
ALIEN AGENDA PUBLISHING

2018 SAMPLER

Alien Agenda Publishing

West Gardiner, Maine

glenntheory@hotmail.com

www.glenntheory.wixsite.com/alienagendapub

This sampler contains works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the authors' imaginations, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

All stories are Copyright © 2018 by their respective authors.

All material used by permission.

No part of this product may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission by the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
INTRO

I'll keep this brief. My name's Glenn. I love horror books, and sometimes write them. I've been releasing books under ALIEN AGENDA PUBLISHING for a few years now. When my old publisher, Samhain Publishing, went out of business, I wanted to rescue my shipmates. I wanted to help the "new kids" get back in the game. Unfortunately, I didn't have the money or know-how to do it the way I would have liked, so I, like the rest of the old crew, kept the pen to the paper (or the fingerprints to the keys) and waded through the debris.

We made it to shore, didn't we, folks?

Well, it's been a couple years now, and I decided to start this thing up. I come from a punk rock background, so there is a community helping to put these books together. Two of the most important members of the gang are my editor and my cover artist. Thanks to Erin Sweet Al-Mehairi and Jason Lynch for their hard work and dedication. I also have to give shout-outs to two more unofficial crew members, Jane Camp and Tim Feely. Thanks, guys!

I decided we'd start with three books and a "Sampler" to get things going. The "Sampler" is something punk labels used to put out to get you to check out the bands they signed. Now, not all of the authors in this sampler are putting books out with me, but they are people that I cherish and support immensely in our horror community. I am grateful to each of them for supporting our little group. Thank you, Somer Canon, Michelle Garza, and Melissa Lason.

This sampler contains mostly unpublished stories. I love each one, and hope you will, too. If you have a blog or write for a horror site, we'd love to see your review!

Thanks to David Bernstein, Jackson R. Thomas, and Mick Ridgewell for being the AAP guinea pigs.

Creating horror with heart. That's my mission statement. Thanks for choosing to spend some time with me and my friends. Maybe we'll see you in your dreams.

Glenn Rolfe

June, 2018

# Beast of Equal Bearing

Somer Canon

Subjugation was what she knew. She lived a life under a master who she realized meant to subdue her far too late to save herself and be free of scars. She didn't know love or companionship. She knew cruelty and she knew the cold bite of loneliness despite the fact that she was rarely physically alone.

He wanted her to sit on the floor by his chair where he would pet her head. Sometimes his fingers would snag in her dense curls and he would jerk his hand out violently, snapping her neck painfully and pulling out handfuls of hair. Then he would hit her for good measure, just for being less than his vision of perfection. The first time he had done that, she had bared her teeth at him and defended herself. That was not a mistake she could have afforded to make twice. She was beaten, kicked, and forced to sleep outside in a dog box for her moxie. Better to have none, sacrifice dignity and autonomy for fewer physical attacks.

He had been exciting at first, putting his best face forward to win her. She often wondered, if she were as useless and ugly as he often told her, why he wanted her at all. Was the spirit that he beat out of her attractive to him or was her independence so repugnant to him that he had to get her by deceit so that he could rid the world of a creature such as she was, make it better for spineless grown children like him? She dared not ask it aloud. The less she spoke, the better for her.

Coupling with him made her sick. She liked it at first, but then she found herself trying to talk herself into liking it, and then she had tried to tell him no. That was another mistake not to make twice. Choice was an illusion. Her submission was not required.

He would show her off to his friends. She was nothing more than a symbol of his greatness and if his friends were not thoroughly impressed with his trophy, she would get kicked. Inversely, if a friend admired her too much, a lingering gaze or an interested smile, she was beaten and called unfaithful. She hated his friends. Their roaming eyes and cruel remarks showed that they were all beasts of the same pack.

For a while, she grew accustomed to a numbness that almost passed for existence. She stayed quiet and did what was expected of her. His beatings became tired and disinterested and she let herself become hopeful that maybe he would leave her alone altogether.

Then she became pregnant.

He hit her a little less, fearful of hurting the thing within her, but he insulted her and made his disgust with her round, swollen body plainly known. When she birthed her young, a male, he had no interest in it. She hated it at first. It would grow to be like him, she feared. But as she cared and suckled it, its eyes staring up at her, its fingers reaching for her, she couldn't help growing to love it. It was hers and perhaps she could save it from becoming like him.

It grew, thrived, and shook her world like a bolt of lightning with a musical laugh. It gave her happiness. It gave her hope.

Then _he_ started taking an interest. He took it from her and started socializing it with his friends. He started to teach it to dress like him, enjoy his interests, to love him. As long as it still reached for her at the end of the day, as long as it still had sweet black-eyed smiles for her in the night, she could bear him touching the only thing that was hers.

It grew older and the approval of its father became more important to it than the love of its mother. She cried bitterly the first time it insulted her simply to amuse _him_. He roared with laughter and patted it on the back and they both glared at her in contempt. She was beneath them in their eyes and contempt was all there was for her.

She beat his head in as he slept. She didn't stop until there was no longer a discernible shape to his skull. Only wet sounds responded to her blows when she felt safe enough to stop. Certain that he was dead, she went to her young. He slept peacefully in a bed kept soft by her love. He was nearly a man, his sweet smell replaced by the pungent stench similar to his father's. She brushed hair off of his greasy head and wept silently for the tiny wet kisses in the dark that stopped years before. She wept for the smiles and the eyes always searching a room for her. Her heart was already broken, but it hurt as she delivered the first fatal blows to the head of her young one. His body jerked violently at first, but then was still as the wet sounds replaced the hard knocking ones. Better to save the world from another one like his father.

She sat in his chair, the one she always knelt beside on the floor. A first for her. The thick smell of gasoline made her feel sick. She looked forward to stillness, quiet, and black. For once, she thought, maybe she would have been seen as equal by the pack of beasts. But what she was doing wasn't cruel, and they only knew cruelty. What she was doing was a mercy. Mercy to the world and mercy to herself.

She struck the match and closed her eyes. Finally, something for her.

# The Eyes of Phobetor

Michelle Garza & Melissa Lason

Your mother told you to pray.

Monica focused her eyes in the darkness.

"Shane, did you hear something?" she whispered.

A startled snort from the other side of room answered her.

"Were you asleep?" she asked.

"No!"

"Sure sounded like it."

"Just be quiet, the recording isn't finished," he answered.

Monica shook her head and fell silent. She wasn't sure if she'd last the entire investigation, not after what she'd already seen in the case evidence on Shane's computer. The blurry recordings of The Walking Corpse's rampage haunted her every night while she tried to sleep.

But prayers won't do you any good here.

*****

Alicia Derringer drifted through the crowd, careful not to touch any of the sweaty, hypnotized onlookers. The music was so loud it reverberated in her chest. That was the first time she'd felt anything that resembled a heartbeat in months. She came to the edge of the pit, watching the shirtless men flinging their fists and bumping into one another. The violence of it would please the other; she could almost feel it grinning behind her.

Do it.

Alicia stepped forward, pulling something from her sweater pocket; the tip of it sparkled in the flashing stage lights as _Fetid Breath_ played their unique style of death metal.

He won't see you, only the ghost of your putrefied corpse.

"What a thing to see before he dies," she said.

But no one to either side heard her over the blast beats and chugging guitar riffs. The club was a toilet, the band shitty, the security even more shitty. No one patted down the skeletal red head after she paid the entry fee. She walked freely among the living into a place she used to frequent back when she still existed.

Alicia waited for the wave of human flesh to come her way; it did as the band wound into their third song of their set. He was tall, tan, and dripping perspiration. She could see a sly smile on his face but there was no humor in it, he meant to hurt her, to show her no clit was allowed in the pit. He was a human battering ram, knocking the other men on their asses as they attempted to bang their heads. Alicia stood motionless; time seemed to slow to a crawl as she waited for him. A wall of meat with a rapid heartbeat and a body full of alcohol and speed. She lifted her hand as he raised his fist, ready to drop it like a hammer on her skull. She plunged the syringe directly into his heart. He froze, stared down at the erupting pain in his chest; his gaze followed her frail hand up to her face, emotionless as she pumped his blood stream full of air and bleach. She calmly receded back into the blurring faces around him. He fell to the floor. It took more than a few moments for anyone to realize he was frothing at the mouth and turning violet.

The demon pursued her as she made her way out of the club. She halted in an alley way to allow it to get its fix, a glimpse through her eyes as the life left her victim's body. It hovered over her, its form spectral and transparent, yet its face seemed familiar, mostly the eyeless sockets dug out of its visage.

The Phobetor wouldn't leave her. It promised it wouldn't, not until Alicia showed it all it wanted to see. Then, she could die for real and not walk around a rotting, stinking corpse.

"Are you satisfied yet?" she asked as it spasmed in near orgasmic ecstasy.

"No, not yet."

"You promised I could die."

"Not yet." It answered.

She was drained, having barely enough energy to walk home and sit in the filth that once was her life.

*****

Monica squinted, nearly blind at the beam of a flash light that suddenly lit half the room.

"I think we've got what we came for in here," Shane said, walking in her direction.

"Can we go back to the van?" she asked.

"Not yet. I meant we got we needed in this room," he answered, pulling a small video camera from a satchel slung around his neck. He held it out to her.

She took it, feeling her heart drop. This would be the longest night of her life.

"We still have hours of recording to go."

He checked the minutes on the voice recorder used in the EVP session. Satisfied, he put it in his bag and pulled out another voice recorder.

"I promised my mother I'd call if I was going to be later than midnight."

"What? Aren't you like thirty years old?"

"I'm twenty-eight," she replied.

"Sorry, mama's gonna have to wait," he said.

"I don't want to make her worry. This is the first time I've done anything like this."

"Listen, I hired you and you've already gotten half up front, so you ain't going anywhere," Shane said.

"I know, I just..."

"I said no, do you realize how hard it was for me to land this gig?" he asked.

"I know, Shane. I just need to let her know I'm ok. She was really upset when I told her where I was going."

"Monica," he rubbed his eyes with his free hand, "this investigation is for the fuckin' Syfy channel. Are you a professional or not?"

"I'm a professional."

"Okay, because the last time I checked, professionals don't call their worried mamas."

