9 Tales Told in the Dark 4 Read online

  “Jacob!” Stephen wailed. More of the plant people had converged around Stephen as he stood watching Jacob die leaving him nowhere to run. Stephen felt their hands take of hold of him. He kicked and screamed as they dragged him deeper into the city. As they approached the heart of Bloomington, Stephen saw it weaving and twisting in the air like a giant snake moving to the music of a song only it could hear. It was so beautiful it took his breath away. A sea of reds and yellows swirled on its petals. “It looks like a sunflower,” Stephen thought and smiled, suddenly overcome by an eerie, hypnotic calm.

  The flower stood nearly twenty feet tall but it stopped its dance and lowered itself down closer to Stephen as if it were examining him. A fragrant, sweet odor like honey filled Stephen’s nose as a tendril shot out of the flower’s center and plunged into his chest. Stephen screamed with both pain and bliss as the tendril penetrated his skin and pulsed pumping him full of the thing’s seed. Around the city, the plant things swayed like blades of grass in the wind as Stephen died and was reborn.

  THE END.

  AUTHOR BIO

  Eric S Brown is the author of numerous books including the Bigfoot War series, the Kaiju Apocalypse series, and the A Pack of Wolves series. Some of his stand-alone books include War of the Worlds Plus Blood Guts and Zombies (Simon and Schuster), Season of Rot (Permuted Press), and Cowboys vs. Zombies (Severed Press). The first book of his Bigfoot War series was adapted into a movie (featuring C. Thomas Howell and Judd Nelson) by Origin Releasing- available in store at Wal-Mart, Best Buy, etc. He is also the first fiction writer to ever be published by WAL-MART WORLD magazine and the Wal-Mart Corporation also adapted his story "The Babble Creek Monster" into a cartoon for their TV network, which will air in late Oct. 2014. He has sold short fiction to Baen Books, The Grantville Gazette, and numerous anthologies such as the recent release SNAFU: An Anthology of Military Horror. Eric has also scripted comic books for Unstoppable Comics and writes an ongoing, award-winning column on the comic industry.

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  THE CHILDREN OF BONETOWN by Dale L. Sproule

  The hill is so long and gentle you hardly know you’re going down. The forest is thinning; with the stumps of more and more scrawny firs and alders cleared by hand. You pull back on the reins and look around. Neither the Blood nor the Blackfoot cut timber in such a fashion. The woodcutting is extensive enough to suggest a settlement rather than a homestead. But there’s no scent of freshly cut wood here, or of smoke. A faint acrid smell hangs in the still air and it takes a while to put a name to it. Decay is something you don’t encounter much in these dusty woodlands, what with the wolves and coyotes, crows and magpies that can pick a carcass clean in hours.

  You see a giant shadow through the trees, jutting from the earth like a rock face. Riding toward it, you make out the details of a stockade, built of stone and timbers; around it are arrayed eight houses — five are sod and the three in the back are woven out of small branches.

  Wind chimes hang in every doorway, all made of bone — the bones of ducks and prairie chickens mostly. No one seems to live here. You stand scratching your head. You’ve spent all of your 42 years between Fort Macleod and Prince Albert, but never heard of this place, which looks like a Hudson’s Bay Company outpost, large and established enough to have its own Northwest Mounted Police detachment.

  Yet it seems deserted.

  You tie your horse at the hitching post. The watering trough contains only twigs, dirt and a thick layer of pine needles.

  Latched but not locked, the door of the stockade swings open at your push, thumping heavily into the wall. It is a single vast room, empty of everything except a table or a bed of some sort. You squint into the darkness and it comes slowly into focus -- whatever-it-is has more than four legs. If your rifle was cocked, you’d have shot the thing because it looks so alive, like some sort of spiny beetle. Having worked as an undertaker’s assistant in Fort Macleod and as a guide for the Northwest Mounted, you recognize the human leg bones comprising the segments of the insectile limbs. The scarab’s shell bristles with sharpened shin and arm bones.

