Year's Best Hardcore Horror Volume 4

by Cheryl Mullenax

  The girl frowned at me. “Hide your face, you whore.”

  I did as I was told. When I looked again, we were in a new place.

  “This is the Room of Idiots,” she said. “You should feel welcome here, taaqa.”

  My face must have revealed my anger at her words.

  “Ah, I see!” She walked to a bench and with her mouth lifted from it a cat-o’-nine-tails made of black leather and pieces of jagged stone. She then slid out of her purpled buckskin dress, spread her legs in a wide horse-stance, and pushed the long leather handle deep into her dewy genitals.

  “Don’t you want to pleasure me? Come here, big white man what studies our culture like a big hero. Don’t you want to make me scream, big man? Don’t you want to eat me? You said you wanted to eat me. You sucked my blood. Didn’t you like my taste? You disappoint me, big boy. I bet your tuber spurts good, yellow milk. Am I right? Why don’t you come over here and show me. Push your big tuber up inside my hot oven, hero-man. I bake it good for you.”

  I was on my knees, hiding my face in pure humiliation, every inch of me flaccid and trembling. The first sting of her whip was like ice, followed by flame. I bellowed, but could not move. I wondered how she was holding the lash whose fiery tails came down again, and again, and again. She had soon flayed my back to rags, and I knew that if I did not escape her, she would kill me. The smell of my visceral fluids covered the room.

  “Enough, wuuti,” I heard a familiar voice say, and peering up through my own blood I saw the baboon creature enter the room. Removing his red Phrygian cap and tossing it aside with an air of carelessness, he retrieved the whip from the girl, who had somehow tied it to her left wrist. She dressed again, walked over to me and, sliding her gory arms under mine, lifted me to my feet. I felt no more pain, and realized that I had not been hurt in the least. My torture had been some kind of cruel illusion.

  An arduous trek of a quarter mile or more through the blackness of yet another narrow passageway (with the terrible, grunting baboon following behind me) led us to a gargantuan door opening onto an ancient sports arena. As we stepped out into the open night air, the winds with which I was now so familiar growled all around us, and seemingly through us.

  “Dios del Viento,” the blind monster whispered. I quaked. God of the Wind.

  “He has come for you, taaqa,” the wuuti said, wuuti meaning woman. “He does not like your spirit, and he has come to kill you. En la Casa del Aire y tu no eres bienvenido!

  “The…God of the Wind? I…am not welcome in his House of Air?” My voice was feeble, shaking. I received a cutting blow across my mouth from the simian devil for an answer.

  “Damn you!” I screamed as blood and saliva filled my mouth.

  “Damn me? Damn me? Oh, taaqa. You are so full of pride I fear you are lost forever. Damn me, he says, wuuti.” He laughed. The girl laughed with him, and coughed, and spat green phlegm at me, and laughed again, her eyes widening in a demonic glee, her tongue rolling in her once-pretty mouth.

  “Christ!” My throat burned as if I had been trapped for hours in a place filled with pine smoke.

  “You think your Christ can save you now, taaqa? Yes, he could save you, if you knew him as you claim to. But you have no lord save yourself, though your mind spins with delicious religious head knowledge. You are a lazy academic buffoon.”

  “How much…how much more of your insults do you think I will take?” I begged them, finding strength to step away from the sadistic duo, preparing to run.

  “Where will you run, little man?” the Indian girl asked. “You cannot run from Bahana. Your hisatsinom Adam and Eve tried to run from him; your Simon Peter tried to run from him; many have tried to run from Bahana. None is ever successful. None. This is Flesh-House. There is no running from Flesh-House.”

  Bahana swept down into the arena with a ferocity causing his antics at the ranch to seem as if they had been light breezes. The skies above us revealed themselves to be a deep indigo each time an onset of lightning flashed and crackled. I looked, and the baboon was gone. I was left with the handless girl, and for some reason, this frightened me to the core of my being. I fell where I stood, and was blown over to my side, my broken wrist pinned beneath me, making my arm explode with electric agony.

