Other Voices, Other Tombs Read online

  Other Voices, Other Tombs

  Edited by

  Brhel & Sullivan

  Other Voices, Other Tombs

  Published by Cemetery Gates Media

  Binghamton, New York

  Collection and editorial copyright © 2019

  by John Brhel and Joe Sullivan

  Individual stories copyright © of their respective author(s)

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under the copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission.

  ISBN: 9781081547189

  For more information about this book and other Cemetery Gates Media publications, visit us at:

  cemeterygatesmedia.com

  facebook.com/cemeterygatesmedia

  twitter.com/cemeterygatesm

  instagram.com/cemeterygatesm

  Cover illustration and design by Chad Wehrle

  cwehrle.com

  Make sure to check out these other Cemetery Gates releases at cemeterygatesmedia.com!

  Novels:

  Resurrection High

  Carol for a Haunted Man

  The Thrumming Stone

  Themed anthologies:

  Tales from Valleyview Cemetery

  Marvelry’s Curiosity Shop

  Her Mourning Portrait and Other Paranormal Oddities

  Story collections:

  Corpse Cold: New American Folklore

  At the Cemetery Gates: Year One

  At the Cemetery Gates: Volume 2

  What Waits in the Dark

  Contents

  Introduction

  “The Second Hand”

  Kealan Patrick Burke

  “The Governess”

  Ania Ahlborn

  “Urban Moon”

  Mercedes Yardley

  “A Circle That Ever Returneth”

  Kevin Lucia

  “Bury Me in the Garden”

  Mike Duran

  “This is How it Goes”

  Gemma Files

  “Comfortable Gods”

  Michael Wehunt

  “Fly away, little fledgling.”

  Michelle Garza & Melissa Lason

  “Forget the Burning Isle”

  Michael Whitehouse

  “Three Lanes Deep”

  Gemma Amor

  “The Switch”

  Cameron Chaney

  “The Red Rose”

  Caytlyn Brooke

  “Can We Keep Him?”

  C.W. Briar

  “Alone in the Dark”

  J.D. McGregor

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  Writing fiction is a blissful business, whether doing so as a profession, or hobby. Writing dark fiction is especially mirthful, in that we get to play on the border of reality and pure fantasy. The special nature of telling scary stories is in the way it encourages community. We enjoy the same tales because we take pleasure in the same fears.

  The following stories come from three distinct communities within the already small circle of writers that have dedicated themselves to genre horror fiction. The first two groups will be familiar to many readers, while the third is more personal to John and me.

  If you know what the Horror Writers Association is, you’ve heard names such as Gemma Files, Kealan Patrick Burke, and Mercedes Yardley. If you’ve perused Cemetery Dance Magazine or know what #bookstagram is, you’ve seen the works of Michael Wehunt, Ania Ahlborn, and Michelle Garza & Melissa Lason.

  It still surprises John and I that there is such a chasm between those who read horror and those who listen to it on YouTube, or check-in daily to see the newest posts on the NoSleep Subreddit—because all of the most popular material is written by independent horror writers, who also produce traditional story collections and novels!

  The Nosleep Podcast has quickly become the World Cup of creepypasta, and more broadly, for short form, first-person narrative horror. For the uninitiated, the podcast arose to perform stories from the subreddit, which itself has become a proving ground for burgeoning horror scribes. Michael Whitehouse, Gemma Amor, and J.D. McGregor are the equivalent of NoSleep all-stars. Their work has appeared on the podcast and on widely followed YouTube channels such as Dr. Creepen’s Vault, MrCreepyPasta, and Michael’s own Ghastly Tales—many of these channels are fed stories from NoSleep Redditors.

  Which brings us to the third circle, and much closer to the goings-on of Cemetery Gates Media. In 2015, John and I were writing stories for what would become Tales from Valleyview Cemetery. John’s first story had been published by Michael Whitehouse, and the first audio for one of our stories would eventually be done by Ghastly Tales.

  John and I were living in Binghamton, the spiritual home of Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone. A fellow fan of The Twilight Zone, and Reviews Editor for Cemetery Dance Magazine, happened to also live in Binghamton. Kevin Lucia was an invaluable resource as we navigated our first year in publishing.

  John eventually began a column for Cemetery Dance Online called “My First Fright,” where he would go on to interview many of the authors in this anthology, regarding their first recollection of media-induced terror.

  Along the way, we met other local authors such as C. W. Briar and Caytlyn Brooke. Briar released his first horror collection, Wrath and Ruin, within months of our first book, and Caytlyn, a YA author, quickly became a familiar face at regional comic and fantasy conventions.

  The first thing that I noticed about Caytlyn’s writing was her metaphoric creativity. I’d read her second novel Wired and knew her work fell within the realm of dark fiction—but I had no idea the type of pure, murderous gore she was capable of until I read her first version of “The Red Rose.” Afterwards I even messaged John to tell him that Ms. Brooke had been the first horror writer to make me sick to my stomach…ever. For the story’s sake, we agreed to add a character, which, unfortunately, diminished the obscenely visceral nature of the first version’s bathroom scene.