He slipped through the dark doorway and waited in the hallway. She took a deep breath, the dusty air invading her lungs and enforcing the suffocating feeling she had been battling since stepping through the door of the boarded-up asylum. The floors were littered with debris. Recalling who had spent their lives trapped within the walls of the asylum made her stomach turn. There was an energy that lingered here, one of madness and desperation, still thriving amidst the stench of mold.

She followed him, letting the flashlight in her free hand guide them. He signaled for her to begin filming and she did, switching to night vision mode, watching his grainy green face in the tiny viewing screen only made her hate him more.

"Green Mire is a labyrinth of an abandoned building," Shane's voice echoed ahead of her, "famous for housing some of America's most insane and violent criminals. Deserted nearly twenty years ago, this is the first exclusive look inside."

Monica hoped he was using the recorder properly—the first session when they arrived was a joke. And he wanted to call _her_ out for being a professional?

"Including the infamous, Alicia Derringer," he let the sentence hang in the air for a moment before continuing, "The Walking Corpse."

Monica watched him nod as he ended the recording and then wave her onward.

"We're heading back to the control room. Maybe you can call your mom with Richard's phone."

"I didn't think cell phones were allowed inside," she muttered.

"Rich is our security man, and he needs one for emergencies."

*****

The laptop sat on top of a folding table. Rich was seated behind it, his wrinkled face looked more haggard than usual in the glow of the screen, but he was far and away a better person than Shane Dugan, the attractive host of a popular YouTube series about the paranormal. Monica applied for the job of all-around assistant to Shane after she lost her steady job at a bank. Since taking on the position, she had spent most of her time making sure his lattés were lactose free, his blond faux-hawk was trimmed, and his crushed velvet shirts had no wrinkles. He usually went on investigations like this with his wingman, Richard, and his cousin, Alfred, but Alfred had gotten into some legal troubles, which left Monica in charge of carrying bags of equipment and sitting in on EVP sessions instead of just doing his laundry and answering emails. It wasn't the job of her dreams, but it kept her and her mother from being homeless.

"Take a seat," Shane instructed her. "Rich, while you load our recordings, can Monica use your phone?"

"Sure thing," Richard said. He pulled his flip phone from his shirt pocket. Shane handed him the video camera and waited, his excitement was rising to obnoxious levels which meant he'd be an insufferable piece of shit all night.

Monica thanked Richard and immediately tried dialing her home phone, the ringing on the other end meant her mom had more than likely fallen asleep watching her favorite telenovella, Besos de Amor. Monica tried a second time, which received a huff and eye roll form her boss, but she no longer cared.

The receiver picked up. Monica heard her mother whisper, "Remember what I told you", and then the phone disconnected. Monica felt the sting of annoyance most parents felt when dealing with a rebellious teenager, but she willed the feeling to dissipate. It wasn't the old woman's fault that she acted childish sometimes.

"No luck?" Richard asked.

"Nope, she must be asleep."

"See, she's not worried, she knows her daughter is just doing her job," Shane said.

Monica was on the verge of telling her boss to shove his recorder up his ass.

"I got the videos uploaded," Rich said, changing the subject.

"Let's watch," Shane replied, smiling down at his assistant.

Monica knew he was trying to scare her and she was ashamed to admit he had accomplished his goal long before their argument over using a phone.

*****

Alicia sat on the couch next to her mother's corpse. Belinda Derringer tried her best to keep her daughter taken care of after her accident, always prayed her child's condition would leave her just as fast as it was inflicted, that Alicia's madness would be driven from her and peace would return to their lives, but the nightmare that rode her daughter home wished to see Belinda. Alicia wasn't sure how to show her mother to the eyeless Phobetor, but it told her how. Belinda's skull was opened with the claw end of a hammer. The smell had diminished over the last week. It didn't matter anymore to Alicia, she could smell her own flesh rotting away, could feel the writhing maggots eating her useless organs. The Phobetor was nowhere to be seen which meant it was choosing new prey from her memories. She could hear it rummaging through her closet, deciding by the emotional imprint left on her old things where he wanted her to go and who he wanted to see.

*****

Monica was squeamish. She didn't want to watch the footage again. It seemed sadistic on Shane's part to watch with such great interest as the notorious killer stabbed a needle into a young man's heart at a small concert and pumped him full of a toxic mix of cleaner and air bubbles. Monica scooted back as her boss watched, captivated as the pixie of a woman ended the life of Ian Cranston.

"The cops said she used to go to this place to watch her boyfriend's band play. That's how they the security identified her."

"Wow, she wasn't very scary looking," Rich commented, sipping coffee from a thermos.

Monica couldn't disagree more. To her, Alicia looked like a skeleton with its papery white skin stretched over its bones or a malevolent forest being of true fairytales that didn't give little girls dreams of castles and knights, but those of bone soup and child eaters.

"Looked like an average girl, only she was bat-shit crazy."

The comment struck Monica in an area of her heart that even the sickest killers might find pity.

"That's kinda mean. She was mentally disabled after motorcycle accident." Monica said, knowing as soon as the comment left her mouth how it sounded.

"Mean?"

Shane huffed and looked at her in disbelief. "This bitch burned a bus load of kids!"

"What?" Rich asked.

"Listen, she got into a motorcycle accident with her biker boyfriend and ended up completely loco. She killed almost thirty people, because, get this, she thought she was already dead."

"What the fuck?" Rich said.

"She thought she was in hell and killing these people didn't matter."

"Whoa, sorry, Monica, that's pretty fuckin bat-shit crazy," Richard agreed.

"All I know is people with mental problems can't help it. Yeah, she deserved to go to jail, and of course I feel terrible about her victims," Monica said, her mind straying to her mother again.

"Don't be like that," Shane said.

"Like what?" she asked.

"I'm not saying everyone with mental disabilities are gonna burn up a bus of kids or pump bleach into an innocent person's heart. I'm an asshole, but not like that."

Monica nodded. "I know."

She couldn't erase the last vision of her mother. The poor woman was in the beginning stages of dementia, the disease slowly stealing her mind, leaving only her deeply religious fear of hell behind. It was the same ailment that claimed her grandmother and left her to die in a small Mexican town, in a place much like Green Mire.

"You better pray, mija," her mother said.

"I will, mama." Monica made the same empty promise to her mother that she did at least three times a day. Why would she continue praying to a god who never answered her before?

She remembered her mother stretched out in an old recliner, her hands folded over her chest, looking like a corpse on display.

*****

The Phobetor first revealed itself to Alicia while she was in the hospital. The doctor's and her mother called her a miracle after surviving the horrific accident, but she knew better. She was an abomination, a walking dead girl. It was the voice of the eyeless being that entranced her, and made her go willingly into its arms.

I want to see them.

Alicia felt a book slap her thighs as it landed in her lap. It was a yearbook form her elementary school, she hadn't been there in twenty years. When she was alive, she wouldn't dare take a demon, a self-professed nightmare, to a school full of children, but that part of her was dead. She was no more than a thrall to the bloodthirsty thing that tormented her since she awoke with a splitting headache in a sterile hospital room.

I want to see them.

*****

Monica couldn't stomach to watch the recording of Alicia dowsing the bus seats with gasoline and striking a match. The footage recorded the children scrambling as the fire raced along the accelerant and up their legs. Monica felt her stomach rise into her throat and tears fill her eyes.

"Pause it," Shane demanded, "there, right there, do you see it?"

"The burned kid?" Richard asked.

"No, it's much too big to be a child, look!"

He pointed at the grainy footage on the computer screen.

"Alicia claimed to the staff here and doctors that she was tormented by something she called the Phobetor, the nightmare. It told her to do these things."

"Remind me how you talked me into working with you?" Richard asked.

"The money, Rich. The fuckin' money," Shane grinned, slapping his partner on the shoulder.

Monica couldn't bear to stare at the grainy image long enough to decide whether it was only a shadow or the outline of a transparent figure with holes for eyes.

"Can we watch some of the footage of her stay here?" Monica asked, desperately avoiding looking at the graphic deaths of twenty elementary school kids and the thing that appeared to be watching over them.

"I got it," Richard answered, closing the video window and scrolling through the files.

"That one."

"You got it, boss."

"This was hours before Alicia's death, it was supposed to be a break through."

*****

The smell of charred flesh clung to her hair, as fists pounded her face. The cops were like ravenous wild dogs when they located the killer responsible for torching a school bus. Her door was kicked in, her mother's corpse revealed, and no one asked her why. Alicia was thrown to the floor in a sticky stain left from her mother's bodily fluids. She didn't remember much, only that she was deemed insane and put in a padded room. Periods of deep sedation couldn't alter Alicia's reality, she was in hell and the demon on her back wouldn't allow her body to rot away until she'd shown him all he wanted to see. Green Mire became her new home until the Phobetor allowed her spirit to leave its decaying prison. The doctors spoke to her almost daily in the beginning, none of them believed she was dead. Most tried convincing her that she was very much alive, but they didn't understand the things Alicia knew to be true.

Hell is here, we walk in it every day.

The camera focused on Alicia, her cheeks were sunken deeper, her mouth exaggerated by weight loss. She was sickly and stared over the table at her doctor with a hopeless gaze.

"Good evening, Alicia."

The killer didn't respond, only nodded her head slightly.

"Do you remember me?"

"Doctor Xhiang," she replied.

"That's correct."

He took a seat and glanced back over his shoulder to be certain he wasn't blocking the view of the camera.

"The orderlies have told me that you are refusing to eat."

Alicia nodded, "Food does me no good."

"You have to eat, Alicia."

"No."

The doctor nodded and stood from his seat, "I want you to tell me about the other, the Phobetor."

Alicia's gaze was blank and lifeless as her eyes fell on the camera.

"He wants to see you," she said.

"But you told me he has no eyes, how can he see me?"

"I can show you to him in a special way."

"Your descriptions of him remind me of someone else, someone you knew before," Doctor Xhiang commented, opening a notebook in his hand, "your boyfriend, James Echlund. Jimmy called himself, Phobetor, when he performed with his band. It's the god of nightmares. Was he a nightmare?"

Alicia sat stone still. Her eyes didn't blink once during the interrogation.

"He lost his eyes in your accident. You had your fingers lodged in them when the motorcycle crashed," the doctor continued.

