Dead Souls Read online

  Dead Souls

  Edited by

  Mark S. Deniz

  Published by Morrigan Books

  Kindle Edition

  Östra Promenaden 43

  602 29 Norrköping

  Sweden

  http://www.morriganbooks.com

  All stories copyright 2009 by their respective authors. Published by permission of the authors

  Cover art by Reece Notley

  Design and layout by Mark S. Deniz

  Typeset in Garamond and Times New Roman

  Kindle Edition, Licence Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook my not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

  ****

  Dedication

  For Audrey Kitara

  for making my soul anything but.

  Mark would like to thank:

  Reece Notley for just about everything; Sharon Ring, Brad C. Hodson, Pete Kempshall, Sharon Kennedy, Kym MacFarlane, and Michael Bailey for your tireless proofreading work; Etina Deniz, for constant support and ideas; Nikki Phillips for some lovely cover art that we were unable to use, due to a change in direction; Amanda Pillar, always there when most needed and Greg Ballam for all the support I could ever need.

  ****

  Diverse, well arranged and edited. You can’t make a wrong decision with this anthology.

  Harry Markov: Temple Library Reviews

  ****

  introduction

  Within these pages, you will find a man so affected by the horrors he witnessed at war, he believes another is guiding his actions; a small boy with enough malevolence to shake a young girl to her very core; a tattoo artist with a hidden agenda. You will read about a future not as bright as we might have imagined or hoped; a puppet show with a damning message; a new twist on the theory of Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved; Adolf Hitler in a new guise, and something terrible that approaches us in the desert. All this, plus many, many more, tales of darkness and human suffering.

  Dead Souls is a re-imagining of a previous book, forced into a new life, which began with the title before moving on to the cover and extra tales.

  Trying to come up with a new title for a book that was about to be reborn was a little difficult, to say the least, but fell into place when I was having a day of nostalgia, going through my CD collection. Although it has been suggested on forums and in mails that the title has come from a certain Russian classic, I actually decided on the name whilst listening to one of my Joy Division albums. Granted, they may have taken their track’s name from said book but that is by the by. I was reading one of the selected stories at the time, and it was a clear representation of my concept of Dead Souls. All of a sudden another story fit the concept, and then another, and it very soon became evident that everything I had for the book fell easily into this category, and the book could not have any other name.

  Now, I had an interesting book and title but it needed something extra, something that would make it stand out in the world of dark independent press. I began contacting authors I admire: Ramsey Campbell, Gary McMahon, Kaaron Warren, Robert Hood, Stephanie Campisi, amongst others, to write something for me. Some sent me whole new material, others offered reprints of previously published, yet fantastic stories, all of which I felt matched the theme.

  The theme was further exemplified by Reece Notley’s current cover and, in my opinion, this is the best Morrigan Books cover we have to date. It showed that all of us involved in the Dead Souls concept were starting to get to grips with the new theme of the book. The theme I most wanted to examine was that of human nature through short stories about people, people who do terrible things. These things could be of their own motivation, guided by others or, in some cases, forced by some malevolent entity.

  Finally, slotting the stories in place and getting some thoughtful comments from an excellent team of proofreaders (who I am sincerely hoping will work with me again), made me see what it is we have produced — a book that stands very comfortably with the other titles at Morrigan Books. Dead Souls was a challenge which not only taught me a lot about how the industry works, on many levels, but also showed me what I had only suspected I was capable of.

  If you, like me, hark back to the days of Stoker and Poe, and like your horror psychological and thought-provoking, then you are going to love this collection. And if you love it half as much as I do, then my work is done.

  Mark S. Deniz

  August 2009

  ****

  table of contents

  Genesis

  The Collector — Bernie Mojzes

  Licwiglunga — T.A. Moore

  The Blind Man — Carole Johnstone

  Dry Places — Tom English

  Begin With Water — Sharon Irwin

  In The Name — Robert Holt

  When They Come To Murder Me — Bill Ward

  Once Upon A Time

  The Unbedreamed — Christopher Johnstone

  Goldenthread — Elizabeth Barrette

  When The Cloak Falls —Catherine J. Gardner

  The Price Of Peace — Anna M. Lowther

  Your Duty To Your Lord — James R. Stratton

  The Beast Within

  Mercy Hathaway Is A Witch — Ken Goldman

  Immortal Beloved — Lisa Kessler

  Subito Piano — Lisa Kessler

  The Migrant — Michael Stone

  Sandcrawlers — Robert Hood

  The Beast Without

  Tatsu —Reece Notley

  Wayang Kulit — L. J. Hayward

  Contaminator — Rebecca Lloyd

  The Dead Must Die — Ramsey Campbell

  The Ringing Sound Of Death On The Water Tank — Stephanie Campisi

  June — Paul Finch

  A Shade Of Yellow — Gary McMahon

  Then...