  Writers are endlessly fascinating; Mike Duran has a book called Christian Horror which deals with the compatibility of Christian belief and horror fiction. I’d never read his work until a friend recommended him for the collection. I soon picked up his novella Wickers Bog, which was an excellent read—rich with cypress trees, swamps, and chock-full of southern flavor.

  We connected with Cameron Chaney, author and YouTube book reviewer, via Twitter. He promoted Corpse Cold: New American Folklore when it was still a dream on Kickstarter, back in the fall of 2017, and he’s shared our subsequent work with his audience ever since. I didn’t know he was a writer until he put out his first book, There Are Monsters Here, which was right in the wheelhouse of stories I enjoy the most—introspective dark fiction which doesn’t hesitate to reveal an author at their most vulnerable. His story “The Switch” is very much a Cemetery Gates variety of tale—a nostalgic homage with a major twist!

  I believe the stories in this collection will entertain both fans of literary horror and readers of our creepypasta brethren, who are only recently birthing paperbacks themselves. As writers, we know that these two communities aren’t all that far apart. Gemma Amor’s latest, Dear Laura, and Gemma Files’ Experimental Film are two of my favorite stories from the past five years—both are fantastic expre
ssions of art, with a quality of prose that John and I hope to approach—someday, on some page—within our next ten (or so) books.

  Joe Sullivan

  July 2019

  The Second Hand

  Kealan Patrick Burke

  There’s a lot to say about that day back in the summer of 1989, most of which I expect you’ll dismiss as fiction, as would anyone who wasn’t there, but I need to say it anyway, for the good of my health. Take it as a story, if you must. That’s fine. I’m doing this because my wife and my therapist suggested it as a means of coping, and because nothing else has worked. This won’t work either.

  I tell myself I dreamed it all but know I did not. If I don’t write it down and look at the words from a distance, they’ll keep burrowing into me like termites until my mind and my marriage crumbles like the rotten flooring of an old house.

  It’s about the day my best friend Robbie Wayans disappeared, something I haven’t talked about in three decades because every time I thought about it, it debilitated me. My parents said it wasn’t my fault and, on some level, I believe that, but they didn’t see what happened. They weren’t there, but lately I am, and I’m afraid the thing we saw at the pool is coming back to get me.

  #

  School is out. It’s early in the morning, the sun a hundred burning eyes peeking through the chestnut trees that flank our neighborhood. The light is clean and bright. Two doors down from my house, Mr. Carver hoses down his driveway even though it doesn’t need it. It washes away his daughter’s chalk drawing of the Cincinnati skyline, and the street is wet from the runoff. Alice Carver will have another one drawn by noon. She’s an architect in Detroit now, I believe, so it’s good to know her father’s dismissal of her earliest efforts didn’t redirect her ambition. Small foamy rivers chuckle along the gutter, swallowed by the perpetually thirsty drains. I’m sitting on my stoop, tying up my new Keds—a birthday gift—and positively vibrating with the kind of excitement unique to thirteen-year-old boys who find themselves armed with paint on blank canvas days. My mother appears behind me, still in her robe, face veiled by the steam from a cup of coffee made ubiquitous by the hour.

  “Open sesame,” she says. I tilt my head back. She pokes a crispy piece of bacon into my mouth. “You drink your juice?” I nod, chewing meat that will never again taste so delicious. She musses my hair and leans down to kiss me between the eyes. “You going to find trouble today?”

  “I hope so.” My smile is missing an incisor, which I’d used to glean a dollar from parents who could scarcely afford it. Even though I’d made them a proxy for an entity I no longer believed in, they knew I needed the money to finance my summer shenanigans and were content to play along rather than have me ask directly.

  “Me too. Just don’t lose a limb. We’re all out of spares.”

  She’s referring of course to my father’s prosthetic leg, the real one bitten off by a car accident and swallowed by the night three winters before. It used to creep me out to walk into their room in the mornings and see that leg sitting on the chair next to his side of the bed, like it had every right to be there, an unpleasant reminder that we are all just component parts, any one of which the universe may recall without notice. His right leg ended in a smooth stump just below his knee, and he loved to torment me by making me touch it or waggling it at me, delighting in my horror. It passed, both the revulsion and his resultant glee, but every now and then, I suffered nightmares in which I awoke to find myself limbless and mute, screaming soundlessly in a room that did not exist beyond the crooked oblong sketched out by the moonlight.

  “We’re thinking of going to the pool.”

  My mother frowns. “Oh? I didn’t think it was open yet.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “Ah, you mean the other pool. That petri dish of god-only-knows-what. Well, be careful and don’t drown.”

  “I won’t.”

  She nods her satisfaction. “And if you do, don’t haunt me.”

  “I might.”

  She leans against the door, takes a ponderous sip from her cup and looks out over the sun-dappled neighborhood. “I’m more worried about your dad haunting me, though. Can you imagine? A ghost with half a leg. Brr. That thing scraping against the floor in the middle of the night like a wagon with a missing wheel.”