Alicia didn't respond.

"What were you trying to make him see before he lost control?" Doctor Xhiang asked as he sat once more in his chair, his voice growing louder, demanding an answer from her.

"He was always blind. He didn't see that he was a cruel man. I tried to help him see his true self," she said at last.

The doctor nodded, confident that he was finally making ground in the case that had been sitting on his desk for months.

"Is Jimmy the Phobetor, the other, the nightmare? Did he hurt you? Abuse you?"

Alicia sneered and only responded, "He wants to see you."

The video footage cut out for the span of one agonizing second yet the audio continued to capture what took place in the small white room. The muffled sounds of a struggle, a cry that turned from startled bewilderment to terror to horrific pain.

*****

"She gouged her doctor's eyes out with her thumbs," Shane spoke menacingly, "and then her own. Some say her last recorded screams still echo in these hallways. Alicia was finally free."

He stood in the light of a rechargeable lantern; he said it added to the creepy effect of the shoot. His silhouette stretched across a closed door, the room where Alicia claimed her last victim before killing herself and ending a legendary spree of death and violence.

"Did we get it?" he asked after motioning for Monica to stop recording.

"Got it," she answered.

"Next, we're goin' inside," he said, turning around to face the door. "I wonder if the Phobetor is still in there?"

"Do you think it was her boyfriend, Jimmy?" Monica said.

"You mean his ghost?"

"I mean, the trauma he supposedly caused her that made her damaged brain think she was dead... Do you think she thought she needed to kill people to appease him?"

"I'm not a doctor, but maybe that was it," Shane answered, struggling with the doorknob.

Monica pulled the edge of her thin sweater down over her thick figure, something her mother would have nagged her about before her illness. She felt cold, she remembered she left a thicker jacket in the van but she wasn't allowed to go get it. Shane let a string of obscenity slip as he fought his way into the room.

"And here we are, home sweet home," he announced.

Monica hesitated until he urged her inside.

"Come on, this ain't gonna film itself," he said.

She bent over, grabbed the lantern and camera bag, and followed him. Claustrophobia gripped her lungs. The room was like a coffin. Monica took a deep breath and forced herself to remain calm.

"Rich should be monitoring us from a heat sensitive cam he installed in here earlier. We'll have double footage to splice together but it will make for some damn good viewing."

Shane lifted a small radio to his mouth. "Can you see us, Rich?"

"That's eagle one to you," Richard joked, "and yup, I see you pretty damn good in there."

Shane gave a thumb up before dragging a dusty table from the corner of the room.

"Come on, have a seat," he instructed Monica.

She came over slowly as he placed a discarded stool before her.

"This is going to be epic. Make sure you keep the camera focused on me. I've rehearsed these lines a million times, so it should go off without a hitch."

Monica nodded and readied herself, her mind counting the minutes until she was freed back into the open air beyond the asylum doors.

*****

Richard kept an eye on the feed while cycling through the footage Shane had already captured. He never claimed to be a believer or a skeptic, he was there for money and Shane kept him paid. His retirement from the security firm paid most of his bills, but to fund his casino habit, he was stuck analyzing recordings of dust motes and shadows and mashing them into "haunting footage" to freak out Shane's one million subscribers. To him, Green Mire felt like any other place, and though it was dark, he may as well have been sitting in the noonday sun. He felt nothing, either that, he was oblivious to everything around him.

His stomach rumbled. He scooted his chair back and ran his hand into his front pocket. His gut made his pants a little too tight to get his hand in deep enough, so he stood. He found a pink tablet he liked to chew on when his stomach was upset. Unwrapping it was a bit of a challenge, but he finally freed the chalky pill and threw it in his mouth. When he focused on the screen again, his eyes were drawn to the previous recording.

"Bingo," he said, chewing his bismuth tablet loudly.

He paused the video and zoomed in on a shadowy figure in a cluttered corner. It was there for only a few seconds, but he saw it plainly, long and spidery like the shadow of only a skeleton. Shane was busy talking about the history of the asylum and didn't realize he already had a spectator. It reminded Rich that an EVP session was recorded. He cued it up and slid his headphones on.

*****

"Alicia, are you with us?" Shane asked the quiet room.

Monica's eyes focused on his face in the screen. The night vision made his skin and eyes glow green. She knew by the way he cocked one eyebrow he was about to "give the spirits some attitude", his signature move in every episode on his YouTube channel.

"Come out, Alicia!" he demanded.

Monica found him all the more irritating when he acted like an asshole to the unseen forces hiding in dark shadows. It made her uncomfortable and it made her think about her mother's reaction to her new job.

"Mija, you shouldn't anger things you can't see, those things can see you...aqui." The old woman pointed to her heart.

*****

Your mother told you to pray,

It was a garbled sentence, but Richard thought the voice sounded feminine. Not in an airy, pleasant sort of way, but much more akin to his niece who smoked too much, her soft voice was broken by a gurgling of phlegm in her throat. He felt his hair rise on end, but he wasn't frightened yet. The recording was pure gold and would make this documentary a hit. He dreamed about the Syfy channel asking them for a series of other videos. The slot machines and card dealers would never see the end of him.

But it won't do you any good here.

The statement was a warning. It silenced the old gamblers hopes for a big payday, and it was distinctly male. Rich glanced back to the live feed and his heart seized up. Shane was flanked by two shadows, but it appeared he had no idea. The recording went haywire--white static obscured the view before the screen went completely black.

*****

"Come out. Not so scary now are ya?"

Monica's heart raced, the darkness was suffocating.

"We wanna see you!" his voice raised dramatically.

Monica couldn't take it much longer. She wasn't cut out for this ghost hunting shit or calling out the spirits of serial killers. She decided she'd rather wash dishes or vacuum floors, anything other than following Shane around anymore.

"Show yourself!" he shouted.

Monica's hand trembled, she felt like she'd vomit if she didn't run from the room.

"Shane," she said. Her voice broke as a wave of dry heaving took her over and stole her focus. She sat the camera on the table, hoping it continued to record, and ran from the room. Monica closed the door behind her as Shane's voice raised again. She was sure he'd be upset with her, but Rich was good at video editing, he'd have to splice out the few minutes she retreated into a dark hallway to vomit.

It came out in a hot mouthful, followed by a dizzying headache. Monica felt a wriggling on her tongue, which brought a second round of throwing up. She felt her pockets, pulled out a flashlight, fished the writhing thing out of her mouth. She hit the power button and illuminated the squirming white worm between her fingers, before spotlighting the small pool of vomit at her feet that was crawling with them. Monica cried as she backed away from the maggot-filled pool of puke. Wild screams and the sounds of fists against steel told Monica that Shane was in trouble. She hesitated, listening to him screaming, but she didn't have the courage to try to help open the steel barrier. She turned and fled, hoping Richard would already be calling the police.

*****

Richard stared at the screen as the feed returned. Shane pounded the door and turned in terror before being suspended off the floor by his throat. The hazy outline of hands held him. The audio was cutting out, but occasionally, a high-pitched scream broke through and shook Richard to the core. He put his hand over his heart, felt it struggling, felt his mind struggling harder. He watched Shane's eyes come floating out of their sockets the optic nerves extended out taught until they frayed and snapped. Blood erupted like geysers from the empty holes. The crimson flood ran down into his mouth as he screamed.

"My god!" Richard cried.

He jumped to his feet, but the pain in his chest made him feel as if his lungs had collapsed. Stumbling toward the door, he searched his pockets for the van keys, but fell to the floor.

His luck ran out in a filthy hallway in an abandoned asylum.

*****

Monica couldn't find her way through the labyrinth named, Green Mire. Her breath sounded loud in her ears, and excruciating pain tore through her gut. A whispering voice pursued her as she frantically ran for the exit. She fell against the door, slamming her fists against it, crying out when she realized it was chained shut.

"Please, God!" she screamed.

There is no God, only Hell.

She got to her feet and hurried down a short set of steps. Her abdomen felt as if it would burst, sending Monica falling to her knees. She found herself in what was once a lobby. Ornate wooden doors stood at the other side of the room. The entrance for those banished to die here, but the exit and salvation to those deemed normal enough to roam the streets. Monica got to her feet, and though her inside burned, she made it to the door. She pressed her hands against it as a lanky shadow filled her vision.

"Please, don't hurt me. I want to live!" she wept.

Can't you feel the maggots writhing inside you? You're already dead.

*****

The old woman sat before the television, still reclining in her favorite chair. Bes de Amor had ended and she watched a few reruns of an older novella before deciding it was time for bed. Headlights lit the front window. Her daughter must be home. She couldn't recall the girl's name. It filled her with shame when she couldn't remember something she knew for almost thirty years, a name she chose herself for the baby girl swaddled in a pink hospital blanket. She waited while keys ratted at the door.

Monica, that's her name...

The room was dark, only lit by the light above the stove in the tiny adjoined kitchen. Two shadows passed through the door.

"Mama," Monica said, her voice sounded husky as if she'd been crying. The silhouette beside of her daughter was familiar, she thought it might be the man her daughter worked, but he held his face in his hands.

"What's wrong, mija?" the old woman asked.

"I have someone that wants to see you," her daughter answered.

# In the Basement of the Amazing Alex Cucumber

Glenn Rolfe

Growing up, you hear about the creeps and the perverts who kidnap women, or children, and imprison them in dark, dank basements. You hear about the jars of hands, fetuses, and brains. In Bentleyville, two towns over from Fort Wayne, we had Alex Cucumber. Strange last name, stranger family. Alex was the only child of parents who were themselves quite outrageously talented in many dark and enigmatic ways. Kids whispered about his mother being a vampire, though no evidence of the charge ever made its way public. His father was assumed to be her creator. They both disappeared in 1998, the summer before Alex's senior year at Bentleyville High School.

Alex, who bore a striking resemblance to the late Doors singer, Jim Morrison, wandered the streets of Bentleyville night after night. Though not even eighteen at the time, he was seen with one beautiful lady after another, going in and out of Danny's All-Night Diner, and the massive house he had to himself.

I was a senior myself three years later when I found an odd invitation–-a black piece of construction paper with a red cut-out heart and glitter-written message inside–-upon my windowsill. The message read:

Nolan Lachance, your presence has been requested to join us at a party thrown by the Amazing Alex Cucumber. Come alone, or bring a friend. See you this Saturday.

