The Twisted Book of Shadows Read online

  Presenting an all-new horror anthology that shatters the mold…

  Mainstream publishers want all-star lineups. Small press publishers often can’t afford to pay pro rates…and even when they can, the names in the table of contents can be limited by the editor’s reach or effort. Bestselling horror, fantasy, and

  thriller authors Christopher Golden and James A. Moore knew there had to be a better way. Inspired by the efforts of legendary anthology Charles L. Grant, who helped move so many new writers in the horror community’s conversation, Golden and Moore teamed up with Haverhill House’s Twisted Publishing imprint to create…

  THE TWISTED BOOK OF SHADOWS

  Determined to pay pro rates, the editors crowdfunded the project, and then put the word out as far and wide as possible, loudly and repeatedly encouraging submissions by diverse voices, and recruiting a stellar editorial committee to read along with them, including Linda A. Addison, Nadia Bulkin, Rachel Autumn Deering, Lamar Giles, KL Pereira, and Lee Thomas.

  Out of seven hundred stories received through a blind submission process—none of the editors had any idea who the authors were—

  nineteen made the final cut. Within these pages you will find the beautifully weird side-by-side with terrifying nightmares, horrifying folklore, and hellish futures. Nineteen unique and haunting tales that truly earned their place in a book entitled…

  THE TWISTED BOOK OF SHADOWS

  Discover your new favorite horror stories by: Melissa Swensen -- M.M. De Voe -- Andrew Bourelle -- Sara Tantlinger -- Jeffrey B. Burton -- Eóin Murphy -- Sarah L.

  Johnson -- Jason A. Wyckoff -- Amanda Helms -- Trisha J.

  Wooldridge -- Liam Hogan -- KT Wagner -- Rohit Sawant -- P.D.

  Cacek -- John Linwood Grant -- George Edwards Murray -- Cindy O’Quinn -- David Surface -- Kristi DeMeester THE TWISTED BOOK OF SHADOWS

  The Twisted Book of

  Shadows

  Edited by

  Christopher Golden

  &

  James A. Moore

  Introduction by

  Linda D. Addison

  With assistance from

  Rachel Autumn Deering

  Lee Thomas

  KL Pereira

  Nadia Bulkin

  &

  Linda Nagle

  An imprint of Haverhill House Publishing The editors would like to dedicate The Twisted Book of Shadows in memory of Charles L. Grant .

  The works included herewithin are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are a product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The Twisted Book of Shadows © 2019 by Twisted Publishing Cover design & setup by Dyer Wilk

  All stories herewithin are copyright their respective authors 978-1-949140-15-6 Hardcover

  978-1-949140-09-5 Trade Paperback

  978-1-949140-14-9 Limited edition

  All rights reserved.

  For more information, address:

  Twisted Publishing

  Haverhill House Publishing LLC

  643 E Broadway

  Haverhill MA 01830-2420

  www.haverhillhouse.com

  Acknowledgments

  The editors would like to thank the contributors, of course, but also every other author who submitted a story to The Twisted Book of Shadows and waited patiently for our reply. We owe our gratitude to all the people who contributed money to the crowdfunding that financed this book and made certain that we could pay the authors a professional rate for their work, as well as to everyone who posted about our call for submissions, particularly in traditionally marginalized writing communities.

  Our thanks to our publisher, John M. McIlveen, to everyone on the Twisted Publishing team, and to the indefatigable Matt Bechtel, who not only ran the crowdfunding effort but played traffic cop for all 700 plus submissions, making sure we had no idea who had written which stories until we had already accepted or rejected them. Finally, massive thanks to our editorial committee—those authors who waded with us through hundreds of stories, searching for the best of the best. KL Pereira, Nadia Bulkin, and Lamar Giles read some of the submissions, and we’re grateful to them.

  Linda D. Addison, Rachel Autumn Deering, and Lee Thomas read every single story that came in, and for that extraordinary effort, we’re eternally indebted. Finally…thanks to you, every one of you who purchased this book, supporting short horror fiction and horror anthologies and new and emerging writers.

