Shock Totem 8.5: Holiday Tales of the Macabre and Twisted - Valentine's Day 2014 Read online

  PUBLISHER/EDITOR

  K. Allen Wood

  CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

  John Boden

  Catherine Grant

  Barry Lee Dejasu

  Zachary C. Parker

  COPY EDITOR

  Sarah Wood

  DIGITAL LAYOUT/DESIGN

  K. Allen Wood

  COVER DESIGN

  Mikio Murakami

  Established in 2009

  www.shocktotem.com

  Digital Edition Copyright © 2014 by Shock Totem Publications, LLC.

  “Clocks” first appeared in The Horror Show, Phantom Press, 1989

  “The Man of Her Dreams” first appeared in A Dangerous Magic, DAW Books, 1999

  “She Cries” first appeared in Anthology: Year One, Four Horsemen LLC, 2012

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the US Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the written consent of Shock Totem Publications, LLC.

  The short stories in this publication are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The views expressed in the nonfiction writing herein are solely those of the authors.

  ISSN 1944-110X

  Printed in the United States of America.

  NOTES FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

  Welcome to the second Shock Totem holiday issue!

  Love is in the air, my friends. Can you feel it? The most wonderful and diabolical emotion of them all, and we’re going to celebrate it. Ostensibly as a Valentine’s Day issue, but really...it’s all about love.

  And horror, of course.

  In this special edition of Shock Totem you will find nine short stories and ten anecdotal nonfiction pieces. Up first, Darrell Schweitzer’s beautifully tragic “Clocks,” one of my favorite short stories, which I am honored to reprint here. “Silence,” by Robert J. Duperre, is a gut-wrenching tale of love, war, and death. You won’t soon forget this one. Amanda C. Davis’s quirky “Omen” was originally written for one of our prompted flash fiction contests, so it’s nice to welcome this one home.

  In “Broken Beneath the Paperweight of Your Ghosts,” Damien Angelica Walters tells of a man and his tattered heart. Catherine Grant’s “Sauce” teaches us that sometimes things left behind are best left alone. Tim Waggoner examines the perfect lover in “The Man of Her Dreams.” “Hearts of Women, Hearts of Men,” by Zachary C. Parker, follows a battered woman struggling to free herself from an abusive relationship while a serial killer is on the loose. This is Parker’s debut, and we’re very happy to offer it to our readers.

  Like our previous holiday issue (Christmas 2011), the fiction is paired with nonfiction, this time by Violet LeVoit, Jassen Bailey, Kristi Petersen Schoonover, C.W. LaSart, Bracken MacLeod, John Dixon, and more. True tales of first loves, failed relationships, misfortune, death, sex, and meatloaf. Trust me, you’ll dig it.

  Love has its dark side, folks, and fittingly this issue has very sharp teeth.

  So there you have it. I’d say I love you, but that’d be weird.

  Instead I’ll just say thank you. Hope you enjoy what lies ahead.

  K. Allen Wood

  February 14, 2013

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Notes from the Editor’s Desk

  Clocks

  by Darrell Schweitzer

  Lose and Learn

  Holiday Recollection

  by Brian Hodge

  Hearts of Women, Hearts of Men

  by Zachary C. Parker

  Unlearning to Lie

  Holiday Recollection

  by Mason Bundschuh

  Sauce

  by Catherine Grant

  Something to Chew On

  Holiday Recollection

  by Kristi Petersen Schoonover

  Silence

  by Robert J. Duperre

  Hanging Up the Gloves

  Holiday Recollection

  by John Dixon

  Golden Years

  by John Boden

  Akai

  Holiday Recollection

  by Jassen Bailey

  She Cries

  by K. Allen Wood

  The Same Deep Water As You

  Holiday Recollection

  by Bracken MacLeod

  One Lucky Horror Nerd

  Holiday Recollection

  by James Newman

  Omen

  by Amanda C. Davis

  The Scariest Holiday

  Holiday Recollection

  by C.W. LaSart

  Broken Beneath the Paperweight of Your Ghosts

  by Damien Angelica Walters

  Everything's Just Methadone and I Like It

  Holiday Recollection

  by Violet LeVoit

  The Sickest Love is Denial

  Holiday Recollection

  by Richard Thomas

  The Man of Her Dreams

  by Tim Waggoner

  Howling Through the Keyhole

  CLOCKS

  by Darrell Schweitzer

  He returned to the house again on an evening in November. He had been away a year, but nothing had changed. The house stood pale and dark among the trees as the twilight deepened, as the walls, trees, ground, and sky all faded into that particular autumn grey which is almost blue. He paused in the cold air, listening to the rain hiss faintly on the fallen leaves, wishing he could remain there forever, that time would cease its motion and this moment would never pass.