9 p.m. sharp!

– Bev

I wasn't sure who Bev was, or when Alex Cucumber had established himself as "The Amazing," hell, I didn't think he was aware of my existence, but I couldn't deny that I was intrigued by the situation. The Cucumber's house, on Haley Street, sat behind a line of massive pines that held its secrets along with those of young Master Alex. Rumors at school spread throughout the years that he could levitate, that he could read or control minds, that he got whatever he wanted. No one said no to Alex Cucumber. And now, what of this invitation? It was childish in its make-up, using construction paper and glitter? However odd, I could not resist the opportunity to be in the company of our town's strangest resident. I made up my mind the moment I finished reading its glittered lettering that I was going, and my buddy, Devin, was going with me.

I called Dev the next morning, informing him of the party.

"What if I don't wanna go?" Dev said, his newborn baby sister crying in the background.

"What if the rumors are true and his place is filled to the brim with chicks that look like Megan Fox?" I countered.

"What if the rumors are true and we end up strung up by our flesh and sacrificed to the devil?" Dev had a little Money Mayweather in him, and he could counter anything.

"Listen, just go with me. If you get bad vibes, and you want to get the hell out of there, we'll leave."

"I don't know, Nolan. Why can't you just take Billy?"

Billy Katz was our third wheel. His parents had money and Billy had every game and console any teenager could ask for, but he was a bit of a nimrod, and pretty much useless in real world situations.

"Absolutely not," I said. "Billy would get me thrown out, or instantly cast as a lost cause, the second I walked through the door with him."

"All right, I won't do that to you, but I want total stay-or-go power. If I get the creeps, we're out of there."

"Clash powers granted," I said, referencing Dev's favorite punk rock band. "We'll meet at seven? My house?"

"Deal, but one other thing, why does it say "the Amazing" Alex Cucumber?" Dev said.

I had wondered the same thing myself, but guessed it was a play on the rumors of his abilities. "Maybe he's putting on a magic show," I said.

*

Saturday seemed to take a month to arrive (even though it was only two days). I waited for Dev to show up as the night began to devour what remained of the day. Fall had come to northern Indian all too soon. Damn cold off of Lake Michigan, where rumor had it, Alex had washed his crimson hands after many nasty dates, wasn't doing us any favors. Leaves were changing colors, and the hard rains of the last week had forced them to the earth's floor. You would have thought it was Halloween already, not mid-September. Dev showed up on time, as always, dressed in a black Alkaline Trio hoodie and a pair of skinny jeans, or girl pants as I liked to refer to them. "Got enough gel in your hair tonight?" I said, staring at the wet-looking spikes of black hair covering his head.

"Fuck you, Nolan. I agreed to go. I didn't agree to fancy myself up like that," he said, gesturing at my clothes.

I had on the pair of black slacks, and the black button-up shirt my mom had bought me to attend my Grandpa Joe's funeral earlier this summer, and a fairly-new pair of white Adidas. A white fedora Grandpa Joe had passed down to me finished off the "fancy" look, to which Dev was shaking his over-gelled head. "I didn't say you had to, but I look like someone who wants to get laid, you look like a slacker-hipster going to Fall Out Boy reunion gig."

"Double fuck you," he said, flipping me off with both hands.

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry. You don't have to do this–"

"You're damn right I don't," he said.

"But I appreciate you coming with me."

I watched him fend off a smile, and then saw his eyes dart off somewhere behind me.

"What?" I said, turning to the patch of trees and unruly bushes that served as the end of my property, and the beginning of old man Peterson's. There was a brief rustling among a black pocket that looked as though it had been swallowed by the universe. I stood staring, my imagination attempting to get the best of me. _Alex, or one of his friends, is watching us to make sure we're on our way._ A few seconds later, Van Halen, my dad's fat gray cat, jumped from the black hole, and plopped down on his rump to lick his paws.

I turned back to Dev, smiling from relief as much as from excitement. "Let's get going."

*

There were no cars near the Cucumber residence and Haley Street was devoid of any sense of life, it seemed even the crickets were holding their breath as we reached the driveway. I thought cars would be lined up down the road. Dev slowed down as we neared the line of pines that served as the home's fence.

"You sure you want to go in there?" he said.

I wasn't. "Yeah, of course," I said. I took the lead, taking us from the blacktop to the gravel driveway. The crunch beneath our feet gave way to the booming thump of music we should have been able to hear from a mile away. There had been nothing until we crossed onto the Cucumber property and found ourselves standing before the impressive estate. I'd seen the home in the light of day (Gina Colby had dared me to go up to the porch earlier this summer. I did, and was rewarded with a make-out session and hand job later that night). Standing before it under a pitch-black sky, the clouds casting out the moon as if it were uninvited by the Amazing one himself, I got goose bumps, like the zits that greeted me on my fourteenth birthday, upon the canvas of my flesh. I passed off the fluttering in my guts as positive anxiousness.

"I'm following you, man. You ready?" Dev said.

I looked at my watch, it was not yet nine, and then around once more, searching the scene for signs of _anybody_ else: cars, voices, _lights_. Despite the music, the sprawling three-story house was in complete darkness. "Let's hang back a minute. We're a little early."

"And what, stare at the grass, or the tree-fence? Fuck it, dude, let's go," he said, blowing past me, and heading straight for the porch. "Whoa," Devin said, and stopped in his tracks. There was a shadowy figure standing on the steps. "Tell me you see that," Dev whispered from the side of his mouth.

I did, but couldn't make out whether it was a man or a woman.

"What should we do," Dev whispered again.

Run, run while we can. Get the hell away from this godforsaken place before we end up in the headlines as two missing teenagers.

Instead, I stepped forward. "Hello, we're here to see Alex–-I mean, the Amazing Alex Cucumber."

"Invitation," the voice behind us said.

I nearly catapulted out of my skin, and noticed Dev do the same as I spun around. A tall woman, clothed in a long, black dress that hugged every one of her curves, stood with her hands behind her back. I hadn't brought the invitation with me, and said so. "I didn't bring it. It didn't say to."

She took a minute to look us over, first Dev, and then me; her face was expressionless. Despite her awe-inspiring beauty, with high cheek bones, full lips, and her dark, come-hither eyes, I found myself repulsed by her. The urge to flee swam over me again.

She gazed past us, and then back to me. "Come, the Amazing Alex Cucumber welcomes you." She moved between us, and led us to the porch. I searched for the shadowy figure, but found the dark space empty.

The large, wrap-around porch was shadowy and vacant. No chairs, no knick-knacks, no welcome mat. The lady in black pushed the door open. The foyer within, bathed in dim-red light, was also empty of any possession. The walls were bare, or so I thought. A few steps in, a portrait hung near the bottom of the staircase across the room. As we got closer I saw it was a family portrait. Alex sat between his mother and father. His mom on his left was smiling with her mouth closed; his father, on his right, was wearing a thin moustache on a stoic face with handsome features.

"This way," the lady in black said.

The staircase, from what I could make out in the red light, looked like it was carpeted in dark velvet–either blue or red– and rose up to a second floor that seemed impossibly far away. The house looked humungous from the outside, but seemed oddly larger on the inside. _It's probably the lack of furnishings; mom says that really opens the space._

Dev trailed behind, and he seemed much more comfortable than me. Hhe kept poking me and grinning at the lady in black's ass. Of course, I noticed, but I was also aware of the heavy silence pressing down upon us when we should have been assailed with thumping music that had been audible from the driveway.

We reached the top of the stairs, where our hostess led us through a large, white door. Once open, the music with the pounding bass blared out. Mixed in were moans, whether of pleasure, pain, or both, I could not discern. Another red light was the only source of luminance in this room, as well. There were bodies moving everywhere. Men and women were swaying, and grinding all around us as we followed the tall woman in the curvy dress through the center of the room. I glanced back at Devin–-his eyes looked black in the red light–-and saw him grinning. He was under the spell; I felt sick.

We exited the red-light dance floor and followed our mysterious hostess to a hallway lit by candlelight. The walls were bare here, too. The wooden floor squeaked at every step. I wondered if it would hold our combined weight.

"Where are we going?" I said. She did not answer.

The hallway ended at an elevator. Strange, but true.

Bing.

She stepped aside and motioned for us to enter. The voice in my head warned me.

"Aren't you coming?" Devin said, once we were both inside. Our hostess, standing in the hall of candles, smiled, but offered no verbal response. Her creep factor was at about a nine. The door closed, and the elevator began its descent.

"Why the hell did we go upstairs to get into an elevator to go back down?" I said.

"Beats me, but did you see the friggin' shit going on in that dance room?" Dev bit his knuckle. "Holy shit, if that's what's happening up here, I wonder what we're heading into."

I wished he hadn't asked.

"Hey man, are you all right? You asked me to come, and now you look like you wanna go home and suck your mother's tit. What's up?"

I didn't feel right. _This_ didn't feel right. "I-I don't think we–"

Bing.

The door slid open. On the other side was a wooden door.

"Now what the fuck is this?" Dev said.

I didn't want to find out. I'd had enough. I no longer felt the spine-tingling sense of mystery and wonder the invite had given me. I looked for the elevator buttons, wanting to go back the way we came, and found none.

Dev stepped out into the small, torch-lit foyer. I followed, chewing at my thumbnail the way I always did when we were at Dev's house watching Halloween, or Friday the 13th. I wished this was a movie. The door looked like something that belonged on a dungeon in some medieval black and white film. It looked older than the rest of the house. The wood was worn, and also splintered in some places. It looked like there had been a slat to peep through at some point, but that had been covered and bolted with a rusted piece of metal. The door handle was a thick brass ring, which ran through the mouth of a freaky-looking demon gargoyle. I was certain that if we passed through that door, we were either going to enter a wormhole, or head straight into Hades.

"Are we supposed to knock?" Dev said.

"Uh, I don't know. They must be expecting us, right? Your girlfriend wouldn't have sent us down here otherwise."

