Behold Read online

  OTHER ANTHOLOGIES BY CRYSTAL LAKE PUBLISHING

  Twice Upon an Apocalypse: Lovecraftian Fairy Tales

  Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories

  Tales from The Lake Vol.3

  Tales from The Lake Vol.2

  Tales from The Lake Vol.1

  Children of the Grave

  The Outsiders

  Fear the Reaper

  For the Night is Dark

  CLICK ON THE IMAGE BELOW FOR EXCLUSIVE CONTENT

  Copyright 2017 Crystal Lake Publishing

  Be sure to sign up for our newsletter and receive a free eBook

  All Rights Reserved

  Layout:

  Lori Michelle—www.theauthorsalley.com

  Cover art:

  John Coulthart—www.johncoulthart.com

  Interior artwork:

  Luke Spooner—www.carrionhouse.com

  Proofread by:

  Paula Limbaugh

  Petro Lombaard

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  FOREWORD

  ODDITIES

  LaRue’s Dime Museum

  Lisa Morton

  Wildflower, Cactus, Rose

  Brian Kirk

  The Baker of Millepoix

  Hal Bodner

  Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament

  Clive Barker

  An Exhibition of Mother and Monster

  Stephanie M. Wytovich

  CURIOSITIES

  Madame Painte: For Sale

  John Langan

  Chivalry

  Neil Gaiman

  Fully Boarded

  Ramsey Campbell

  In Amelia’s Wake

  Erinn L. Kemper

  A Ware That Will Not Keep

  John F.D. Taff

  Earl Pruitt’s Smoker

  Patrick Freivald

  As a Guest at the Telekinetic Tea Party

  Stephanie M. Wytovich

  Hazelnuts and Yummy Mummies

  Lucy A. Snyder

  UNDEFINABLE WONDERS

  The Shiny Fruit of Our Tomorrows

  Brian Hodge

  The Wakeful

  Kristi DeMeester

  Knitter

  Christopher Coake

  Through Gravel

  Sarah Read

  Hiraeth

  Richard Thomas

  ABOUT THE EDITOR

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  ABOUT THE ARTISTS

  COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  “Chivalry” ©1993 by Neil Gaiman. First published in Angels & Visitations. Reprinted with permission.

  “Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament” ©1984 Clive Barker. First published in Books of Blood, Vol.2. Reprinted with permission.

  For Franny, who showed me that true miracles and real magic exist.

  FOREWORD

  Wanna see something weird?

  Come on. This way . . .

  Turn a page. Turn another.

  Something weird. See?

  We’ve got extraordinary. Touching. Devastating. Even profound.

  Come on.

  That’s what you want, yeah? It’s what I want pretty much all the time and it’s definitely what I was hoping for when I saw the cover for this beauty of a book. Inspires something in you, doesn’t it? Yeah. Almost like it activates the village of imps within, the unseen governors that direct you one way or another, that help you decide things. Like picking up this book. That cover. That title. And, if you’ll follow me, the stories most of all.

  Doug Murano is on a roll and for an editor to be rolling, it means he’s got an eye. It’s an eye for what he’s looking for, yeah, and an eye for what he thinks is good, yes, but it’s really an eye for putting stories together. That’s the best part of Behold! Oddities, Curiosities and Undefinable Wonders. I’ll tell you straight up that’s the best part because by the end of this book, you’ll find yourself reaching for a quilt that isn’t actually in the room. Nope, it’s not a physical quilt, but a woven thing nonetheless, a thing that’s kept you warm for the duration. If you’re anything like me, you’ll reach for it, and if you’re a lot like me you’ll still cover yourself up with it, long after you realize it’s unseen, unreal, and that it was the stories, after all, that warmed up the room all along. Lovers of short stories, and, specifically, those of us who devour horror shorts, we know the power, the promise, of any anthology we pick up.

  Will this be the sort of book that grips you by the shirt and tosses you into the fray, ready-or-not-here-I-come? Yes. This is that kind of book. And yet, the images you’ll find within are much more tangible than the animatronic beasts and witches that wait for you in a traveling house of horrors. There’s no crappy lighting in here to make you squint your eyes, no track-car moving too fast, no loud music to distract you.

  That leaves you and your mind, you know. Nothing between. Just you, the writers, and your mind.

  Come on.

  This way.

  We’ve got curiosities. We’ve got wonders, too.

  And that’s how you like it. That’s how we all like it.

  Did you know a man with tentacles wanders these pages? And so does a woman who discovers she’s able to crush powerful men with her imagination? Wanna meet them? Yeah, sure you do. Hell, I’d like to get coffee with them in an all-night diner and talk about oddities. Talk about wonders. About desire.

  There’s a lot of desire in this book, these pages, a lot of want. Erinn Kemper’s brilliant “In Amelia’s Wake” gives us a boy who wants to marry a girl who seeks adventure in her life, not unlike Amelia Earhart herself, whose fateful plane the boy and his brothers stand guard over and who wanted quite a bit of adventure herself. John F.D. Taff’s “A Ware That Will Not Keep” stars a young man who wants to destroy the evil in his way. And yet, sometimes that’s a dangerous idea, isn’t it: exacting revenge? For, as in the beloved film “Pumpkinhead,” sometimes the beast to whom you say “sick ‘em” doesn’t know when to stop sicking ‘em.