  The girl walked forward a pace, turned, and faced me. Blood dribbled from her lips. “I will always love you.” Miriam’s last words to me.

  The Lord of the Mesa then manifested himself in human form.

  * * *

  One might expect Ehecatl to appear as a glowing warrior of tremendous strength, feathered with colorful plumes, a bronzed and handsome king of his ancient culture; a destroyer of the Anasazi vampire god Huitzilopochtli—the ‘Blue Hummingbird from the Left.’ Oh, if I could erase the image of Ehecatl, of Bahana, from my mind forever, I would gladly give anything I own to do so. But, was it his image I saw? Even today I am not sure, yet, after all, what color is the wind? Are not the heavens our mirror? Do we not remake God in our own image?

  Before me and the Indian girl stooped a naked Caucasian man with no hands. His eyes had been scraped out, and his back had been shredded, as if with a whip. His complexion was sallow—almost dead in appearance. As the winds continued their outrage, he mouthed words I could not understand.

  <<====>>

  Author’s Story Note

  ‘Lord of the Mesa' was originally inspired by 'The Dead Valley' written by Ralph Adams Cram and published in the collection Horror Times Ten (1967). In 1990, fifteen years after I read the R. A. Cram story, I tried my hand at writing a short-short carrying a similar dread, and only succeeded in being threatened with a shotgun for my effort. Seventeen years later I remembered the little story and, now wanting to see if I could execute a full-length Extreme Horror piece, I put pen to paper and wrote. For a few years I was concerned that I had crossed the boundary between morality and demonic filth. Today I think there may be some value to it. The first rejection I ever received for the story, and there have not been a few, said that the reader was forced to stop…something about nausea and convulsions.

  THE GODHEAD GRIMOIRE

  Sean Patrick Hazlett

  From Galaxy’s Edge Magazine

  Editor: Mike Resnick

  Phoenix Pick

  The box from the National Archives arrived with the blistering wind and driving snow of late December. Miranda nearly set the package aside until she remembered Damien’s fanatical warnings not to open it. The bastard still hadn’t signed the divorce papers, so she took a peek anyway. With scissors, she carefully cut the packing tape so she could later cover her tracks.

  Tentatively dipping her hand into a sea of foam peanuts, Miranda lifted a rectangular object wrapped in parcel paper from the box.

  She hesitated, worried that if she went any further, Damien would know she’d broken the seal.

  Screw him, she decided, ripping open the packing paper with the wild abandon of a prisoner escaping a super max prison.

  It was a book. And by the look of it, an antique. Its ragged leather cover stretched taut over a sturdy bone frame, conveying a sense of timelessness. The tome’s jagged edges could easily pierce skin. Inscriptions reminiscent of Egyptian hieroglyphs encircled a stylized eye etched on the cover’s upper left quadrant.

  Curious, Miranda opened the book. The stench of rot overwhelmed her. Turning her head, she gagged. Pepper, her coal black German shepherd, growled at the artifact. But Miranda refused to let its odor deter her.

  The book’s blank pages felt smooth and durable like vellum. A sequence suddenly materialized on the first page. With a doctorate in mathematics, Miranda instantly recognized the pattern as a Fibonacci sequence.

  She found the experience unsettling. Not only was the book writing itself, but it was populating its pages with Arabic numerals, a system invented over two millennia after Egypt’s Old Kingdom. There was also something fundamental in the book’s choice of the Fibonacci sequence. It was a pattern rife in nature, characterizing phenomen
a as diverse as the branching of trees to the structure of a nautilus shell to the spiraling of galaxies.

  As Miranda read further, the pages revealed more complex mathematical concepts ranging from Fourier transforms to fractional derivatives to elliptic curves. It was as if the text were establishing a baseline of her mathematical competence.

  Soon, the tome had exhausted her encyclopedic knowledge of advanced mathematics, unveiling concepts just beyond its current frontiers.

  The book mesmerized her.