  So much sunlight is streaming between the logs and big stones that you can see clearly now. Much of the mud caulking has dried up and fallen through the cracks, indicating that the place has been abandoned for some time.

  The longer you stand staring, the more you see. Through a doorway are ribs, curving down from the top of a doorframe – part of a sculpture that is mostly out of sight, around the corner. You are curious, but only slowly work up the nerve for a better look. As you go deeper into the room, you see an enormous snake, coiling through the bars of a jail cell. Slithering upwards. You cock your rifle this time, before you realize that the serpent isn’t really moving after all. It too is made of bone. Taking a few steps closer, you discern human vertebrae, strung like beads and braided -- giving the ‘snake’ a criss-cross pattern and scaly appearance so realistic that you shudder.

  The light grows dim, and you think it’s just getting cloudy outside, but it gets darker and darker, trapping you in the blackness with the grotesqueries.

  Listening for the sounds of the snake’s approach, you hear neither whisper nor clatter, but something completely unexpected – the kind of faint, absurd sound that makes you tilt your head like a chicken, trying to figure out if you really hear what you think you’re hearing – voices singing and laughing in the distance. As you look over your shoulder towards the doorway, the light returns as if it had never gone away.

  You hear women’s voices and the thump of footsteps getting closer, coming in the door.

  You stare into the startled and suddenly sombre faces of three girls. Two blondes, twins in their late teens, and a pre-adolescent Metis girl. You can see by their features that they are sisters. The dust they have kicked up coming into the room defines motes of sunlight against the gloom. The trio, no longer laughing, all hold you in similar curious gazes. You expect them to start asking questions that they never ask.

  So you decide to initiate communication, find out what the hell is going on. As you crouch to make yourself less threatening you have to suppress a sneeze with a knuckle. When the tickle is gone you open your mouth to speak and the sneeze roars out. Having turned your head away, you sniff and grope for a handkerchief, saying, “I’m sorry.”

  You wipe your nose and run your rawhide sleeve across your eyes to clear the dust and tears.

  When you look up again, it is completely dark.

  “Wherever you are,” you say, your voice sounding small and timid in the massive gloom. “Please stay.”

  The sunlight comes back, fainter than before.

  “Girls?” you say. “I won’t hurt you.”

  Darkness again. You take a deep breath and by the time you exhale it is light again, then dark, light, dark-light-dark. You hear footsteps but can’t tell where they’re coming from or where they’re going. You turn to see that the bone creatures are closing in around you. What you thought were footsteps and the roar of thunder, were actually the tick, tick, tick of the beetle’s feet and the snake slithering toward you, rattling like a giant chain being dragged across the floor. There is a third monstrosity, deeper in the darkness, but approaching faster than the others. It’s a human skull, six feet across, floating through the darkness as it opens and closes its monstrous jaws. The air seems thick as water around you as you run for the door. You have trouble breathing until you step outside.

  Your horse is gone. Your memories tell you that it is still morning, but the sun is on the wrong horizon. You turn around and around, unable to get your bearings.

  You look at the vegetation, but can see no sign of your horse’s passage, or even of your own arrival. You’d think there would be some droppings if she was tied up here all day, but there is nothing, except – over there – something sprawled in the tall brown grass. Flies become thick in the air as you walk toward it and see that it is the carcass of a large animal. Your old mare. But it can’t be; this horse has been de
ad for days, maybe weeks. It is little more than hide and bones, untouched by scavengers. But you recognize your saddle and the blaze on its forehead is unmistakeable, a perfect black-brown diamond inside of a long white star. Your saddlebags and pack are still intact, though maggots fall from your bedroll as you retrieve it.

  While you have been doing this, it has been getting dark. You walk back into the clearing in front of the stockade. You’ve seen no further sign of the young people and making camp here is the last thing you want to do, but you know you won’t get far on foot in the deepening night.

