Mystery! Read online

  MYSTERY!

  Origins Game Fair 2018

  Edited by

  Chantelle Aimée Osman

  Compilation Copyright © 2018 by Origins Game Fair

  Individual Story Copyrights © 2018 by Contributing Authors, except

  “Paw-trait of a Murderer” copyright © 2000 by John Helfers. First Published in 100 Crafty Little Cat Crimes. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Abomination of Fensmere” copyright © 2015 by Lucy Snyder. Shadows Over Main Street, Hazardous Press, January 2015. While the Black Stars Burn, Raw Dog Screaming Press, November 2015. Honorable mention, Best Horror of the Year, Vol. 8.

  All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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  Lutz, FL 33558

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  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Edited by Chantelle Aimée Osman with additional editing by Bryan Young

  Cover design by Charles Urbach

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Mystery!

  The Abomination of Fensmere

  Lucy A. Snyder

  (Ms.) Taken Identity

  Timothy Zahn

  The Name of the Saints

  Bryan Young

  Morning Star

  Nik Korpon

  Paw-trait of a Murderer

  John Helfers

  Plugged

  Chantelle Aimée Osman

  Fire and Fuel

  Dylan Birtolo

  Doomed to Repeat

  Ronald T. Garner

  Law of Negation

  Michael A. Stackpole

  The Waking Dread

  Donald J. Bingle

  Witness

  Taylor Ker

  Bargaining Chip

  Daniel Myers

  DuckBob: Hunting Apartments

  Aaron Rosenberg

  Lock and Wat

  Gregory A. Wilson

  Authors at Origin

  Acknowledgments

  About the Contributors

  The Down & Out Books Publishing Family Library of Titles

  Preview from Suburban Dick by CS DeWildt

  Preview from Tushhog by Jeffery Hess

  Preview from Once a Killer by Martin Bodenham

  The Abomination of Fensmere

  Lucy A. Snyder

  On a Saturday exactly one month after her mother died in a car wreck, Penny heard a strange car slow down outside her house and stop. She put down her Nancy Drew novel—The Moonstone Castle Mystery, which her mother had bought her only an hour before her death and which Penny kept reading over and over as if somewhere in its pages was the solution to human mortality—and peeked through her second-story bedroom window to see who had arrived.

  A gleaming black two-door 1963 Oldsmobile F-85 sedan crouched at the curb. Her stepfather took her car shopping the day after the funeral, but she’d refused to take a test drive with him, preferring to sit in a chair at the dealership and read her book. Still, she’d overheard the men talking shop and knew the model on sight.

  A tall, balding man in an old-fashioned suit unfolded himself from the driver’s seat, pulled an old leather briefcase from the back, and strode toward the house. He was about her stepfather’s age and had angular features she might have found handsome if it were not for the unsettling intensity of his pale blue eyes and the unpleasant downward cant of his mouth.

  He doesn’t look like a kind gentleman.

  Penny slipped quietly out of her room and stood just out of sight above the stair landing, listening, watching the dust motes dance in a beam of light from the hallway window. In the distance, her little brother and sisters shrieked and whooped as they played Cowboys and Indians.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Penny, can you get that?” her stepfather called from his first-floor study.

  She went perfectly still, not breathing.

  “Penny, are you there?”

  The stranger rang the bell again, and she heard her stepfather curse under his breath and go to the door.

  “Dr. Farrell?” The stranger had a deep voice like a radio announcer.

  “Yes?” Her stepfather sounded cautious, tense.

  “My name is Ezekias Haughton,” he replied smoothly in a peculiar accent. “And I am your stepdaughter Penny’s second cousin.”

  Cousin? Penny wondered. Her mother hadn’t ever mentioned any cousins. Or aunts and uncles, for that matter. Until that moment, all the extended family she knew were her stepfather’s relatives.

  “You have my condolences on your wife Edna’s recent tragic death,” Haughton continued, “I come here as a representative of her family. I wish to discuss with you certain arrangements for her daughter that will have a salutary impact upon your own finances.”

  “Salutary…what do you mean?” Her stepfather sounded skeptical. But curious.

  “Is the girl here?”

  “I think she walked down to the corner store.”

  “Is there someplace we can chat where we won’t be interrupted?” Haughton asked.

  “Certainly…come this way to my study.”

  Penny knew the location of all the creaky boards in the upstairs hallway. She also knew that if she crouched down in the corner of the upstairs linen closet, she could hear every whisper inside her stepfather’s study. Quickly and quietly, she hurried down the hall and sequestered herself in the sweet spot on the closet floor before the men had settled. She could hear the squeak of her stepfather’s office chair and the scrape of the guest chair being pulled out on the other side of his desk.

  “I’m sure your wife’s death was a dreadful blow to poor Penny,” Haughton said, his voice oiled with sympathy.

  “It was. It’s been a terrible time for all of us.” His tone was guarded.