  But, inevitably, as he did every year, he made his way along the leaf-covered path to the front porch. Again he stood procrastinating, fumbling with his keys until his fingers, by themselves, found the key he needed and his hand had turned it in the lock before he was even aware. Then he stepped into the dark house, the door sweeping aside a year’s worth of junk mail he had never been able to cancel.

  Behind him, the rain whispered, and when he closed the door there was another sound, a faint ticking. He stooped to gather the junk mail into a basket, and noticed the clock on the mail stand, a few inches from his face. It was a cheap, plastic thing, decorated with figures of shepherd girls, like characters out of Heidi.

  It was one of his wife’s clocks. As long as her clocks were here, she was too, in a way. All her life, Edith had collected clocks.

  He wound it, and it seemed to tick louder. Then he stood up and wound a row of little golden alarm clocks that stood along the top of a bookcase to his left. They had stopped, and now they added to the faint, rhythmical ticking. He didn’t set the time on any of them. That wasn’t the point.

  It was only after he had completed this task that he turned on the lights, surveyed the hallway, and stepped to his right, into the living room. The ticking followed him, until it was lost in the deeper sound of the grandfather clock that waited in the shadows by the fireplace. He remembered how they had found that grandfather clock in an antique shop once, long, long ago, how Edith had raved over it, begging him to buy it in her joking-but-earnest way, until he relented (even though they couldn’t afford it). There had been weekends spent polishing, repairing, finishing. In the end, when they were ready, when the thing stood dark and gleaming in the living room, it had been like a birth. Or that was how
he remembered it now.

  He flicked on one small light, and saw in the semi-darkness another clock humped on the mantle piece. There was a story about that one, too, and as he wound the clock, once more the memory came to him.

  Then he sat down by the empty fireplace, exhausted and sad. He put his feet up on a little stool and stared into the fireplace for a while, listening to the clocks. The house was stirring, the soft tick-tick-ticking like the breathing of a great beast turning in its sleep.

  He dozed off, and when he awoke it was dark outside. He heard sounds from the kitchen, dishes touching gently, a cabinet door closing, but he remained where he was, listening to those sounds and to the clocks. The grandfather clock chimed softly.

  A few minutes later he did get up, his joints aching. He realized that he was still wearing his hat and coat. He left them on the chair and walked through a narrow hall, past the dark basement stairway, into the kitchen.

  There was a steaming cup of tea on the counter by the sink, and two slices of warm toast on a plate, both buttered, one with jam, one without, the way she had always fixed them for him when he worked late at night. He turned and stretched to wind the clock on top of the spice cabinet. It was a smiling metal Buddha with the clock face in its belly, a ridiculous thing (again, full of memories), but she had put it there once, long, long ago, and there it remained, gazing down at him serenely as he ate his toast and drank his tea.

  He was almost crying then, but he held back his tears as he went from room to room, winding clocks, until their sound was like that of a million tiny birds outside the windows, gently, very patiently pecking to get in.

  Upstairs, a door closed.

  In the library he found a brush with long, blonde hairs in it, discarded on a desktop.

  He used a key to wind an intricately carven wooden castle of a clock, where armored knights appeared on the battlements at the ringing of every hour.

  The ticking was still gentle, but more insistent, unyielding, like the sound of surf on a quiet night.

  When he had made a circuit of the first floor, he came to the front door again, but turned away from it and slowly climbed the front stairs. He was sobbing by then. The sounds from behind him seemed to rise, to propel him up the stairs.

  He found his wife’s furry slippers at the top, neatly together by the bathroom door where she often left them. He wept, and leaned his head against the wall, pounding softly with his fist.

  More than anything else, he wanted just to leave, but then he heard the singing from behind the bedroom door, and he knew that, of course, he could not go away. The song was one he had taught Edith before they were married, long, long ago.

  He entered the bedroom and she was there, and she was young and beautiful. She helped him undress and pulled him into the bed, whispering softly as she did, then silent, and for a while he was completely happy, suspended in a single moment of time.

  A clock ticked on the night stand.

  When he awoke it was morning and she was gone. The empty half of the bed was cold, the covers thrown back. He wept again, bitterly, deeply, cursing himself for having continued the cruel, miraculous farce, for torturing himself one more time, for doing this, somehow, to her, once again. He held up his hands before his face, and he saw how wrinkled the backs of them were, how age-spotted. He touched the top of his head, running his fingers through his thinning hair.

  She had still been twenty-six and beautiful. She would always be twenty-six and beautiful.

  And the memories came flooding back with horrible vividness, until he was living them again: the rainy night, the screeching tires, the car on its side by the road’s edge, Edith in his arms while one set of headlights after another flared by and nobody stopped for what seemed like hours.

  He turned over in the bed and pressed his face into the pillow, crying like a small child, and hoping, absurdly, that he would eventually run out of tears.

  He tried to tell himself that he wouldn’t come again next year, that this would finally cease, but he knew better. When he got up to dress and found a note stuck onto the telephone by the bed, it was only a confirmation.