"I wish that was my girlfriend," he said. "I'm gonna knock." He stepped up and wrapped his knuckles against the wooden door three times. The sound died on impact. The smells of the room began to present themselves–-mildew, rot, and something that reminded me of _raw hamburger_. Combined with our elongated shadows cast beside the demon door knob from the dancing flames behind us, the atmosphere was seeping into my blood stream like a narcotic. My affected brain conjuring up a parade of macabre images that would have fit in perfectly in the painting Mr. Adkins had shown us in Art class. Garden of Earthly Delights, I think. I can't remember the artist's name, but like it or not, my mind tunneled toward its darker corners

Dev moved forward, raising his hand to knock again. I grabbed his wrist, no longer wishing to be acknowledged by whoever was down here, but the door opened.

And I swear I shit my spine out right on the spot.

The room before us was lit by more candles and torches, and what their light cast upon was certainly more perverse than the sexually charged rave taking place above. There were people I didn't recognize, dressed in various leather-studded outfits, chewing on severed arms and hands, or devouring what looked like intestines or organs. Devin screamed, and so did I. Clutching one another, we stumbled away from the door back toward the elevator. Not one of the cannibalistic heathens looked our way, they just kept on _feeding_. Two dark shadows flew at us. The next thing I knew, Devin and I were snatched up by the unseen hands of shadow people, pulled apart, and taken into the heart of the ghoulish scene.

That's where were introduced to our host, the Amazing Alex Cucumber.

He was mesmerizing. Clad in leather pants, an open white shirt, and with his longish, brown curls he looked like he could have stepped straight out of a Doors poster. Two devilish, nude girls writhed up and down his legs, groping at him all while staring at me and Dev.

"Wine?" Alex said.

Two glasses, surrounded by black smoke, floated to our hands. I took mine, but held it, still trying to clear my head, and figure out what the hell was going on. I glanced over and caught Devin sniffing the glass. He shrugged at me and threw the dark liquid down the hatch.

"It's okay, Nolan, despite all that you have already seen, I assure you, it is only wine. Drink, please, let the spirits unburden your mind." He patted the girls on the head. The one on his right rose. He whispered in her ear. She stepped over to Devin, pressed her breasts to his chest, and kissed him. She pulled away, taking him by the hand, and led him past Alex, and through a group of fornicating figures beyond. He never looked back. I held the wine glass, not yet convinced.

"Your friend will be fine. Come, Mr. Lachance, I wish to share something with you," Alex said, pulling up the other naked imp by her chin as she sucked on his thumb. I felt movement in the front of my pants. As if she noticed, the girl with the black lips smiled at me.

Alex led me past more sexual trysts; thankfully, there were no more cannibal sightings. I already doubted what I had seen, or what I _thought_ I'd seen. Could it have been some sort of illusion by my host? I thought of the rumors at school, mind reading, levitating (like the wine glasses that floated to our hands), and in those few seconds, I worked hard to convince myself that's what it was–-magic.

Ahead of me, Alex whispered to his mistress. She smiled back at me, and wandered off to the right, vanishing into the shadows.

A trick. Another trick. She couldn't have–

"I suppose you're wondering why I invited you here tonight?" he said.

I continued following him, looking back to where the girl had disappeared. "Uh, yeah, I mean, I didn't know you–"

"Knew who you were?" he answered. "I know every beating heart that resides in Bentleyville." He stopped at a curtain. "Please, my friend, after you."

"I-where's Devin?"

"Nolan, I hate to repeat myself," he said. I saw something that might be anger flare-up in his twinkling eyes. "Your friend is fine." He placed a hand on my shoulder, and nodded toward the black curtain.

A dreadful feeling crawled over my heart. I didn't believe him that Dev was all right, and I couldn't shake the darkness swallowing me like an alcoholic's drink, as I was led onward, presumably, to my own private execution. As his hand gripped my shoulder, those thoughts became murky. I felt _off_ , but better. His smile made me smile.

"Go on. This is where the real show is," he said.

I noticed the glass of wine in my hand, I thought I had sat it down, but here it was. I put the glass of wine to my lips, downed its warm, bitter contents, and parted the curtains.

The basement stretched out on and on. The room Alex ushered me into was a village. There were youthful-looking men and women all sitting single file, ten rows wide, at least a dozen to a line. They were all directed toward the stage on the far side of the room. At the back of the stage, surrounded by red and black candles, were two thrones, and sitting in them, two skeletal forms.

Mr. and Mrs. Cucumber.

"Who are all of these people?" I said.

"They are the missing, the lost," he said, placing his hand upon my shoulder again, and looking me in the eyes. "The found."

I felt his power was intoxicating, seducing me.

"They were like you, Nolan, now, they serve a much higher purpose. They are no longer chained to the world outside of these walls," he said, urging me forward. "Walk with me."

I had never felt so good in my life. My mind, my body, my blood tingled and it was euphoric. And my host, Mr. Mojo Rising, the Amazing Alex Cucumber, continued his speech as he walked me to the stage. His voice spoke not of peace frogs or riders on a storm, but of belonging, and family.

" _They_ offer money, they live by it, for it, they are only their possessions. Here...we have none. We reward your efforts with love, with companionship, with truth. What they have is fleeting. What they have are lies," Alex said, and directed me up the stairs to the left of the stage. I climbed the steps. "Look," he continued once we stood before the congregation of youth. "Look at their faces. Do you see it?"

I did. Their eyes were upon me, each and every one, smiling. I couldn't recall what I was outside. I couldn't remember my family, my friends, my life. I searched the crowd of beautiful faces, and spotted someone familiar.

"Yes, you know that one," Alex said over my shoulder.

It was Gina. Gina Colby.

"She is one of many, much like you, she wandered through _their_ regimented series of make-believe freedoms, thinking she was an individual. We open eyes here. We welcome those who have no idea they have been deceived by the world around them; pulled in by the technology, distracted from the real world...the old world. Here, our eyes are wide open," Alex said, and turned me away from the crowd. I managed a smile at Gina before turning to something unexpected. Devin, being held under his arms by unseen hands, was naked, and shivering. He looked at me, but he was no longer there. His lights were on, but someone had snuck him out the back door. I should have been scared, angry, sad...

"We ask only one thing of our new members," Alex said, handing me a knife. "A sacrifice."

I wanted to do it, but part of me resisted.

"Children see this world free of confinement. They haven't been told that ghosts are not real, so they see them. They are not yet confident that monsters cannot exist, so they fear them. They are handed lie upon lie by those they trust most. They are fed fantasies of a man who brings presents, a fairy who comes for lost teeth, and a bunny who carries eggs of candy. We only want to give back to you that which they have ripped away–-your innocence, your truth."

There was a tin pail in front of Devin.

"One act of brutal truth and you can have it all back. Free yourself."

The knife was now in my right hand, the pail in my left. Neither had been there seconds before.

"Do it," Alex whispered in my ear. I turned to ask him why Devin couldn't come, too, but he was gone. His advice was repeated, chanted by the throng behind me.

Do it, do it, do it...

I tried to weigh my options, but my thoughts were drowned by the chanting voices.

Do it, do it, do it...

The next few seconds flashed past my eyes as if in a dream. I looked up at the Godparents of this cellar dwelling movement and hollow sockets looked back, their skulls appearing to wear smiles. Alex (or Jim as I saw him) and Gina Colby were standing at the edge of the stage nodding, prodding me onward, and my hand with the blade out before me like that scene at the beginning of the first Halloween movie, then Devin's neck spilling blood into the bucket.

My head spun like a top My eyes fluttered as I fell into darkness.

I awoke to the sound of rain thrashing against my bedroom window, the same window where I had found the invitation from Bev, the lady in black. My head hammered away in unison with the wind whipping around in the gray world outside. I sat up, noticing the odd scent secreting from my slick, pale skin; mildew, like the cellar of the Amazing Alex Cucumber. A dream; it had to be a dream. Loud music burst to life from my right _–♫ faces come out of the rain, when you're strange, no one remembers your name, when you're strange, when you're strange ♫–_ startled, I slammed my fist down on my alarm clock radio. I knew the song, as it was from one of my favorite movies: the one about lost boys that had nothing to do with Peter Pan. I noticed something on my wrist and followed its faint red trail down my forearm. It was blood, dried and staining my pale skin.

Knock-knock-knock

"Nolan, there's a girl here to see you," my mom's voice said from the other side of the door.

"Yeah, who is it?" I said, sounding like I'd downed a whiskey and broken glass concoction as I slipped out from beneath my covers, scratching at the red stain on my wrist.

"It's Gina. Gina Colby...from your school," my mom said. In my mind, I could see her holding the laundry basket with an ear cocked at my door. "She wanted me to let you know that _Beverly sent her_?"

I froze with my jeans halfway up my thighs, my mind flashing back to the events in the basement of the Amazing Alex Cucumber, to the words of the great one himself: _"We ask for one thing...a sacrifice."_

"Nolan?" my mother said. I watched the door knob begin to turn.

Glancing down I saw the knife was once again in my hand.

"Nolan?" Gina's voice.

"Oh, hello dear, he should be right out," my mom said to her.

I knew what I had to do. Why Gina was here.

I pulled up my jeans, and slid the knife behind my back.

"Mother, come in, I have something I want to show you."

My mother's blood was still warm, slicking my wrist and hand. Gina was wearing the same beautiful smile she had shared at Sunday school, all those years ago, when we were just victims of our parent's ignorance. She took my crimson hand in hers as we stepped over the bloody mess in my room and moved with swiftness and ease down the hall, and then, out the door like a whisper on the wind. Unheard by most, but cherished by the chosen. We were _his_ chosen. The Amazing Alex Cucumber. Our liberation of a town undone by its own want for modern distractions had begun.

# Margaret

David Bernstein

Margaret Atwood sat in class having finished her algebra test. She was a brilliant twelve-year-old girl who always received A's on her tests regardless of the subject. She glanced at the clock and smiled. Fifteen minutes remained until the end of the period. Margaret was always done before anyone else and never content with finishing quietly. She would raise her hand and ask to use the restroom, her way of announcing that she had won.

She rarely had to use the facilities, and usually wound up sitting on a toilet and carving a poem into one of the stall's walls with her straight razor (magic marker seemed so vagrant-like and was easily removed). Her mother constantly preached that horrible things could happen to little girls if they weren't careful. Margaret had decided at the age of nine that careful wasn't enough. She added peace of mind by carrying her razor. The smooth-to-the-touch surgical steel gave her a sense of hidden power. If ever needed, it could cut off a man's balls with but a flick of her wrist. The instrument's easy gliding motion and scalpel-like edge were something to admire.