  “Girls her age go through so many difficult changes, even at the best of times. It’s hard to be a good father, especially when the girl isn’t your own.”

  “I’ve been the only father Penny’s known, and I’ve raised her just like my other children,” her stepfather replied sharply.

  “Please, take no offense, Dr. Farrell! You are an upstanding gentleman and a fine pater familias. But, as they say, blood is thicker than water. And adolescent girls are enigmas wrapped in sullen mysteries. No one can argue that.”

  Penny frowned in the dark, wanting to argue it. While she didn’t mind being thought of as mysterious, she disliked it when men lumped girls together as though they were all fish in a can of sardines or cakes on a conveyer belt. Further, she instinctively suspected that what Haughton took as girls’ mysteries were his own investigative failures.

  There was a silence. “Why are you here, Haughton?”

  “A girl Penny’s age needs a strong maternal presence in her life so that she can grow up to be the fine lady we both know she should be. Her mother’s regrettable decision to cut ties with her own parents has meant that Penny has thus far grown up without knowing most of her own kin. I propose that we remedy both problems.”

  “How?”

  “Penny’s Aunt Morinda wants to have the girl over for a visit at the family home in Fensmere, Mississippi, this summer. Say until August.”

  Her stepfather paused again. “Starting when?�
�

  “I hoped to take the girl back with me today.”

  “You can’t be serious.” Her stepfather sounded annoyed. “I’m not handing my daughter over to some stranger who just walked in off the street.”

  Penny heard the sound of a briefcase’s latches popping open. “I have my identification here, and a copy of Morinda’s birth certificate, along with your wife’s. As you can see, although Morinda is fifteen years your wife’s senior, they had the same parents and were born in the same hospital. I know you’ll say such documents could be forged, so I have a collection of photographs and newspaper clippings from the town paper that Morinda kept. Look there; your wife was an accomplished pianist in her youth. She and Morinda even played a concert together at the governor’s mansion; there’s a picture here.”

  For several minutes, Penny heard nothing but the distant shuffling of paper and photos. She drifted into daydreams as she imagined a younger version of her mother playing to an adoring audience on American Bandstand.

  “All right,” her stepfather finally said. “I believe you are who you claim to be, but it’s ridiculous to think that I could give Penny to a virtual stranger, and on such short notice!”

  “I do realize it’s sudden, and an inconvenience, but Morinda wishes to compensate you for your trouble.”

  There came the sound of a weighty packet dropping on the desk.

  “What’s this?” her stepfather asked.

  “It’s enough to cover the debt you owe to…certain parties in New Jersey.”

  Her stepfather inhaled in surprise. “How do you know about that?”

  “Oh, dear Doctor, please don’t look so alarmed. Every man has his vice, and many gentlemen gamble. You simply had a run of poor luck. Family of Penny’s is family of ours, and family secrets are safe with us. Your patients and neighbors will never have to know of this unfortunate footnote in your life, nor about your somewhat unsavory dalliances with the carnival boys…provided my dear young cousin can leave with me late this afternoon.”

  Penny shivered at the threats swimming like hungry sea monsters beneath the surface of Haughton’s voice. She couldn’t sort out what Haughton meant by “unsavory dalliances,” but she was not in the least shocked to find out that her stepfather had not been spending all his time at his downtown office as he’d claimed. Her mother’s tone and manner were strained on the evenings he was late, and when he got home he was just too nice to everyone. She’d known all along something was afoot.

  “What…what do I tell her? How do you expect me to explain this?” Her stepfather’s voice was tight as a violin string.

  “Her fourteenth birthday is next week, is it not? Tell her that summer vacation at her long-lost aunt’s house is a surprise present. Tell her she will be greeted there with cakes and the freshest peach ice cream. Girls love peaches.”

  Penny vowed to hate peaches from then forward on general principle. But then she remembered how much she liked Peach Melba and abandoned the idea.

  There was another long pause.

  “All right.”

  “Excellent. There are a few papers I need you to sign to ensure that Morinda can act in loco parentis…”

  Penny’s heart beat loud in her ears, drowning out Haughton’s voice. Instinct told her to grab a few books and clothes, duck out the window, climb down the tree and run away. But where would she go? Her only good friend at school, Susan, was already off at summer camp. Any of her stepfather’s relatives would surely just hand her back to him, as would the neighbors.

  Another, louder voice in her mind reminded her that staying at home promised a long, tedious summer of nothing much to do but babysit her little half-siblings while Dr. Farrell worked or indulged himself. And besides, there were enticing mysteries afoot. What was her Aunt Morinda like? Was she anything like Penny’s mother? Did she have a nice house? If she was paying her stepfather a lot of money, it must be a nice house. Penny briefly imagined herself sliding down the banister in some grand old manor and wandering in a rose garden, searching for clues to some family mystery.

  What would Nancy Drew do? Clearly, the girl detective wouldn’t flinch from adventure. Penny slipped out of the closet to pack for the journey.