  Yes, there’s a lot of want in this book. A lot of craving. A lot of appetite. And yet, no vampires. No. In fact, the second half of this book’s title sums up the lot you’re about to encounter rather well: Oddities, Curiosities, and Undefinable Wonders. How else to describe the Kindred in Sarah Read’s subterranean “Through Gravel”? Edith in Kristi DeMeester’s “The Wakeful”? The titular Jacqueline Ess in Clive Barker’s classic story “Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament”? These may sound like mere titles to you now, but soon you will know them. You will know them well.

  Come on.

  This way.

  Let’s go look at something haunting.

  The train-hopping duo of Brian Hodge’s masterful “The Shiny Fruit of Our Tomorrows” sure as shit wants something. They want something big, and they’re willing to travel across the country to see if it’s still there for the having. The knight in Neil Gaiman’s superb “Chivalry” is after the biggest score of al
l. And Patrick Freivald’s Jamie wants and then gets “Earl Pruitt’s Smoker.” Oh, the places she goes.

  But this book isn’t about being “careful what you wish for.” This book is about being drawn to the implied, unspoken, second half of that statement: The writers in Behold! seem to start when things have already been twisted.

  Come on.

  You’ll see what I mean.

  The book’s cover may inspire images of men and women entering curio marts, underhanded deals with shadowy pawn brokers, people purchasing things they shouldn’t have. And yet, aside from John Langan’s “Madame Painte: For Sale” (scary, this one), the sought-after emporiums in Behold! cannot be found at First and Main; here, the pawn shop packed with mystifying matter is the world. And isn’t that just the truth?

  Don’t we all want oddities?

  Curiosities?

  Undefinable wonders?

  Hell, I do. You do, too.

  Behold.

  Follow me.

  This way.

  Maybe the cover and title have you thinking of sideshows instead. You pick up the book and it feels something like buying a ticket to the kind of show that includes parting curtains and feelings of guilt for having contributed to the caging of aberrations. And yet, aside from Lisa Morton’s stirring “LaRue’s Dime Museum,” the stories herein aren’t so much sideshow as they are front and center.

  Wanna know a secret? The freaks you’ll find in here are the writers themselves. The guys and girls bold enough and enthusiastic enough to put pen to paper, to write, as Brian Kirk did with the heartbreaking “Wildflower, Cactus, Rose,” the best pocket-symphonies they could. It might not take a freak to spot a freak, but it sure as hell takes one to make these ideas accessible. It’s the fantastical writer-mind that can see both things happening at once: the undefinable . . . defined. The two poems by Stephanie Wytovich encapsulate this idea perfectly and add pepper to, say, Hal Bodner’s “The Baker of Millepoix,” perhaps giving Bodner’s pastries just what they needed to procure miracles indeed.

  Behold.

  Richard Thomas’s parable-pastoral “Hiraeth” reminds us that there’s good reason Mom and Dad say don’t stick your hand in every cookie jar you come across and Ramsey Campbell’s “Fully Boarded” makes you wanna reach into that cookie jar of a story and assist Warden yourself.

  So much to see here. So much to be here.

  Let’s go.

  Where Murano really excels is in his ability to juggle light and dark, the track-listing, so to speak, of this album. Take Lucy Snyder’s “Hazelnuts and Yummy Mummies,” a story written for writers and deviants alike (I am both. You might be both, too.); Snyder makes you laugh, hard, then gently turns you around, shows you the heart of the matter, and by the end of her tale your chuckles have molted into sobs. Christopher Coake pulls off a similar sleight-of-hand with “Knitter” (scary as hell, this one), wherein his delightful village is inhabited by something unfair enough to drive you mad.

  If you think about it too much.

  Which I am. Which you will do, too.

  There’s a line in Coake’s story that serves as an anthem for the book as a whole: “You will turn a page; you will fold another world across this one . . . ”

  And so you will, as the unseen quilt of this collection is woven, you will turn the pages and behold . . .

  JOSH MALERMAN

  Michigan, May 2017

  ODDITIES

  LARUE’S DIME MUSEUM

  Lisa Morton

  LIVE ON STAGE

  THE HUMAN SQUID

  The first thing in the old photo that caught Julia’s eye was the banner strung across the rear wall of a small stage. It took her a few seconds to realize that the tall man standing in front of the banner had appendages that looked like tentacles pushing up around the sides of his 1940s-style shirt and double-breasted jacket.

  There were more banners, all sporting whimsical lettering in a curving style long obsolete.

  MR. INSIDE-OUT

  APPEARING DAILY

  Next to the man with tentacles was a smaller performer whose skin glistened darkly, highlighting the whites of his eyes and his bared teeth. Although the glossy photograph was in black and white, Julia guessed the dark color was a deep crimson red . . . like blood.

  SEE CONUNDRA

  WORLD’S GREATEST CONTORTIONIST

  The woman to the far right of the stage stood with her back to the audience, hands on her hips, and her head, smiling, sitting between her shoulder blades facing the camera.