To Margaret, school was always a competition. Her parents enforced the desire to achieve greatness and that nothing should ever get in her way to achieve it. Family, kids, and frivolous material items would all come to her if she was the best, but she had to be honest. Cheaters were vile creatures and would eventually pay the price for their putrid acts. Cheating was stealing, and hard work was a priceless commodity. Margaret, along with making sure she was the best, had to watch out for cheaters, and make sure she kept them from robbing her most vital achievements.

Having achieved another A for sure, she was about to raise her neatly manicured hand in signature fashion when Brian Avine beat her to it.

"Mrs. Morgan," he said. "Can I use the bathroom?"

Heads that had been slanted down at a northwest position (except for the lefties, they screwed up the uniformity) had suddenly lifted from their unison positions and turned to stare at Brian.

Margaret was dumbfounded. No, not dumbfounded, but flabbergasted. No one had ever asked to use the restroom before her. Heads turned to the teacher awaiting her return volley. What was Brian up to? No one was allowed to leave the classroom until that person had finished their test and handed it in.

"Brian, dear," Mrs. Morgan began, seeming tired and wanting nothing more than to be whisked away by some twenty-year-old with a yacht and an endless supply of caviar. "No bathroom until you've completed your test. You know the rules."

The return was an ace. A shot so perfect that the volley was over. Students began shaking their heads in disappointment as they returned to work. Margaret smiled as she would be the one to walk slowly up to the front of the classroom to hand in her test. She'd stop on her way, grab her crotch, stick out her tongue and mock Brian for trying to ruin her record.

"But, I am done," Brian said. Again, all the heads turned to gawk at him.

Margaret felt as if she had been struck by a magic frost bolt and was cemented in place. Her breathing had stopped and she was clearly going into shock.

Someone had finished before her.

As logic found its way back into Margaret's brain, she realized something was askew. It couldn't be that someone had bested her, let alone stupid Brian Avine. He was a D student who maybe achieved a C when he was fortunate enough to cheat off of a neighbor's paper. Margaret began to formulate her own hypothesis as to what was happening.

Brian, the loser, jealous of Margaret's constant winnings, decided he couldn't pass the test anyway and would take an F just so he could hand it in and ruin her consecutive winning streak.

"You've answered all the questions?" Mrs. Morgan asked, peering up from her newspaper. Her eyeglass chain drooped low, accentuating her flabby cheeks. She looked like an old bulldog. "Are you sure you don't want to take the extra time to go over your answers?" The test had become a secondary thought as the class was entrenched with Mrs. Morgan and Brian's rapport, something hardly ever seen.

"Nope, no need," Brian bellowed, chest out. "This one's an A."

Margaret couldn't believe how big of a dissident Brian Avine was being. Lying to the teacher in order to win was abhorrent behavior. He had to be disqualified. He was obviously cheating. There would be a huge asterisk by this one, and as far as she was concerned her record was intact.

Margaret had never liked Brian and only sat in front of him because of Mrs. Morgan's alphabetical order policy. She tolerated his gross burping and farting, but ruining her record, her satisfaction, and her accomplishments was inexcusable. Margaret heard screeching as Brian's chair slid along the tile floor. He was getting up. It should have been her chair making that annoying sound, not his. He walked by her, brushed his hip against her desk and let go a nasty fart. Half way up the aisle he turned, grabbed his crotch, stuck out his tongue, then left the room after handing in his test.

Margaret seethed in her seat as she replayed Brian's arrogance and brash behavior. He did exactly what she had planned to do. She wanted to hand in her test and go to the restroom where she could confront Brian face to face, but Mrs. Morgan's rules only allowed one person to leave the classroom at a time. She raised her hand anyway, and seeing Mrs. Morgan was about to repeat the rules, Margaret spoke first.

"I just want to hand in my test. I'll wait until Brian gets back before I go to the restroom." With her shoulders slumped, Margaret begrudgingly walked to Mrs. Morgan's desk and handed in her exam before returning to her seat.

She watched as the second hand ticked by on the white circular clock that hung above the doorway. Brian was taking his sweet time—Margaret's time. Her insides grew heavy with depression as if her organs were sponges sopping up all of the debilitating emotion. With shoulders now propped at attention, chest pushed out and spine straight as if sitting against a wall, Margaret managed to maintain her normally proud posture.

Brian had finally returned after having been gone an excruciating ten minutes. The period had five minutes remaining so Margaret, for the first time since she could remember, decided to skip the bathroom visit.

The next day Mrs. Morgan handed back the exams. Margaret grinned, her jaw muscles bulging as she clenched her teeth. Seeing an A on her paper and an F on Brian's paper would surly lighten her mood.

"Good job as always Margaret," the teacher said before continuing onto Brian.

Margaret itched with excitement as she waited for Mrs. Morgan's gleeful words. Brian wouldn't care about the F, but at least the class would know what a loser he had been by handing in a test way too early. Losers like Brian didn't give a rat's ass about grades. They only cared about being shown up which was precisely what Margaret had in mind. She was about to turn around, give a wink and a smile when something Mrs. Morgan said made Margaret want to vomit.

"Great job, Brian. Keep it up."

The room began to shift as if Margaret was being sucked out of existence. She was suddenly brought back to reality, her stomach roiling. The emotional sponges within her were being rung, releasing whatever dastardly sensations they held. Feelings swam around her belly like tadpoles trying to flee a hungry snapping turtle. She had never known or felt as she did now. A minute amount of warm bile found itself at the back of her throat before it was quickly swallowed back down. She wanted to run to the water fountain in the hall and wash the horrible taste from her mouth. Instead, pinched her forearm. After all, it was what people did during nightmare like events, wasn't it? She applied further force and pinched harder when she didn't wake, then dug her nails in deep, drawing blood.

Margaret needed to turn around and see with her own eyes and make sure her mind hadn't deceived her. She needn't hurry though. Brian would leave the exam out in the open for all to see, especially her.

Margaret turned around slowly in her seat like a Sherman tank readying to fire on a new target.

Brian met her eyes. He had been waiting.

She smiled.

"That's right," he said. "An A." He looked smug and had a grin that could rival a circus clowns.

Margaret glared down at the exam. It was nicely positioned in her direction, indicating how much Brian was enjoying himself. It was true. Brian had received an A. Margaret suddenly felt sick again, wanting to run out of the room.

"Not feeling so hot?" Brian asked.

Margaret's nausea passed quickly as if she'd had icy water thrown on her. She looked up from his exam paper. Her eyes met Brian's normally vacant eyes, except this time they had something in them. She peered in, making Brian move back. There was something there she'd never seen before. The peepers had life in them. How the hell did that happen? Shallow minded hollow-heads like Brian didn't have that inner flame within them. He was as vacant as a freshly raided whore house on Christmas Eve.

"What?" he said nervously.

"You cheated," Margaret said softly so only Brian would hear.

"Prove it."

Margaret tried keeping her composure, but the rage swimming throughout her needed its freedom. She smashed Brian's desk with her fist making him jump back further.

"What was that," Mrs. Morgan said from a few aisles away.

"Nothing," Brian said swiftly. "My hand slipped as I was stretching." Mrs. Morgan shook her head and continued handing back the exams.

Margaret regained her control, but was still enraged. "You're a big, hollow cow and a no good loser. There's no way you could have received an A without cheating."

Brian seemed to have regained his swagger. "There's a new top dog in class, so get used to it, twat."

Margaret had been called plenty of names on the playground and in gym class, (or as she liked to call it, Neanderthal hour) but the classroom was a sanctuary, a place for civility. Brian's words were flat out blasphemous and criminal.

Margaret's eyes became slits, her jaw muscles rippling her cheeks. "I'll find out what you did and when I do I'll make sure you get expelled." She spoke softly through clenched teeth, but held a firm tone to her voice. "I shouldn't have to deal with trash like you."

Red blotches began sprouting on Brian's cheeks, camouflaging his many freckles, before spreading throughout his entire face like fireworks on the fourth of July. Margaret had poked him in a tender area, but he forced a smile through the obvious anger.

"I'll tell you what, twat," he began and at the sound of that word, Margaret began her own flurry of red fireworks. "Meet me after school by the big boulder on Creek's Path.

"I wouldn't meet with you if you had a scholarship to the ivy league of my choice."

Brian's eyebrows furrowed as if he was confused. "I don't give a crap what plants you like, freak, but meet me and I'll tell you my secret."

He had to be lying. He probably wanted to make her wait for him while he and his moronic friends watched and laughed at her, then tease her about it the next day.

"No," Margaret said.

"I'm not lying and I'll come alone. My friends won't tease you." Brian turned the exam back towards him so that it was now upside down to Margaret.

Margaret felt as if a ghost had walked through her mind. Did Brian just answer her thoughts? No, her face had said it all. Angered, Margaret was easy to read, like the children books Brian struggled with after school.

"Look," he said. "It's a secret, no one can know, not even my friends, but I'll tell you," he said pointing at Margaret. "If you do one thing, just one, itsy bitsy thing," he said holding his forefinger and thumb a few inches apart.

"And that is?"

"Make out with me."

Again Margaret felt the need to hurl to such an extent that Brian must have noticed it too as he was reddening again.

"Fine, twat, meet me at the boulder and I'll tell you how I got the A."

"Did your loser drunk for a father teach you that word or is that just his pet name for your mom?" Brian's pigmentation turned candy apple red, his nostrils pulsated like an angry bull readying to charge, and his jaw muscles flexed making him look as if he wanted to bash Margaret's head. She would love it if Brian hauled off and hit her; the result would yield a definite expulsion and a possible lawsuit.

"Like I said, meet me there."

"Yeah, right," Margaret said and rolled her eyes incredulity.

Brian clasped his hands together as if a meeting of the mind was about to take place. "I'll be there. This is a one-time offer. Miss out and I promise you that you'll regret it forever. I'll get the same grades as you for the rest of the school year and it'll drive you mad."

There. He admitted it, the dumb shit. He said he'd get the same grades as Margaret. The moron had figured out a way to cheat off of her, making him a little (forefinger and thumb distance apart) smarter than she had given him credit for.