  The note said:

  I LOVE YOU

  — EDITH.

  He was still crying, but softly, as he went down the front stairs, around and into the kitchen, and from there down the dark, creaking stairway into the basement. At the bottom he stood once more, wishing he could remain there motionless forever, that he didn’t have to go forward, but, again, he knew better. He flicked on the lights, revealing the thousands upon thousands of clocks that filled the basement, crowded on shelves, standing against the walls, spread across the floor, and holding in their midst by a fantastic spider web of wires a closed coffin that seemed to float a few inches above the rug. It was as if the clocks had grown there, proliferating. He had long since given up wondering if there were more of them now than there had once been.

  His mind could supply no explanation, but he knew that somehow, if even one clock in the whole house remained running—and somehow, in defiance of all reason, one or more would always keep running for a whole year, awaiting his return—on this one night in November time would stop, or perhaps slide backwards, and Edith would be as she had been the night before her death, loving him, never aware of any future, forever young while he continued to age. He didn’t know if it was real or not. There no longer seemed to be such things as real and unreal.

  But he could never, never bring himself to put an end to it, and he wept as he made his way gingerly among the clocks, winding each one. Their voices grew louder and louder, resonating in the cramped basement, while he sobbed and trembled and worked with furious, desperate care, and in the end the sound of them was like screaming.

  Darrell Schweitzer's stories have appeared in Cemetery Dance, Night Cry, Twilight Zone, Interzone, The Horror Show, Postscripts, and in numerous anthologies. His novels are The Mask of the Sorcerer, The Shattered Goddess, and The White Isle. He has authored numerous collections, including his latest, Echoes of the Goddess, a companion to The Shattered Goddess. He has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award four times and won it once, for co-editing Weird Tales, something he did for 19 years. He has edited anthologies since: The Secret History of Vampires, Cthulhu’s Reign, Full Moon City, and the forthcoming Cthulhu Mythos anthology That Is Not Dead.

  HOLIDAY RECOLLECTION

  LOSE AND LEARN

  by Brian Hodge

  My first love lasted three years, and straddled high school and college. It ended the way they usually do: with the feeling that all life on earth had been extinguished.

  Her name was Susan, and she took what already would’ve been good years and made them radiant. They also became my first great lesson in the perils of not paying attention to what’s going on under the surface. At that age, guys are all pretty much variations on a single theme: hormone-addled lunkhead. We have to learn the hard way.

  I never saw the parallels myself, but I reminded Susan of her father. I was also the first guy she’d gone out with that he actually liked. All well and good, I suppose, until her father decided he’d had enough of family life, and bailed on his wife, two daughters, and son. Susan didn’t have a lot to say about this, and in my lunkheaded myopia, I just thought she was handling it superbly.

  Some months later, she broke things off with me and took up with a guy who was ten years older, and had been hanging around the family via her younger brother. They eventually got married. Not a terribly bright fellow, I don’t think; he’s the only person I’ve ever heard of who called someone to ask what night a New Year’s Eve party was going to be. But, in retrospect, I have to think he offered a level of security and stability that, at the time, I couldn’t. And, of course, he was so very different from her father.

  That didn’t last but a few years either.

  Somewhere in there, a mutual friend told me that Susan had confessed this to her: “I don’t know what Brian sees in me. He’s so artistic, and I’m so practical.�
� This from a girl who was not only fiercely smart, sweet, and funny, but a wonderful singer, flutist, and pianist. I’d never had a clue she felt that way. Which isn’t to say none were there. I’m not sure I would’ve known what to do with one even if I’d recognized it.

  They say you never get over your first love. And maybe we shouldn’t. So long as we hang onto the right things.

  HEARTS OF WOMEN, HEARTS OF MEN

  by Zachary C. Parker

  The Camaro’s lights flashed twice in rapid succession. I know you see me. I see you, too.

  Megan had spotted the car in the lot before, but never this close. The diner’s broad windows and industrial lighting made her feel both trapped and exposed, an actress thrust upon a stage for the sole amusement of the silhouette behind the steering wheel.

  She turned her back on the Camaro and transferred a pair of eggs from the grill to a plate, then added strips of bacon and a sprig of parsley. One of the eggs had ruptured and now resembled an eye dripping down a white cheek. She set the plate in front of a balding man absorbed in the sports section. Being the small operation that Dale’s was, the waitresses doubled as cooks and busboys, even if their wages didn’t account for the extra responsibilities.

  It was almost closing time, and aside from a few regulars and a handful of others, the diner was empty. Barb, the other waitress on duty, stood at the edge of a booth, batting her eyelashes and chatting up a group of college boys half her age. Now and then she leaned forward to rap her lacquered nails on the edge of the table and provided a good look at her cleavage. The boys were eating it up.