  The Blue Stream — Kaaron Warren

  Bios

  Acknowledgements

  genesis

  ****

  the collector

  Bernie Mojzes

  It's not all death, here on this hill, now that the battle has moved on.

  Not yet.

  The crows and vultures aren't waiting, though. The winter has been harsh and long, and the wolves and foxes have been loathe to leave them their share. They make the best of unexpected fortune: vultures tear flesh from bone while the crows feast on the softer tissue, so recently exposed that it still steams in the snow. Neither discriminates between living and dead, so long as the meal is too weak to be a threat.

  One old crow refrains. Perched on a rocky outcropping, she surveys the carnage with a glittering eye as she tries to compose her ruffled feathers (the efforts do little to coax the errant feathers into place). Of the dozens of bodies strewn across the rocky slope, perhaps half still show signs of life. Some scream or cry, others hiss or curse through pain-clenched teeth. Yet others lay still, blessedly unconscious as the blood pools and freezes around them. So many stories, all come to a common end.

  Some of the stories she knows; she's seen them birth and grow, watched these tales through the twists and turns of marriage, work, and secret lovers. She's even written some of the chapters herself. Other stories are mysteries. The end is clear — is always clear — but how these men with their strangely rounded speech, their festive and plumed uniforms, and their finely forged steel ca
me to be here, to die on this hill with those they came to kill, those are stories that will forever be lost.

  All stories have a beginning, and all stories come to an end. (All but a few, her inner bird caws.) And she is a collector of stories. She watches them develop with greedy eyes, and when they come to a close, she takes them home and places them with the others, fitting them together like nesting dolls.

  But what use is an ending when the beginning is lost?

  There are curses reserved for so wasteful a God. The crow contemplates them.

  Further up the hill, torches are touched to thatch, and the village begins to burn. The fighting has turned to slaughter, and the slaughter to rape and slave-taking. The crow is there as well, watching from atop an aspen tree.

  But there is one particular drama that she finds most compelling.

  His name is Zoran, and he waves his broken spear at an overeager vulture that stretches its neck toward the entrails that spill between his fingers. She knows this man, dragged him bloodborn into life, cutting him from his mother's broken body while she was still warm, bedded him sixteen years later, at the turning of spring. Later still, she mid-wifed both his daughter and his son, now almost old enough to bed as well.

  In the village, Zoran's wife and daughter are dragged screaming from a burning house. On the hillside, his son, Javor, lies on his back, laboured breath bubbling pink from his mouth and chest, only a few spear-lengths away from his father. Beside his body sits the Byzantine soldier who put the sword through Javor's chest. The Byzantine is pale, panicked to nervous immobility, hands clutching the spear that Javor pushed through his gut. He mouths silent curses as he tries to coax movement from his legs. The Byzantine is perhaps less lucky than the villager; the spear has severed his spine, but not the artery, and his ultimate fate is paralysis and an agonizingly long death of sepsis.

  The Byzantine is hardly older than the boy.

  Zoran shoves his intestines back inside his belly as best he can and wraps a strip torn from a dead soldier's tunic around his gut to hold himself together. Then, using the broken spear for support, he drags himself to his son's side. The Byzantine sees him approaching and seems to get a hold of himself. Javor is oblivious of everything but his own pain.

  “I'm sorry,” Zoran tells his son. He washes the blood and shit from his hands in a snow drift before he touches the boy's face. “I'm here now.”

  “Papa?” The boy reaches weakly. His eyes are unfocused, glazed. “Papa, did we win? Is Danica safe?”

  In the story of this boy's life, just yesterday, Danica, the miller's daughter, kissed him on the cheek at the market. She had watched him for months, and he, her. And perhaps they'd have married. And perhaps in a year or two they'd have had children of their own. Or perhaps not. The crow sees little point in speculation. Might-have-beens won't line the nest.

  In the village, Danica drags a paring knife, concealed in her hair, across the throat of a soldier as he mounts her, and is rewarded with a quick death on the blades of his companions.

  The Byzantine boy dying on the mountainside looks at the child he's killed, and at the child's father. “Yes,” he lies, his tongue stumbling over the Slavic words, “Yes, you have won. I am your prisoner.”

  “Thank Perun,” the boy gasps. He grips his father's hand weakly. “Papa? Tell Danica I love her.”

  Then he gurgles and gasps. This story is drawing to a close, but perhaps not quickly enough; the boy is drowning in his own blood. He draws quick, pain-filled gasps through clenched teeth. “Make it stop!” The hissed demand is almost inaudible.

  His father draws a knife and presses it against his son's throat. There's no saving the child, not from this wound. Only from a lingering and painful death. His hand trembles.