Later that day after the final bell, Margaret stood at her locker debating on whether or not to meet Brian. She grew furious at herself for having to waste her thoughts on such a loser. Despite her knowing better, she decided she couldn't risk not knowing why Brian, if it was to be true, would continue receiving A's. Was she deluding herself? Could he really keep up the honorary marks? Something in Brian's words rang true earlier. The boy was not just overly confident, but certain that he'd keep getting A's. It had to be some device he'd purchased or had a friend that could access Mrs. Morgan's computer files. Deep down Margaret didn't believe any of the ridiculous ideas that her brain concocted, but even more unbelievable was the fact that Brian could achieve A plus status.

Margaret went to the library and spent the next hour studying while she waited for the clock to hit 3:25 pm. She left the library and headed to the trail. The moron had to stay after for tutoring, like it would help. But he wasn't staying after for help, was he? No, he was using it to cover his ass and make people think he was trying harder so when the good grades started pouring in he'd be covered. The teachers would pat him on the back and congratulate him on the fine grades. He'd become the poster boy for losers that could change and that the public school system was working. Margaret wasn't sure what was happening, but she was certain she'd show the liar for who he truly was—a no good cheating waste of brain matter.

Margaret arrived at the boulder. The monstrous mass sat alone, the ground around it was worn and littered with cigarette butts. The vicinity surrounding the small clearing consisted of dense forest. Many of the immediate tree branches had been broken; the trunks scarred with numerous carvings.

The huge rock was once a true emblem of nature's beauty, but the vagrants that traipsed the area had covered it with markings. Graffiti, mostly curses, names of lovers and drawings of youth at its wildest made the stone a hideous clown. Margaret despised her peers and felt privileged that none were her friends. Everyone was an opponent, at least until after she was established in life after which she'd settle down, marry and make babies. It was what a good woman was supposed to do after all.

Margaret sat on a dried, mossy log that lay near the tree line. She wasn't afraid to get dirty or have an insect crawl on her. She glanced at her watch. Brian was late. The time was coming upon 3:45 pm. Losers were late, punctual was proper. She was about to leave when she heard the irritating sound of Brian's voice.

"Hey, Atwood," he yelled. "You came."

The delight in Brian's voice angered Margaret and a spider scurrying across the ground took the brunt of her rage as her heal squished it into the ground beneath. "Better," she whispered and turned her head in Brian's direction. "I just couldn't pass up not knowing how you managed to cheat off me."

Brian stopped a few feet from Margaret. He took long deep breaths as if he had sprinted the whole way and slowed when he approached the meeting spot, not wanting to seem eager.

"Good, you came alone, he said."

"Of course I came alone. Who was I supposed to bring?" Margaret cringed at the invitation she had awarded Brian by her comment.

"I forgot that you don't have any friends," he said and snorted. A tiny amount of spit flew from his mouth. Margaret would have to add doofus the list of adjectives she used when describing Brian.

"I may be a doofus, but you're still a stupid twat."

Margaret began grinding her teeth before briefly shutting her eyes. She'd have to endure Brian's antics if she wanted to find out the truth, at least for now.

"I have to get home, so could you get on with it," she said, her left foot tapping impatiently.

Brian's face relaxed and a seriousness overcame him. "What are you going to do at home?" he asked.

"Pretend I never met you." A cool breeze swept through, pushing Margaret's hair into her face, tickling her. She swiped it aside with an annoyed haste.

"No, you aren't," Brian said.

"What the hell are you talking about, you loser?"

"You're going to go home, do your homework, then touch yourself and dream about Bobby Mildrum."

Margaret tried standing up to fast and instead flew off of the log. She landed on her side, her cheek hitting the ground where some leaves were piled. She lay still for a few moments not knowing what to believe. Opening her eyes, she saw a millipede a few inches from her nose. The insect's many legs were working furiously to get away from her, not wanting to wind up like its friend, Mr. Spider.

Margaret sat up and wanted to refute her liking of Bobby, but that would only feed Brian's fire.

"Don't try to deny it. I read you like a book, even though I don't read them." Brian laughed at his own attempt to be humorous. "You like him. You want to make out with him, make babies with him." Brian was snorting now, loudly.

Margaret got up, dusted herself off and said, "I don't know who told you that, but it's not true," and stomped her foot like an angry child. "I'm leaving."

Brian reached out and grabbed her by the arm. His grip was strong, sending a tinge of pain into Margaret's forearm.

"Ouch," she yelled. "Let go of me, you toad."

"Don't you want to know my secret?" he asked, and let go of her.

"I don't give a crap about your secret," she said and turned to leave.

"I read minds," Brian blurted.

Margaret froze, as if turned to stone like a Greek adventurer caught in Medusa's stare. What she had heard was so ridiculously preposterous she wanted to giggle, but it was the only, as impossible as it was, reason for Brian's A.

"You're right, twat, it would explain my A."

Margaret spun around and met Brian's stare. Her face was drawn and angry. She couldn't believe she'd actually fallen for such a tail.

"What am I thinking now, asshole?" she asked.

"How much you despise me," Brian said, before crossing his arms over his chest.

"That hardly requires telepathy," Margaret said hotly, but felt weak inside. Her skin was warming. Sweat was building around her hairline. Each gulp of air seemed more and more difficult to grasp. Reality was fading. Margaret had to prove Brian wasn't telepathic. "What number am I thinking of?"

"Seven," Brian said with no hesitation. A smirk began to form on his chubby face.

Margaret was angry at herself for thinking of such a common number. Seven was usually the number people picked. She quietly changed it and was about to ask Brian again when he spoke first.

"Negative nine," he said and the smirk had become a huge grin.

Margaret's safe and predictable world was over. Everything would have to be different now. How could she compete against someone who knew people's thoughts? Mind readers were real. Where were they? How many of them were out there? Was Brian some kind of freak?

"I'm no freak," Brian answered her. "I'm important."

"You're weak," Margaret screamed. Tears began to flow down her cheeks. "You're nothing but a cheater; a no good for nothing cheater."

"You're the weak one, you Ordinary. That's what we call your kind because that's what you are, weak and ordinary. You're no match for my kind. I own you, Margaret Atwood." Brian beat his chest proudly like a gorilla. "I have a better question for you, Margaret. What color undies are you wearing or aren't you wearing any?"

Margaret immediately thought of her undergarments, the color and design. She flashed back to the morning when she picked them out. All Brian had to do was ask a question to get what he needed. It would be almost impossible not to think, at least for a second, about the answer to a question. Mind readers would always know. She felt her body begin to weigh down under the emotional pressure that soared throughout her. Margaret's mind would always betray her. She needed to act without thinking. She needed to keep her mind on false images. Talking was the key. She unzipped her purse as her mouth worked. It was hard to think when talking aloud.

"Pink, with hearts, how cute," Brian said, clearly knowing what underwear she was wearing.

On top of all of her emotions Margaret added embarrassment to the list. Brian had intruded her mind and violated her inner sanctuary. And all without laying a hand on her. She had to stop him.

"You shaved or natural?" he asked.

He was a pig. Worse than a peeping tom because at least they hid and tried not to be seen. He would keep on violating her, over and over. Margaret had to keep talking and keep her mind from thinking.

"Where did you get the ability to read minds?" she asked, after which she thought of a black ball suspended in space and hummed to herself.

"Passed down from my parents," Brian said.

"Couldn't have been long ago or you'd of been an A student all along," Margaret said before returning to the black ball.

"My ability was recently grown into, as my parents like to put it. The same thing happened to them after they turned nine."

Margaret had her right hand in her purse. She found it difficult not to think of the task at hand but kept concentrating on the black ball. Flashes of her purse and some of its contents popped into her mind, but she managed to keep the ball focused almost all of the time. She had to keep Brian talking and let her fingers meander around the contents of her purse.

"Hey, what's with the ball?"

"What ball?"

"Oh, I get it. You're trying not to think of something so I can't read you." Brian took a step forward and was almost nose to nose with Margaret. His breath stank of shit and cherries.

"I won't let you cheat anymore," Margaret said angrily. "I work too hard for someone like you to come along and take that away. I'm the best, not some cheat like you. I was given a gift too, the gift of brilliance. You're nothing but an abomination."

"Face it, Margaret. I'll be getting the good grades, going to the good schools, working my way to being president someday and then eventually take over the world."

Margaret found the razor. Relief fell over her like a cooling wind on a scorching beach. Glimpses may have gotten through, but she kept on the ball. She wrapped her little hand around the hilt. Her thumb slid along the cold steel, sending a shiver to the back of her head. She took the razor out of her purse and held it hidden at her side. Brian was too busy blabbing about his superiority to notice.

With the blade extended, Margaret found its pleasurable vibe to strong to hide and let it out.

"You want to cut my throat with a razor?" Brian began to chuckle. It was an irritating laugh that turned into a snort, dislodging a loose bugger, and launching it at Margaret. She watched as it sailed towards her, never taking her stare from Brian. She ducked her left shoulder and narrowly missed getting hit by the projectile. Brian's snorting chuckle slowed enough for him to add, "If only you really had one."

Margaret had been staring at Brian's sneakers. She looked up, her face taunt and filled with death. She focused on her right hand, the one holding the weapon and smiled as she saw Brian's face falter into a panic as he realized what was about to happen. He tried backing away, but Margaret was too quick. She slashed forward with the blade striking Brian in the side of his neck. The blade's thirst was evident as it sliced its way into the jugular. Margaret forced the shaving implement down and across Brian's neck where the stainless steel slowed as it cut into the Adam's Apple. It popped through as she added the required pressure. Then she continued on across the neck. She managed to sever both the corroded artery and jugular vein on Brian's left side before pulling the razor free. Blood layered Margaret's entire frontal region. Her her face was particularly caked, and she found it hard to see through the mess. Using her free hand, she wiped away Brian's fluids.

The kid was clutching at the mortal wound. He gurgled as he tried to breathe or speak, Margaret wasn't sure which. Blood spewed from the sides of Brian's neck, but the middle was like an overflowing sink as the red liquid poured from the gaping slit.