  After unrolling and shaking out your bedroll, you look for the moon, by which to gauge the passage of days, but the night grows blacker than any night you can remember. The cool thickness of a pending storm washes over you, cleansing the smells of dust and decay. The wind whips your long hair around your face and before you can decide where to take shelter, the rain starts coming down in fistfuls, pummelling you. It’s like standing under a spring waterfall. Within the space of a hundred startled heartbeats, you’re sliding and slogging through ankle deep mud to the wooden threshold of one of sod huts. The interior is ripe with the smell of fermentation.

  “Hello?” The roar of the rain absorbs your voice as it leaves your lips. You take a few steps further into the room. The walls are so thick the downpour is hushed to a patter, punctuated by the occasional wet slap.

  You drop to your knees and shake out the contents of your saddlebags. Enfolded by canvas are a hunting knife in a leather sheath and some dried buffalo meat tied in butcher’s paper. Gingerly you pull apart the string and confirm by feel that no maggots or mealworms got inside the wrapping. At least you won’t starve. As you struggle to bite off a chunk of the leathery meat, a lightning flash illuminates the inside of the house. You see a table and…a woman with a big knife lunging at you out of the darkness.

  “Don’t touch my babies,” she screams in a voice like the hollow rattle of bones. Nearly choking on your food, you launch yourself out of the doorway, rolling into the mud. You lie there, knees drawn up, arms over your face, poised to fend off an attack that doesn’t come. There is no sign of her in the doorway. You sit up cautiously, unable to see anything. You unsheathe the knife in your hand as you back up, still expecting the woman to emerge from the house. The rain has let up and you think about going into the woods. As you turn around, your mind fills in the details of all you can’t see; the face of the stockade, door hanging open like a mouth.

  “I see you’ve met mother,” says a girl’s voice – and you whirl to see a blonde girl of almost marriageable age – the eldest of the trio you encountered earlier. Like yours, her clothes are soaked through.

  “How many people live here?” you ask.

  She shrugs. “Our father died before we got here. Out on the prairie. Walking Bear found us and brought us here. He was Violet’s father, but he loved Elizabeth and I as though we were his own.”

  “Where did you disappear to, when I saw you the first time?”

  “We didn’t go anywhere,” says the girl. “You need to understand that this is all an illusion. Walking Bear was a shaman. After the wars in the south, people came here to hide. But they brought their violence and their hatred with them. They killed everyone. But Walking Bear used his magic to keep us alive – to protect us.”

  The rain is started to come down hard again. The sky lights up from horizon to horizon and you gaze up in awe. When you look back down, the girl is no longer where she was. Through the curtain of water, you see a flickering shadow as she disappears through the stockade door.

  “It’s all illusion,” you whisper to yourself, urging yourself to get up and follow her.

  The girl is now standing in the doorway with a lantern. None of the bone sculptures are visible in the room behind her. They’re just illusions, you remind yourself.

  She holds out her hand and shouts. “Come in from the rain. And we’ll tell you the rest of it.”

  “All illusion,” you say aloud, new hope fuelling each step as you make your way to the door.

  The girl takes your hand as you step inside. Her sisters stand behind her. “Where’s your mother?” You ask.

  The oldest girl shrugs. “She doesn’t come in here.”

  The door clunks shut behind you and you see the youngest girl barring the door.

  The middle girl speaks for the first time, “She’s confused. She thinks we’re still alive. But we were killed the raid. We died before she did.”

  The eldest one who found him outside no longer appears wet. She says, “Our father built us each a house of bone and hid our spirits inside. He made them frightening so that no one would try to breach them.”

  Despite the candle going out, there is light, shafts of what appears to be sunlight, flickering through the windows and chinks between the logs. You remember how time seemed to pass so strangely the first time you entered.