  The ringing cell phone jolted Miranda from her trance, jamming her back into her own mundane reality. She nearly threw her smartphone across the room.

  On the third ring, she answered, “What?”

  “This is Seth Rosenblatt of Rosenblatt, Wilson, and Yablonsky. Is Miranda available?”

  She rolled her eyes. “This is Miranda.”

  “Oh, great,” he said, his tone indicating anything but. “I have a few questions regarding this divorce settlement. I don’t think Damien should sign it as is.”

  Struggling to control her temper, Miranda cut him off. “Not now. Call Robert Menendez, my lawyer. He’ll handle this.”

  “I’m sorry, Misses Adams, but I need your personal approval on several items.”

  He was trying to take advantage of her, and she knew it. “It’s Doctor Lovko, not Misses Adams. And, like I said, don’t talk to me, talk to my lawyer.”

  “But Misses…ah…Doctor Lovko, I must insist…”

  She hung up the phone. When she glanced at the clock, five hours had passed since she’d begun reading the tome.

  Reaching for the book, she opened it to where she’d left off, anxious to uncover more of its secrets. But all she saw was a blank page. Confounded, she rifled through the book, but found nothing. She cursed Rosenblatt and went to sleep.

  * * *

  That night, Miranda slept in fits and starts. When sleep did come, visions she could only describe as dreamscapes of unreality flooded her consciousness. Disembodied tongues whispered to her from beyond, urging her to press onward, to read further. But she had no idea how to unlock the tome’s mysteries.

  A phone call woke her from her restless slumber. She opened her eyes, realizing she’d never left her living room. The book still rested in her lap.

  The phone rang again. The light shone brightly through her windows. Checking her watch, she realized nearly eighteen hours had passed.

  “Hello?” she answered.

  “Miranda, this is Damien. Did you get the package yet?”

  She hesitated, then looked down at the tome, wondering what to say. She needed more time. “No,” she lied, “but I’ll call you as soon as I receive it.”

  “Okay, but it’s really important. Let me know the instant it’s delivered. And whatever you do, don’t open it. It’s very old, and I don’t want it damaged.”

  A little late for that, Miranda thought. “Understood. By the way, did you sign the papers yet?”

  An awkward pause.

  “I thought we were gonna sit down with Seth Rosenblatt on Friday. Didn’t you set that up?”

  “Why’s that my responsibility? You requested the meeting. Look, why don’t you have him review the documents and send his edits to my lawyer? Then you can sign it. Sound like a plan?”

  “Sure,” he said before hanging up.

  Damien was so self-centered and always fussing over trivial things. Frustrated, Miranda pounded her fist on the artifact. A stab of pain shot through her hand. Blood dripped onto the tome’s sharp bony ridges.

  “Dammit!” she yelled.

  She grabbed the book and stood up. It slipped from her bloody fingers. When it landed, it opened to the page where she’d left off. A drop of blood smeared the page. Letters formed, congealing into words, and words resolved into sentences.

  * * *

  Miranda cancelled her appointments and called in sick to study the ancient tome. It was the end of the semester. A meticulous planner, she’d already scored her final exams and assigned grades. Her nephew, Tommy, was due to visit her in less than two weeks, but she was confident she’d be finished with the book by then.

  Moving beyond mathematics, the book began to reveal the greater mysteries of the cosmos. Miranda now contemplated what before had been unfathomable, expanding her consciousness and consuming knowledge like a locust swarm rampaging on a limitless ethereal plane.

  Almost as soon as the book started sharing its secrets, it stopped. So Miranda bled herself to coax the tome to eke out more. Yet each successive cut yielded fewer and fewer sentences until a single drop could barely entice the stingy artifact to trickle out a handful of words.

  Her bloodletting left her dizzy, unsure of her surroundings, and caught between reality and unreality. She had an uncanny suspicion that others watched her with hungry eyes. Disembodied presences lurked at the edge of her vision, imploring her to let them in.

  Pepper growled in their direction and seemed increasingly uneasy in Miranda’s presence.