  Thank you so much.

  The Twisted

  Book of

  Shadows

  Table of Contents

  Introduction Linda D. Addison

  The Pale Mouth Melissa Swensen

  Cake M. M. De Voe

  Midnight Sun Andrew Bourelle

  Smeared Star in Your Hands Sara Tantlinger Liza Jeffrey B. Burton

  The Birthing Pool Eóin Murphy

  Elegy Sarah L. Johnson

  Coyote Jason A. Wyckoff

  Unto the Next Amanda Helms

  At Least the Chickens are All Right Trisha J. Wooldridge Groomed Liam Hogan

  Beneath Her Skin KT Wagner

  Brother Mine Rohit Sawant

  Mirror, Mirror P.D. Cacek

  Records of the Dead John Linwood Grant

  Underground George Edwards Murray

  Lydia Cindy O’Quinn

  Angelmutter David Surface

  “For Every Sin, an Absolution” Kristi DeMeester Author/Editor

  Biographies

  Introduction:

  Shaken and Stirred

  Linda D. Addison

  Everything created by humans begins as an idea. The editors of this anthology wanted to create a professional paying opportunity for authors and have submissions open to anyone. No slots were reserved for established authors, and no personal invitations were distributed. They hoped to introduce lesser-known writers to the horror community, as has been done in the past with other anthologies.

  As a result of the discussion of how to make this as inclusive as possible, they put together a diverse editorial committee of writers and editors (I was one of them) charged with reading the stories sent as blind submissions. The call for work was distributed as widely as possible. I hope other editors will take notice of this approach of creating editorial readers of different cultural, etc. backgrounds. In this way, writing that may contain more expansive human elements, but is still well written, will be published.

  The window for submissions was one month; the shortest month of the year, February.

  A wonderful thing happened —hundreds of stories were submitted. A daunting thing happened —hundreds of stories were submitted. How to go from seven hundred stories to the nineteen in this book was the challenge. The selection criteria used: well-written,

  twisted, shadowy stories. The hope was that an open call would bring in stories with characters and by authors more representative of the world.

  As one of the readers, I can tell you that many more than nineteen stories grabbed my attention. I’m relieved I didn’t have to make the final decisions. How that was done is worth talking to the editors about, but I imagine there were some heart-breaking conversations involved. My job (and the job of each member of the editorial committee) was to pass the editors our individual lists of the stories we recommended. There was no limit to how many stories we could select, and I can tell you, my list was a long one.

  Although I’ve been writing short fiction for many years, I learned a lot from having to read so many submissions in a brief period. There’s a short list of the lessons I will carry with me; I inc
lude them at the end of this introduction.

  Once the decisions were made, I sat down to read the book you have in your hands without editorial pressure. Even though I had seen these stories before, with the hundreds of submissions, they were brand new to my reader’s mind. New and darkly twisted. Some of the stories made me want to turn on more lights, others made my heart ache, and each and every one stands strong.

  The editors’ vision of creating an anthology of excellent stories from familiar and lesser-known authors, with characters and storylines reflecting an interesting mix of humanity, worked out beautifully.

  I’ve edited a horror anthology that was open to story lines without one specific theme (ex. Killer Dogs from New Jersey , which I made up, but feel free to use it). It was interesting to look at the anthology after it had been set and see the common themes that presented themselves. What patterns surface, I believe, are echoes of the real-life shadows in the human condition.

  There are stories with love, loss, and/or surviving death and demons through romantic, sibling, and parental attachments. There is a fair amount of family dynamics with flawed parents, resulting in nightmarish scenarios. Some loved ones are called back from the dead to soothe a grieving parent or lover; other times there are dangerous attachments in the shattered, razor stories of siblings torturing/testing each other and their parents. The family themes made these very unsettling (in a good way).

  Of course, there are demons, ghosts, and the undead in the mix, but in unpredictable, edgy ways. There are creatures like dogs, cats, flies, coyotes, wolves, and grubs and unexpected ones: chickens (yes, chickens!), rabbits, chipmunks, horses, sparrows, octopuses —with some fungus thrown in for good measure.