  You hear a small voice chanting and see the little girl, playing some sort of skipping game. “We never die, we grow and grow, we want you here, we need your bones. How many years will we get? Five, ten, fifteen, twenty…”

  Your hands are growing thin and bony. Your cheeks turn soft and flaccid. Years drip off your face like wax. For an instant, you feel secretly rebellious and much more clever than you really are, for having had the foresight to have aged before you got here, so that these creatures wouldn’t have as much to take from you. In no time at all your shoulders slump inward, your back curls, your vision blurs.

  “Don’t think of this as death,” the little one says, her voice sounding less like a child’s voice and more like water dripping inside a chamber. Her skull seems to shine right through the flesh of her face, and then the illusion of a child’s body fades, her skull becoming one of many, lashed together by the eye sockets into a gigantic skull made of smaller skulls. The jawbone of the larger creature moves as she speaks, “Think of it as becoming part of something greater.”

  The room dances with pale white shadows and you can feel the flesh drying on your bones as you tilt back your head to scream, but nothing comes out, not even a whisper, as the bone children envelope you in their sharp embrace.

  THE END.

  For more from Dale L. Sproule Check out:

  http://www.psychedeliagothique.com

  COME INTO MY PARLOR by Rachel Slater

  Kyoto, Japan 1938

  Boats.

  Rie liked boats.

  I wonder if it's normal for a six-year-old girl to like boats? She thought to herself, as she made her way down the narrow streets as fast as her awkward shoes would allow.

  Rie couldn't remember exactly how long she had been living in the Okiya. All she knew was that one day, when all of her lessons were complete, she was to become a Geisha- just like her big sister, Chiaki. Chiaki was beautiful. When she walked, she glided. When she smiled, so did everybody else. Rie wanted to be just like her when she was older.

  She liked it at the Okiya.

  And she loved her school- especially her dance classes. In fact, Rie loved her life in general.

  Turning right onto the next narrow street, Rie was careful not to damage her little wooden boat on the wall.

  'Making boats is for boys!' Mother had scolded, when Rie had brought it home.

  And so it was, Rie supposed. But then again, it wasn't like she would be pursuing a career in carpentry. She and her friend Michiko had made the boat, just for fun. And now she was going to try it out. Michiko couldn't come, and Rie couldn't wait any longer, so she had decided to go alone.

  Mother often sent her on errands around the Hanamachi, the Geisha district in which she lived. As such, she knew the area well and she knew the perfect place to try out her little boat.

  With autumn drawing in on the city of Kyoto, Rie knew she didn't have long before it began to get dark.

  But just enough time to sail my boat across this pond just once, she thought, slipping through the gate of the Azagao garden, and jogging up the gravel path towa
rd the pond.

  It wasn't a particularly big pony. And nor would it be very deep, Rie had concluded.

  Stopping at the edge, she surveyed the task ahead.

  Yes.

  She could definitely bob along in this little pond quite nicely for a short while.

  Taking a look around the garden, Rie smiled. She liked to smile. And anyway, Mother always told her that frowning was too much strain for little girls who want to grow up as pretty as their big sisters. So Rie only practiced smiling.

  This garden was probably as beautiful as the rest, once... she thought.

  It looked at bit neglected now, however. The shrubs and plants that had once surrounded the pond were bare, twisted sticks. The footpath was shrouded in brown autumn leaves and the last remaining blossom petals, still trying to cling to life in the bitter cold.

  Rie thought it sad that something so beautiful and innocent as a blossom petal should come to an end. But even at the age of six, she was bright enough to understand that cruel and unfair things happened in this world all the time, and more often than not, it was better not to question them.

  Pushing her boat out onto the surface of the still, calm pond, Rie climbed gingerly aboard and settled herself down.

  If it had been summer, she should probably have brought a snack with her. That would've been fun.

  Maybe I'll come back next year and do just that.

  With that, Rie dunked her arm into the water and began to paddle across to the other side. The water was a lot colder than she had expected, even for this time of year. It was ice cold, and it wasn't long before the little girl was forced to swap arms. After all, she didn't want her skin to turn blue.