sweaty mess and in no condition for a proper visit. His ruffled collar clung to his neck like a leech. Ten minutes later he was pulling to a stop outside the Godfrey Hillshire manor. He paid the runner and the boy disappeared into the night.

  The large Hillshire house was dark and the front gaslights lifeless, forcing Warren to pick his steps carefully up the overgrown path. Godfrey w
as never much for yard work, preferred tinkering with whirligigs, but come on, man! The grass is two feet high! Warren dropped the door knocker and waited.

  Clinking from inside; metal on metal. Banging.

  Warren heard the latch slide back, then close again, then slide back again, and the door opened. Standing before him was a pipe-and-gear clockwork beast of man and contraption. A skeletal figure of copper pipe and wire surrounded Godfrey, who sat cross-legged on a cushion inside the machine’s wicker ribcage like a giant fetus. Copper wire was soldered to four thin, cylindrical probes embedded in the man’s skull and protruding an inch above the mop of brown hair, and ran down to the multiple gearboxes positioned at each of the machine’s joints—shoulders, elbows, knees, everything on down to the oversized knuckles of its fingers and toes.

  “Warren!” Godfrey shouted, and a copper hand, twice the size of an average man’s, extended outward. Godfrey’s own hands hung limp at his sides. Warren was wide-eyed.

  “My God, Godfrey! What have you done this time?”

  “It’s a mover-bot, Warren. A scientific revolution.” Godfrey withdrew his unanswered greeting, and the giant copper skeleton whirred and lumbered into the darkness of the house, its massive wire mesh head bobbling, while Godfrey sat motionless inside. “Lights!” Several gas-powered sconces burst forth on command, casting the unkempt, but once-luxurious, abode in an orange glow. “Come, Warren, I have something big to show you,” Godfrey said.

  Warren entered cautiously. Had it been properly cleaned since Edith was alive? Godfrey’s mover-bot stomped through the foyer and into the study stirring dust at it went. “Help me out of this contraption.”

  Warren joined his friend in the study, where two glasses of brandy waited on a dusty end table. Godfrey came to a stop near the fireplace and opened a wire cage door in the back of the clockwork machine. “A little help?” He extended a hand, his hand. This time Warren took it and Godfrey eased himself to the floor. Warren noticed that Godfrey wore only a one-piece undergarment; it was soiled and dingy. And he stunk. Godfrey tugged at the wires tied to his skull, winced and wiggled them loose from the probes, and the clockwork machine went limp. He scratched at the dark crusted blood around the probes.

  “Hazards of the business, I suppose.” Godfrey grinned.

  “Wha—” Warren managed.

  “Brain power and gear boxes—way of the future. I’ve sold five so far—two paraplegics, a quad, and two fat, rich bastards too lazy to lift a finger...or anything else.” He pointed to a series of padded and lubricated concentric rings wired into a small set of gears positioned in the pubic area of the skeleton. “All you have to do is think it and so it shall be...without moving a muscle, not even your love muscle.”

  “Debauchery, plain and simple,” Warren said indignantly.

  “Oh, is that rich...pot, meet kettle,” Godfrey said, turning for the brandy as he wrapped a crimson house robe around himself and tied the sash.

  “What was that?”

  Godfrey handed him the glass. “To friendship and Samhain!”

  “Friendship indeed, but who the devil is this Samhain?” They tapped glasses and Godfrey drank alone.

  “Not the devil, old boy, Celts. Samhain, the Celtic New Year, of course!”

  Warren wrinkled his nose. “Oh, those Neanderthals.”

  “Ehhh! Happy Halloween!” And Godfrey poured himself another round as Warren drank his first. Warren wanted to sit, but found nowhere to do so that wasn’t already claimed by filth. He began to clear off a chair covered in old newspapers.

  “No you don’t. It’s almost time.” Godfrey topped his guest’s glass and motioned with a jerk of his head for Warren to follow. They left the study and entered the great room. A crystal chandelier hung dark from the high ceiling. Dingy sheets covered chairs and an ornate buffet. Where the massive dinner table once sat was now a hulking object shrouded in a canvas sheet. It was the only thing Warren had seen so far in the house not covered in dust and general muck.

  “My masterpiece,” Godfrey said, staring at the bulk.

  Warren was afraid to ask. The man had once built a steam-driven device that performed enemas. Terrifying. God only knew what was hidden under that veil. Godfrey set his glass on a covered chair and took a handful of canvas.

  “I’m bringing Edith back,” he proclaimed, and the canvas sailed into the air. Before Warren sat a cannon-like apparatus positioned atop a wheeled cart; the brass barrel, if that’s what it was, pointed at the doorway leading to the kitchen. A weather vane of four cupped, metal bowls spun wildly atop the cannon. A plaque at the base of the vane read “dimensional thickness meter.” A pair of wires ran from the vane to a glass gauge that was mounted to the side of the cart and resembled a thermometer filled with red liquid, and next to that a clock counted down—it was 11:55 p.m., October 31st. The red liquid gradually fell as the clock ticked away. Steam gently rose from a cluster of organ pipes to the rear.