  There’s been discussion in the horror community over the years about work that is a mix of horror and science fiction. I was delighted to read the stories with portals to other dimensions, strange alternate futures, and lost extraterrestrials (some who wanted human sacrifices, others survived by creating symbiotic relationships with physically/psychologically damaged humans).

  Each story left me chilled and deeply appreciative of the author’s imagination. Each tale, from start to finish, reflects a different facet of human desire/fear/greed/ loss/sacrifice, told so well that I sat and let my reactions marinate before reading the next. Now it’s your turn to enjoy (in that way readers of horror find joy in being disturbed) these twisted pieces of shadow!

  p.s. What I've learned from reading hundreds of stories: make the genre (ex. horror) clear from beginning the first page matters, write with energy keep the energy high

  keep flashbacks short/tight

  make the approach to an old storyline unique make endings consistent/not rushed

  even a good style/voice needs all the above.

  Linda D. Addison, award-winning author of “How to Recognize a Demon Has Become Your Friend” and HWA Lifetime Achievement Award winner.

  The Pale Mouth

  Melissa Swensen

  The bacon was too crispy. And she’d scorched the coffee. It was obvious in the way he shook the newspaper. She wondered how he’d express his displeasure when they stopped printing the paper next month and every household was issued electronic readers.

  In the other room the TV blared cartoons. The kids giggled along.

  For a moment, the sound blurred into the harsh kitchen light and Layla had to grip the sink to steady herself. Her skin prickled.

  Her eyes hurt. God, they hurt. Mac’s sweet, abundant aftershave clashed with the acrid burnt coffee and threatened to give her a headache. There were seven naked bulbs in the kitchen, the mandated amount for the room’s square footage, and the light felt like a branding iron on her eyes. No one else ever seemed to be bothered, but for Layla the days were a raw nerve licked by an endless flame. She pressed her fingers against her eyelids. A rare moment of relief.

  A mouth appeared in the oily darkness; framed by colorless lips, it moved against the inside of her mind. An ashen face formed around the pale slit in the black, eyes glinting like quicksilver from their own light. Layla saw a hand reaching for her.

  It flickered.

  Something beeped, and kept beeping and beeping. The newspaper banged against the table, rattling dishes. Layla covered her ears. The sound of the alarm ripped like hot iron through her skull. Mac had his back to her. She whirled around to the cabinet next to the sink and yanked it open. Lightbulbs of various sizes and wattages filled the cupboard from top to bottom. She grabbed the one she needed and tossed it across the kitchen to him. They looked at each other briefly. Layla smelled the children lingering at the edge of the room, their sugar and sweat. She didn’t look, instead she covered her ears again and fought the urge to close her eyes, letting the glaring light burn itself onto her sensitive retinas as punishment; they burned. Everything burned. Mac had the new bulb out of its packaging and held it next to the old one as he unscrewed it with quick, precise movements. Layla fought back the frisson of laughter that welled up in her throat. The old bulb fell into Mac’s grip; the room dimmed slightly. The new lightbulb tightened in its grooves and the beeping stopped. Layla’s ears felt cottony. The kids stood in the doorway, looking up at Mac with their cow eyes.

  “Go back to your cartoons, kids. Nothing to worry about.” He said it quietly so they’d know he was angry with Mommy. They turned around without a glance in her direction. In the family room the TV’s volume went up. It wasn’t necessary, though; Mac never yelled. Layla ached to close her eyes as she walked over to the new bulb. She entered the reset code on the timer and the new

  ‘hours remaining’ flickered onto the digital readout. 480 hours.

  Twenty days.

  “It’s just one light,” she said, against his silence.

  “One today, one tomorrow. What if three or four went out at once?” He was clearing dishes off the table. Doing her job to remind her she wasn’t.

  “You know that isn’t possible. The failsafes…” she trailed off.