  As if it’s his cue, my father clomps with dramatic unevenness down the stairs. “Betttttttttttieeeeeee…” he moans, sounding like Boris Karloff, and we both crack up. When I turn to look, I see his back as he enters the kitchen. He waves without turning around, lured by the smell of breakfast. I’ve recalled that image of him a lot over the years, more since his death. Pristine white shirt and tan khakis, unkempt black hair curling over his shirt collar, the barely perceptible limp, not nearly as pronounced as he’d made it seem coming down the stairs. I wish I’d have run to him and hugged him. I wish I’d found any reason at all to stay home with my parents where it was always safe.

  “I summoned him by accident,” my mother says. “I don’t know my own power.”

  Laces tied, humor buoyed, I stand and shake the comfort into my new shoes. They’ll have sliced my ankles to ribbons by day’s end, but that’s okay. Childhood is about raw wounds, the scars the armor of adulthood.

  “Bye, Mom.”

  She nods sagely as if accepting a proclamation of fealty from an underling.

  “Don’t get arrested. We can’t afford the bail, so we’ll probably leave you there.”

  “No promises,” I tell her and then I’m racing around the corner of the house to where my faded and shabby warhorse, a BMX that looks like every day is a stay of execution, leans dispiritedly against the siding. There’s rust on the rims and the saddle resists rightness, the leather perforated, the foam flattened and discolored after years of retaining rainwater. The peddles are chipped and cracked, the reflectors long gone, and the handlebars don’t always obey. The chain sounds like anguish and untethers itself with a regularity that at best means I spend more time stationary than ownership of the vehicle would imply, and at worst, sends me flying when it locks up the peddles on high speed declines. My parents rarely comment on the state of my steed because money is tight since my father’s accident and they don’t wish to give me false hope, and I never ask for a replacement. That they give me pocket money is something of a miracle, but it isn’t much, and I have to earn it. I could save for one, but by the time I’d have enough, I’ll be headed for college and thinking of a more extravagant means of conveyance. So, for now it’s the bike, which is a piece of crap and seldom gets me from A to Z, but it’s summer, and I’m okay walking from F.

  My mother is still at the door when I walk the warhorse down the driveway and out onto the street. “Dinner’s at six.”

  “Okay.”

  “Love you, Sugar Bear.”

  “Gross.”

  She laughs and that sound echoes throughout my life when I need it most. On this day, I am too young to know the full scope of her hardships. I might not know them still. But I love her, and she loves me, and it’s enough to keep our spirits aloft. Plus, it’s a Friday, which means, no matter how this day goes, there’s a Blockbuster horror movie rental and pepperoni pizza at the end of it. Those memories remain among my favorites, right alongside the birth of my first son and the first date with my wife when we sat outside in the rain after all the other patrons of the café had fled inside and I thought my heart would explode with love. Friday Night Movie Nights always followed the same template. My father would suggest an old classic, a Universal monster movie, usually. He didn’t care much for modern horror, which he claimed was all flash and no story. My mother wanted contemporary and gory. They would negotiate with all the fervor of courtroom attorneys, but all of us would be satisfied with the verdict, which invariably meant a pick from each category.

  I rarely missed out on these wonderful nights. They often feel like the very definition of my childhood and are a large part of the reason I became a movie producer. But I did not wat
ch a horror movie with my parents that night, or ever again. After what I saw that day, I still have trouble with them, though they’re hard to avoid, especially now that they’re big money makers again. But I try. Jesus, how I try.

  2

  My best friend Robbie is sitting on the hood of his brother’s Dodge when I skid to a stop outside his house. His bony knees are drawn up, worn sneakers planted on the fender. This is an act of defiance. Robbie isn’t even allowed to ride in the car as a passenger, never mind disrespect it by sitting on it. If he gets caught, Dougie Wayans will mash the living shit out of him and nobody will intervene because “if it happens, you asked for it” is the dictum by which the Wayans family seem to abide. And Robbie does goad his brother at every turn. I never really understood that dynamic, why Robbie asked for punishment and Dougie always obliged. I understood even less how two brothers, separated by a mere four years, could loathe each other so much that damn near every time their paths crossed, they were at each other’s throats. If they knew the reason for this enmity, they never spoke of it, and the few times I asked, Robbie just shrugged and said it was because his brother was a “total fucknut.” If they were ever civil to one another, it went unwitnessed by mortal eyes.

  “Nice kicks,” he says. His skateboard is propped up against the right front wheel of the car in another sign of disrespect. Dougie will probably use it to bash his brother’s brains out, so I don’t intend to hang around very long. Watching them fight always gives me a queer feeling in my stomach. Friendship always compels me to intervene and defend Robbie. Fear of what might happen keeps me away. I was not then, nor am I now, comfortable around confrontation. As a result, I’m forty-three years old and I’ve never broken a bone. Even on those rare occasions in which I move my wife to anger, it activates an ugly current beneath my skin that makes me want to vomit. It was there in me before that day, but the thing at the pool made it a permanent condition. Call it trauma, or PTSD. Call it a neurosis. The name doesn’t matter, only that I have always been scared, like a foundling that never really learned the instinct to flee before danger finds it.