  “Speechless! I love it. Let me explain.” Godfrey walked around the back of the cannon and stoked the firebox beneath the pipes. “I call it the Dimensionator. The Celts believed that the dimensional wall separating the living from the dead was thinnest on their New Year, what they called Samhain, what we now call Halloween. And on that night, tonight, spirits of the underworld were able to pass through that wall and enter the land of the living.”

  He picked up a plastic mask from the covered table and pulled the rubber band back as he fitted it over his head. A plump, grey face with huge colorless eyes now covered his. “Those Neanderthals wore masks to disguise themselves from the evil spirits.”

  The red liquid fell. The clock ticked.

  Warren opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. His friend had fallen off his rocker. Godfrey tapped the glass gauge, smiled, flipped two toggle switches, and rotated a brass knob slightly to the right. The cannon began to hum.

  “They can come here, but we can’t go there, and that simply won’t do. Enter the Dimensionator. When the gauge, here, reads zero, the dimensional wall is at its thinnest. That’s when my Dimensionator will punch a hole between us and the underworld, Warren, open it up like church on Sunday morning, and come as you are. Three years of testing have proven it. Then I’m going after her.” He pulled the mask up. It snagged on a head-probe and sat cock-eyed across his forehead.

  “Why are you showing me this?” Warren asked. “I want no part in your demise. Why don’t you let me take you to a physician? You need a little R&R, a little rest.”

  Godfrey hammered his fist against the knob. “You think I’m mad!” His eyes flamed. “I need your help, Warren. It’s tested, it works! I know it, but I can’t go in alone. I’m...I’m frightened. You know something like that is hard for me to admit. I need your help.”

  “You’ve seen it work? Why haven’t you retrieved Edith sooner?” Warren challenged. Godfrey dropped his eyes.

  “I’ve seen it almost work. Almost break through; small gaps between our world and theirs. The dimensional wall is too thick every other day of the calendar, Warren. Believe me, I’ve tried. No, today is my last shot. I don’t think I can go another year, not another year without her.”

  Judging by the condition of the house and Godfrey’s mental state, Warren agreed with his friend.

  “I’ve seen her face on the other side peering out at me through slivers in the wall. She’s waiting.” Godfrey continued, “Please try. If it doesn’t work, then you can go home and forget you ever knew me...and Edith.”

  He could never forget Edith, but Godfrey...well, that was a different matter. “Okay, you’re mad, but I’ll do it for an old friend and for Edith.” He downed his brandy and checked his wristwatch; if he left soon he could still get a decent night’s sleep. He would humor the man and be off, and for good. “Let’s get on with it then.”

  Godfrey clapped his hands and turned to the machine. “You won’t regret it, Warren. Edith will thank you.” He turned the knob again and the cannon began to shake. Steam w
histled through its pipes. The clock ticked, and two minutes past midnight the red liquid was at its lowest. Godfrey flipped a final toggle switch and a clear beam, almost like a gush of water, transmitted forth. Warren thought the beam would blow the kitchen door off its hinges, but it struck something sooner, a wall of sorts invisible to the eye, and splashed outward. The beam’s reflected spray dissipated before hitting the ground. Godfrey’s face was lit up like a child’s on Christmas.

  “Very good; now what?” Warren asked. The invisible wall was a good trick and water cannons were always good fun, but ultimately a waste of time.

  “Just a minute, Warren,” Godfrey said without turning. His gaze was fixed on the invisible barrier before them.

  Warren squinted as gradually the wall began to dissolve, washed away by Godfrey’s concoction. Where the beam struck, an opening slowly appeared, and where the kitchen door should have been was now a growing blackness. The cannon continued and the kitchen dissolved.

  Mist began to roll out from the expanding hole. Behind it were glimpses of rock and impossible darkness. Warren heard a screeching sound like a bird or a bat, and two flying creatures, small and frail, darted out and strafed the room with shrill squawking. Godfrey jumped up and down with excitement.

  “We did it, Warren, we did it!” He latched the knob in place, the beam locked in the on position, and started towards the opening. When he saw that Warren was not following, he stopped. “Well come on, man, for Edith!” He ducked under the beam and stepped through the hole and into the underworld.

  Warren was amazed and followed, mouth gaping, eyes peeled. He watched the bird things, featherless buzzards, cautiously until they disappeared into the house and then he stepped through after his friend.

  The ground was a single rock slab, wet and slick. Moss and other creeping vegetation lined the stone walls and hung from the unseen overhead, rooted in the very mist itself. Water trickled, dripped. Tiny buzzards flapped through the air chasing black beetles. Movement in the darkness there and there. Slithering, wet. Something moaned in the distance.