  He didn’t know as well as she did that each light burned for an exact amount of time and that those times were staggered. They would never all go out at once, not unless she replaced all seven in the room at the same time with bulbs of the same lifespan. But if she did that, the signal each lamp sent back to the County would show it, and they’d send techs out within thirty minutes to

  ‘correct her mistake’. It wasn’t possible to live in darkness; every room was lit just like this one, and there was protocol upon protocol for her to follow to keep it that way. Layla spent hours every week checking, monitoring, and changing the bulbs.

  And then she logged all her actions into her data account on the

  County’s website so they could monitor her. Darkness could not happen. She watched Mac. His back was tensed as he stood over the kitchen sink.

  “I guess it’s not you that’ll get taken into the dark if you let the lights go out.” His voice was a hot shaft of sunlight spat out against her dysfunction. She closed her eyes.

  One second, two, three.

  The pale mouth-

  Open.

  The monsters that came out of the dark took children, usually babies, but sometimes the older ones, too. It had been two years since the last abduction. A toddler had accidentally been locked in a toy chest. All they’d left behind were its eyes. Now all chests and trunks had to be registered and fitted with lights or destroyed and replaced with clear plastic bins. The trunk lights were monitored wirelessly. Everything was monitored. It wasn’t as dangerous as it used to be when she and Mac were young, but that was because of Layla and all the other Primaries.

  “It was an accident, that’s all, Mac.”

  “You’re the Primary. The first line of defense.”

  “I know what I am.” She smelled his fear. It trickled down his back in a wet rivulet. She closed her eyes. The pale mouth was quick this time, right by her ear. But the light on the other side of her eyelids acted like static. She felt a hand on her shoulder. She hadn’t heard h
im walk over to her; the pale voice could do that. Blind her and deafen her. Tempt her to the darkness she craved. Even if she didn’t know why she craved it.

  Or why she was drawn to the creature.

  “You have to be more careful, Layla.”

  She nodded. He kissed her cheek and left for work. They were on Winter Schedule, the doors had unlocked precisely at 7:15, sunrise. She let her eyes fall closed again. Ten, fifteen seconds. The pale mouth rasped, and she shivered. It had been haunting her mind for two weeks and every time she closed her eyes the voice got clearer. She wanted to understand.

  The kids were screaming. Layla opened her eyes and winced at the pain. In the family room, she switched off the TV.

  “You know the rules. If you fight over cartoons, no one watches anything. Go get dressed for school. The bus will be here in twenty minutes.” Ethan, the youngest, groaned and fell backwards onto the carpet.

  “Are you going to double check all the lights today?” He stretched like a kitten. Amanda, just a year older, tugged on his foot.

  “She’s the Primary, that’s what she does everyday .” She tickled her brother’s toes.

  “But she’ll do it special today, right Mom?” Ethan said through giggles.

  “Of course I will. I’ll triple check.” Layla felt her chest tighten. “Now go get ready for school.” The kids raced off up the stairs to their rooms. Layla pictured them with no eyes, blood oozing from dark, hollow sockets. Forever dark. They both had Mac’s eyes anyway.

  

  Layla ate dinner in silence. The kids were chatting to their father about the day. It was cloudy and had snowed. Headlamps had been required all day. The kids loved them and strutted around like adventurers. Their father had been less enthused; the headlamps seemed ridiculous in an accountant’s office. Hypocrite, Layla thought . She had been stuck in the house all day.

  Primaries maintained the light and needed to avoid any injuries bad weather might cause. They were only allowed out on stormy days to knock the snow off easily accessible exterior lights.

  Government crews took care of everything else. She had triple checked, as promised, all the bulbs and the wiring as well. There were no switches in the house since the lights were not allowed to be turned off. The wiring was maintained by the County, but at Primary training she’d learned how to check it and spot potential problems. She was even trained to do minor repairs as long as they were approved by the County, and providing she posted before and after pictures on the website. Despite her longing for the darkness she imagined fell like thick syrup outside, and despite what Mac thought, she could never kill her family. The County had too many failsafes .