  She gazed longingly at Pepper.

  Miranda needed more blood.

  * * *

  Miranda hadn’t slept in four days, her desperation deepening with each passing moment. She sweated profusely and her nails had turned a bruised blue. She feared that any more blood loss would put her into hypovolemic shock. Yet she also experienced an odd sense of empowerment, her consciousness operating on a higher plane.

  Through the fraying curtain between realms, discarnate entities whispered to her, wheedling her to draw the summoning circle someplace dark, someplace deep, someplace hidden from the light of the stars. All would be revealed, if only she’d let them in.

  Coating the cellar floor in her own sickly blood, she followed their instructions to the letter.

  Cloaked in darkness, she sat in the center of the summoning circle, chanting in alien tongues. The entities came ever closer, hissing from the void. Shapeless forms swirled around her, dulling her senses.

  They tempted her with grandiose visions of the godhead, murmuring of the ability to know the future and change the past; to comprehend the nonlinearity of time. They showed her parallel timelines and alternate dimensions. They shared a glimpse of the power to create worlds and the fearsome might to destroy them.

  If only she did what they asked, they’d shepherd her through the veil of existence toward the next stage in her enlightenment. She’d become one of them, one with them. A god holding dominion over a ceaseless cosmos.

  As quickly as the god forms appeared, they vanished like fog in sunlight.

  Miranda woke hours later, her vitality drained. She stumbled upstairs and prepared for the next step in her evolution.

  * * *

  Miranda worried that if she continued to fuel the book with her blood, she’d die before extracting its secrets. While the entities had shown her another way, it was a choice she could barely stomach. Yet from the edges of reality, the voices whispered to her, urging her along the one path to transcendence.

  The ringing doorbell roused Miranda from her stupor. She struggled to rise from her bed.

  “I’m coming!” she croaked with as much strength as she could muster, wheezing from the effort. She staggered onto her feet, the bones of her shaky, rail-thin legs creaking. Draping her azure bathrobe over her now frail frame, she lumbered downstairs.

  She peered out her window to find Damien standing outside in a Brioni suit, obsessively checking his Patek Philippe watch.

  Miranda girded herself for a fight as she opened the door.

  “Finally!” he said in a tone more suited for a motorist who’d just cut him off on Route 128. Once Damien saw her, his outrage gave way to an expression of concern.

  Miranda cut straight to the point. “What do you want?”

  “My God, Miranda, what happened?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I…I don’t know where to begin,” he stammered. “Everything all right?”

  Damien had never been good about expressing hi
mself. He’d always been so passive, so indirect. And it drove her mad. “Stop pretending to care. Tell me why you’re really here.”

  He stared at her for some time. “All right. But you have to promise to tell me what’s been going on with you. To be honest, you look really sick.”

  “Fine, I’ll update you on my life, such as it is.”

  Apparently satisfied with her answer, he continued. “When I called you a week ago, you told me my package hadn’t arrived. Well, I reached out to the National Archives this morning, and they assured me that FedEx delivered it here ten days ago. Did you somehow miss it?”

  That was Damien’s passive-aggressive way of calling her a liar. And the fact that he was right annoyed her to no end.

  Miranda struggled between coming clean or perpetuating the lie. If she risked telling him the truth now, she might lose the artifact.

  She shrugged. “You got me. It’s here. I wanted to hold onto it until you signed the papers, which, by the way, you still haven’t.”

  He nodded. “Fair enough. Go get them. I’ll sign them now.”

  It wasn’t the response Miranda had expected or hoped for. “Don’t you need Seth Rosenblatt to review them first?” she asked, playing for time.

  “No. I trust you. Let’s get this over with. But what I really wanna do is examine the artifact.”

  This wasn’t going well at all. He couldn’t have the book. There was simply no way she’d let him have it. She was too close. She only needed a few more days. If only she could stall him a little longer.

  “Okay,” she said. “Why don’t you come in for coffee? I’ll get the papers.”