  Once he’d loaded Penny and her luggage into his Oldsmobile, Haughton was even less cheerful than he’d seemed at a distance, and he’d apparently exhausted his supply of conversation with her stepfather. Worse, he smelled unpleasantly of mothballs. But Penny was perfectly content to quietly curl up in the back seat with her book. After just an hour, the hum of the tires on the highway lulled her to sleep.

  When she awoke in the heat of the morning sun, she discovered that he had driven straight through the night. She sat up, rubbed her eyes, and gazed out the windows, wondering how she’d managed to snooze through Haughton’s fuel stops. They passed neat rows of downtown stores: a Woolworth’s, a soda shop, a hairdresser’s, a diner.

  Her stomach rumbled when she saw a man step out of the diner with a half-eaten turnover. He shoved the remaining piece into his mouth and chewed it mechanically, expressionless, his eyes staring out at something so far away that Penny had no chance of spying it.

  “I’m hungry; may we stop for breakfast?” she asked.

  “Your aunt will have a fine meal waiting for you at her house.” His tone made it clear there was no room for negotiation.

  She was suddenly aware of an intense pressure in her bladder. “Please, I need a restroom.”

  “Of course.” He pulled off at a nearby filling station and hovered near the door while she used the cramped women’s facilities.

  Afterward, they drove on in silence. Penny watched the townspeople in their Sunday best walking along the concrete promenade. Something about their countenances unsettled her. It wasn’t that they all looked unnaturally pale in a place where the sun beat down so ruthlessly, nor was it that they all seemed to have the same dust-colored hair that fringed Haughton’s balding pate, his same sharp features. It was the expressions on their faces that sent a chill into her marrow: every person she saw, even the few children, looked so grim that she imagined none of them had experienced a single bit of joy in their entire lives.

  “What do the people do here?” she asked.

  “Many are farmers or mill hands. Others are craftsmen, shopkeepers. The same as anyplace else.”

  “No, I mean ..what do they do for fun?” The moment she spoke, she realized that this was not a favored word in her cousin’s vocabulary.

  “Our town is devout and we don’t have time for juvenile nonsense,” he replied sharply. “But many folks enjoy our church dances. Those are…fun, I think.”

  “What about concerts?” she asked, once again imagining her mother playing piano on TV.

  “Oh, we haven’t had concerts here in over a decade. Not since your—not since the theatre burned down.”

  At least there’s dancing, she thought, feeling suffocated in the over-warm car. Not that it would do her much good; she’d never learned any steps, and the school dances she’d attended had been boring exercises in watching the popular boys and girls show off for each other. She wished she’d thought to bring her record player and her albums; a whole summer without a single Beach Boys song seemed grim indeed! But, she reflected, her aunt certainly had a radio, and there was always television.

  Haughton drove through the rest of the town and down a long road lined with tall pines. He turned off onto a long driveway paved in blacktop that opened onto a roundabout in front of what Penny could only think of as a genuine mansion. The three-story house had to be at least four times the size of her parents’ ranch house, and the front bore double porches supported by thick, whitewashed columns. In the middle of the roundabout grew a large magnolia with pink, fleshy blossoms that attracted a profusion of bees and flies.

  “Here we are,” said Haughton. “A servant will be along to get your things.”

  Penny expected someone like a British butler to emerge from the massive brass-fitted front do
ors, but instead a slim teenaged girl with black braids and dark skin slipped outside. She wore a simple sleeveless daisy print shift, and her left wrist and forearm were in a plaster cast.

  “Oh,” Penny said, staring at the girl’s injured arm as Haughton unlocked the trunk. “It’s okay; I can get my own bags.”

  “She’ll do her job if she wants to be paid.”

  “Yessir!” Not meeting his gaze, the girl slung the medium-sized bag across her body, tucked the smallest under her injured arm, and hauled out the big suitcase with her right.

  “I’ll take you your room, Miss Penny.” Her back, legs, and shoulders straining with obvious effort, the girl stumbled toward the door. Feeling awkward and embarrassed, Penny trailed behind, following the girl into the house. The girl led her past a huge staircase with a banister too ornately carved to slide upon, through a hallway and into a large, high-ceilinged bedroom dominated by a massive four-posted mahogany bed. The walls were icy white, and the two narrow windows wore heavy maroon drapes half-closed to block out the morning sun.

  Sweating in the cool air, the girl carefully set the luggage down on the floor. “Your bathroom’s through there, Miss Penny.” She inclined her head toward a small door that Penny had taken to be a closet.

  The girl doubled over, leaning onto her knees.

  “Are you okay?” Penny asked.

  “I’m fine, Miss Penny.” The girl straightened up, smiling although she was obviously still in pain.

  “It’s just Penny. You really don’t have to call me ‘Miss.’” She’d thought it would be fancy to have a servant call her “Miss,” but now that it was happening, it just felt uncomfortable, like wearing a formal dress tailored for some other girl.