  LARUE’S DIME MUSEUM

  Between Conundra and Mr. Inside-Out stood a small, dapper African American man, grinning proudly, one arm around the contortionist. The stage the quartet stood on was raised perhaps three feet, lit by bare overhead bulbs dangling at the end of wires, surrounded by banners proclaiming their unusual attributes.

  Julia felt one brief stab of guilt at being so fascinated by the image. It was no longer politically correct to gawk at . . . what had they called them back them?

  Human oddities?

  Sideshow attractions?

  Freaks?

  But she couldn’t deny that the photo exerted a pull on her. It wasn’t just the performers, nor even the quaint banners and the cheap stage, but also the composition and lighting of the photo. It was brilliant, bringing the subjects to life with rare skill. She turned the eight-by-ten over, saw a name written on the back—Greta. No last name, not enough to go on. Was that the photographer, the woman in the photo, or someone who had previously owned the photo?

  She set the photo down on an old scuffed teak end table with inlaid glass and thumbed through the rest of the photos and clippings in the handwoven basket. One more gem emerged: another large still obviously by the same photographer, showing the box office/entrance to “LaRue’s Dime Museum.” Inside a glass-and-wood cubicle papered with notices (“Dr. Mostel’s World Famous Flea Circus!”), a bored clerk who couldn’t have been more than twenty didn’t even muster a hint of smile.

  Once again, Julia was taken by the photographer’s obvious gifts. She felt as if she knew that clerk, as if they’d often gone out for coffee, chatted about boys and college classes. Even though the photos dated back probably seven decades, Julia had seen this young woman’s expression in the faces of baristas and social media junkies.

  Julia picked up the two photos and turned to find the store’s checkout counter. She hadn’t really expected to buy anything when she’d come into Round Again Antiques; she’d only wanted to visit the new business in the neighborhood (even though they’d been open for two months now). She found the rest of the store unremarkable—a typical collection of termite-ridden cast-off furniture, American primitive art and hip reproduction tin signs—but she at least wanted to know more about these photos.

  She spotted a thirtysomething with purple hair behind a wood-paneled desk and approached. “Excuse me,” she said, holding the two stills out, “but I was wondering if you could tell me anything about these?”

  The clerk examined the photos. “Oh, those! Yes, believe it or not, we’re pretty sure that place used to be this place. We found those in an old file cabinet in the back when we took over this spot, and a maintenance guy who’s worked here forever said he remembered LaRue’s. He thinks it closed sometime in the ‘60s.”

  “Do you know the person whose name is written on the back?”

  Shaking her head, the clerk answered, “Sorry, I don’t. If you want those, I’ll let them go for five each.”

  As the clerk rung up the purchase, she glanced at the photos again and laughed. “Wow, look at the guy with the tentacles. You don’t think those could be real, do you?”

  Julia shrugged.

  That was the first time Julia saw the man with the tentacles.

  ***

  Julia’s shift at Java Jane’s started every morning at 5 a.m., preparing the shop for a 6 a.m. opening and soon-after influx of downtown’s government workers and bankers heading into their offices and cubicles. Ju
lia didn’t mind the time; in fact, she enjoyed the commute, driving through L.A.’s quiet pre-dawn streets, a world of shadowed doorways and sodium lights that reminded her of the film noir movies she loved.

  She felt more comfortable in the black-and-white world of men in wide hats and black, wet pavement than she did in her own time. She’d been born and raised into a Southern California that gave success to the beautiful and the ambitious, and she was neither. When she’d seen the two photos in that basket at Round Again Antiques, what she’d immediately felt was a sense of belonging.

  She’d Googled LaRue’s Dime Museum, but there wasn’t much to find. She learned that dime museums had once been popular attractions across the country, offering “lowbrow” audiences a mix of displays, freak shows, magicians, and even music. They’d largely died out by the mid-Twentieth-Century, undoubtedly replaced by a combination of changing morality, rising real estate values, and ubiquitous television.

  LaRue’s had started in 1888 as a series of tents on the outskirts of downtown. A year later, Walter LaRue moved his displays into a building at Eighth and Temple. The museum had apparently been popular clear into the ’50s, long after the LaRues had died and sold it to “Slick” Charlie Johnson (who Julia guessed was the well-dressed man onstage with the performers). Slick Charlie had converted most of it into a game arcade by 1960, but it died with the rest of old L.A.’s glamour in the following decade, about the same time that once-elegant Bunker Hill had seen the last of its old Victorian mansions vanish. There was no mention in any of the articles on LaRue’s of a “Greta.”

  Downtown L.A.—or DTLA, as some hipsters insisted on referring to it—was now one part faceless bureaucracy in shining towers, one part trendy artists’ lofts, and one part Skid Row, where the discarded slept in cardboard boxes and rat-chewed blankets. Julia passed them all on her way into work. She felt sorry for the junkies, the handicapped, the vets, the unlucky, but at the same time she was thankful that Java Jane’s was many blocks removed from the alleys and crumbling warehouses that formed the bulk of the homeless encampments. Java Jane’s covered her monthly parking fees, in a structure across the street, so she didn’t have to walk far to reach the shop.