  “Wait,” the soldier says, laying a hand on Zoran's to stay him. “No father should have to do this. Let this be my burden.”

  Zoran looks at his son, then nods and lets the Byzantine take the blade from him. These hands do not shake. It is quick.

  Javor shudders once as the blood sprays, and then is still.

  The Byzantine soldier hands the knife to Zoran.

  His end isn't as quick as Javor's, but it's quicker than he'd expected. The knife burns in his chest, sliding between ribs and into his heart. “Thank you,” he says, and when Zoran pulls the blade, the blood flows freely, and he slumps over the dead boy.

  As this private drama comes to a close, the old crow takes flight and lands on the dead soldier's shoulder.

  “Why?” she asks, her voice harsh.

  Zoran swallows, still staring at the blade. “He helped my son. Could I have done anything else?”

  “Why?” the crow asks again.

  “He killed my son. Could I have done anything else?” Zoran lets himself slump to the ground. There's little enough left in him, and nothing left to keep him here.

  She rests his head on her knees, strokes his hair with cool fingers, and he recognizes her: his first lover. She had been tender and demanding and loving and beautiful and cruel. She had taken him for her own use and left him. Twenty winters have passed, more or less. She hasn't changed a bit.

  “You've come back.”

  “I've always been here,” she says. She puts her fingers to his lips. “Always have been. And always will be.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Don't you already know?” She smiles sadly, and examines his wound. “Perhaps I could heal this.” She stares into his eyes. Her long black hair shrouds his face. “If you could have one wish, what would it be? Would you like to live?”

  He laughs, bitter. “My son is dead. My wife and daughter also, or worse. My village is destroyed. Everyone is dead. What is there to live for?”

  “I can't answer that.”

  “What would I wish? I would wish my wife and daughter safe. I would wish my son walking again. I would wish the damned Empire and its accursed god driven from this land. Can you give me that?”

  “All that?” Her face is grim. “Yes. But there are costs. Are you sure this is what you want?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very well.”

  The old woman gets stiffly to her feet. She pushes at her wiry grey hair (the efforts do little to coax the errant strands into place), and clicks her fingers.

  There's a sound of something galloping, hopping — something massive — and soon a small hut comes into view, running blindly on chicken legs up the hill. Zoran has difficulty focusing on it; it is made of wood, of twisted twigs, or of human bones and candy. It is perhaps all these things, and none of them. One of the legs helps the old woman up to the door. A great clatter spills from the hut: the sounds of a kitchen before a wedding, or a funeral. And before long the witch returns, carrying a wooden bowl and spoon.

  Baba Yaga scoops a spoonful of steaming liquid from the bowl and presses it into Javor's unresponsive mouth. Then she rolls the Byzantine boy off Javor's body and feeds a spoonful to him as well. She makes her way around the battlefield, ministering to the dead.

  Javor moves. He sits up, then pushes himself to his feet.

  “Javor!” cries Zoran. “My beautiful son! You're alive!”

  Javor doesn't respond. He looks around for a weapon, and, finding one, walks over to one of the injured Byzantine soldiers left on the hillside and cuts his throat. Something is wrong. His movements aren't blind, or purposeless. If anything, they are nothing but purpose: he slays one wounded Byzantine after another, until they are all dead, and nothing distracts him from this task.

  And then Zoran realises that although his son is walking, he isn't breathing.

  “What have you done?” Zoran drags himself toward the witch. “What have you done to my son?”

  “I've done what you asked,” Baba Yaga says. “Your son walks. He and the others will save your wife and daughter. They will drive the army of the Christ-god from this land until the flesh falls from their bones and their bones turn to dust.” She scoops up her skirts to get down on bony knees, stra
ddling his hips, kissing him passionately on the lips. He shudders and recoils.

  One by one, the dead rise and arm themselves. Then they join Javor and march toward the burning village.

  “Don't worry,” she says. “You'll get to join your son soon enough. But there is yet time enough for you to thank me properly.”

  She is young and beautiful as she pulls her dress over her head, pert breasts high on her chest. She is old, toothless, the hairy mole on her lip tickling his nose as she presses her lips against his. The rounded belly of a woman in her middle years presses against his wound; her hips are wide with childbirth.

  She is maiden, mother, crone. She is birth, and life, and death. She is all ages at once.

  Up the hill in the direction of the village, the screaming has resumed. They are the cries of men this time, however. Not of women.

  But they are nothing compared to Zoran's whimper as the eternal witch takes the only thing he has left.

  When he is spent, she ruffles her feathers and lets them smooth (the efforts do little to coax the errant feathers into place). Then she cocks her head to stare with one glittering black eye into his. His eyes are green, laced with a hint of hazel. She's always loved his eyes.

  They taste as good as they look.