He reached forward to grab Margaret, but she backed away and slashed wildly at his hands. Most of his fingers lost the battle with the blade and went plopping to the ground. Amazingly enough, Brian's fingers had plenty of blood in them as they mimicked his neck, but in a far cuter fashion as the spewing was to a much smaller degree.

Margaret was in control finally. She had her place back, and rightfully so. She watched as Brian fell to the dirt floor where he held his neck in a futile attempt at saving himself.

Margaret glanced around making sure no one was watching. She bent down and drew near to one of Brian's ears. "There's no place for cheaters, but you go far beyond the norm, mister. The world will be safer without you in it, Brian Avine, and without your parents, too." 

# Black Chaos

# Mick Ridgewell

Jack Steele has been doing the morning drive for WBUZ, Buzz Radio, 99.8 FM for thirteen years. Five days a week Jack rolled out of bed at 3:45 so he could be at the station before five. He hated getting up that early, hated having to get out of bed in the dark every day. Not even the long summer days of June and July provided any daylight until after Jack was seated in front of his microphone.

This was one of those days. July first, Canada Day, and Jack was planning a full day of music by Canadian artists. Like every other weekday, Jack's alarm clock buzzed him awake at what for most people would be the middle of the night. At 4:30 he was waiting for his coffee

at the Tim Hortons drive thru. Emily wasn't at the window. She always had something witty to share with Jack when she served him his coffee. In Emily's place, a pimple faced kid with hair sticking up in all directions. Without ever looking Jack in the face, he handed him a brown paper cup, made his change and said, "Happy Canada Day".

He headed west on Riverside Drive until it turned into Sandwich Street. Passed old Sandwich Town, where at the far northwest corner of Windsor, was an old redbrick factory that once housed a sugar refinery. The tower on the north side of the building was an ideal place to mount the transmitter, or so thought Robert Massey, founder of this sinking ship radio station.

Jack looked across the river at Detroit. It looked almost peaceful. Lights from windows and rooftops glimmered across the water like thousands of diamonds, just out of reach. The view of Detroit usually comforted him during the drive to work. The lights made it seem like he wasn't the only person on earth who wasn't sleeping. This day seemed different. He couldn't put a finger on it, but something was out of sorts, something the lights from Detroit did not alleviate.

At the station, Wally's old Ford Ranger sat in its usual place, directly under the only light in the parking lot. Wally was the only person at The Buzz who had more years in than Jack. Wally spent nights trying to get listeners to call in and discuss current events, but most times he just filled the dead space between callers with whole album sides while he slept in the booth. He always woke up just in time to hear the last song end. He would throw out another tirade about the latest news story, then stick another album on when nobody called to rebut his opinion. Not that most people agreed with Wally; most didn't. It was just that nobody was out of bed yet.

Before Jack took three steps from his car, Wally trundled down the steps, gave Jack a nod without saying a word, and waddled across the pavement to his pickup.

"Mornin' Wall," Jack said with a slight smirk on his face. Wally hadn't had a civil word for Jack since Jack disagreed with his views on the Middle East after 911.

Wally fumbled in his pocket for his keys; all the while Jack watched him with some amusement. The light shining down seemed to glow more brightly off the top of Wally's bald head than it had when it left the halogen bulb up on the pole. The suspension on the little truck groaned in protest as he heaved his rotund frame up into the cab.

As Jack watched the Ranger exit the lot, the odd feeling he had looking across the river returned. At the top of the steps it occurred to him what was odd. It was too dark. Sure, it wasn't quite five yet, but not even the eastern horizon showed any sign of the coming day. Sunrise wasn't due for another hour, but looking up river toward Belle Isle, there should be the slightest hint of morning. If it was a cloudy morning it would make sense, but the stars sparkled, unobstructed in the sky.

"Weird," he uttered, the sound of his own voice giving him a slight start.

Jack broke a nervous sweat pondering the blackness that was the morning sky. He swung the glass door open and stepped into the foyer, the cool air blowing down from the HVAC duct brought goose bumps to his uncovered arms and the nape of his neck. The building was completely quiet but for the rush of air from the ceiling vent.

"Good morning, Mr. Steele."

"Jesus, Annie, you scared the shit out of me. And how many times do I have to ask you to call me Jack."

Annie Dupont was this year's intern at the station. Every spring they picked up a college student; most were a waste of space in Jack's mind but Annie was okay. She was pretty in a plain girl-next-door way, and Jack felt a pang of guilt every time that occurred to him.

"So Annie, CNN got anything worth discussing on air today?"

"Well apparently, it's still dark in Newfoundland."

Normally Jack would have been looking for the punch line here but instead he got a fresh crop of gooseflesh down his neck.

"I guess sunrise should have been about an hour and a half ago, but the feed from the local news channel showed a sky as black as deep space. It's like the sunrise stopped somewhere over the Atlantic ocean. How weird is that."

"Annie, make sure we keep broadcasting. I'll be in the control room in a few minutes."

The station kept a TV on in the lounge; CNN was on 24/7 in there. Up on the screen a young female reporter from Portland, Maine stood with her back to the Atlantic. It could have been midnight. The sky was black; not a slight hint of dawn breached the horizon.

At 5:30 Jack finally made it into the control room. Annie was seated in his chair, her feet up on the consol and her head bobbing to the beat of Mean Mr. Mustard. Any other time and Jack might have given her the thumbs up. Abbey Road was his favorite album, but this sunrise, or lack of it, gave him the creeps.

Annie jumped out of his chair, a slight pink hue colouring her cheeks. Jack grinned then sat in front of the microphone. He waited until the Beatles sang The End, then began what would become the longest broadcast of his career.

"Happy Canada Day, Windsor, you're listening to 99 point 8, The Buzz. This is Jack Steele. We got a funny morning, if that's what you can call it, shaping up for you all out there. And when I say funny, I mean funny-peculiar not funny-ha-ha." He gave Annie a reassuring wink, then continued his monologue.

"For any of you who are just getting up for an early tee time, you can take your time. It looks like the sun decided to take the day off today. No, it isn't cloudy or raining, it's just dark. Dawn should long ago have hit the east coast but it's as black as tar in Newfoundland right now, and the entire eastern seaboard is reporting the same condition. As soon as we can find someone who might have an explanation we will pass it along. Now, let's have some music, and once again, happy birthday Canada."

He fiddled with his planned song list for the day, then as an afterthought played an instrumental version of O Canada. He told Annie to play the entire Bryan Adams, Live Live Live cd, then went back to check CNN.

Gradually the daytime staff of The Buzz trickled into the station. Nobody did any work, they all wandered back and forth from the lounge to the internet at their desks. The internet was virtually useless, by nine a.m. eastern time, sunrise should have come to all of North and South America. No sunrise came however, so the internet was so overwhelmed with news queries that it slowed to a crawl. Switchboards at radio, television and newspaper newsrooms could not handle the volume of calls.

Back on the air, Jack's heart was no longer into the music like it had been the evening before, when he compiled his playlist for the day. "To all you moms and dads still planning to haul your kids to Oeullette Avenue for the Canada Day parade, be sure to bring reflective clothes and flashlights." An anxious chortle escaped his lips then he added, "Sounds more like Halloween advice, doesn't it? We're going to pay some bills now, but stay with me, I'm not going off the air until the sun rises."

Having made his announcement that he would stay on the air until the sun did rise, he returned to the lounge and CNN. It was standing room only. He was a little put out; he was used to using this room while most of these people were still sleeping. Up on the screen a scientist was delivering what he believed was an explanation. The light was still there, he claimed, it had just changed speed, and the human eye could no longer see it.

The station owner, Bill Dondelly, had taken possession of the remote for the TV and switched it to CBC. Another scientist was assuring the viewers that the Earth was still spinning. If it had stopped, we would have been tossed into the air, like loose objects careening to the front of a car that stops too suddenly. In his opinion, the force would have been so great that all the buildings of all the cities would be ripped from their foundations. Bill switched to CTV. A pretty young reporter was reading the estimated effects from the postponed sunrise. Employers reported absentees up thirty percent; rotating blackouts should be expected since the daytime heat didn't take a day off. With air conditioners working to keep up with the predicted daytime high of thirty-five Celsius, and the added power from all the lights that would not normally be on during the hottest part of the day, the power grid would not be able to keep up with demand.

At ten a.m. Jack shared the mike with Patty Lucas. They tried to make light of the situation that was growing darker with each passing minute. They took turns passing along one crazed news report after another. By 10:30, flashlights and batteries were sold out of every store in the country. By noon those same items were listed on eBay for a hundred times their MSRP. Suicides were being reported at alarming frequency. In Toronto a young woman jumped from her thirty-sixth floor balcony with her three year old son in her arms. In Moncton, a minister locked the doors at the beginning of morning mass, doused himself with gasoline, stood upon the altar and lit a candle. The old wood-frame church went up in minutes. The parishioners were mostly elderly men and women, and they all succumbed to the smoke and flames.

At two p.m. George Reese took over the on-air duty. Patty asked Jack to walk her out to her car. There were now several cars sparkling under the yellow light thirty feet overhead. The air was stifling; sweat broke out on Jack's forehead before he reached Patty's car.

"How weird is this?" Jack said.

"It's creepy."

Patty pointed across the river. "Looks like the fire bugs are working overtime."

In Detroit, red flashing lights glittered in front of a huge blaze on the waterfront. "If this lasts much longer, chaos will burn in cities all over the world.

"Well, Pat, be careful driving home. The crazies are going to be out there."

Patty drove off and Jack turned back to the station entrance, still looking out over the water at the fire in Detroit. His mind, asked question after question to nobody in particular, and without any answer expected. He was almost trancelike when the sound of Annie's voice haled him back to the present.

"Jack, come quick. The bridge."

He looked up at the Ambassador bridge. There didn't appear to be any traffic up there, just a helicopter aiming a search light at the center of the span.

Jack quickened his pace. When he got to the step, he could see the concern on Annie's face. "It's on the news," she said.

"The bridge is on the news?"

"There's a bus up there. They're going to jump."

He ran past her, rushed inside, not waiting to see if she followed. When he got to the lounge the entire staff of WBUZ had crowded into the small room. On the TV, a helicopter view of twenty or thirty people standing at the railing holding hands. They appeared to be singing, but the only audio was the reporter. Apparently, they'd blocked the bridge by leaving cars at both ends, in all four lanes, they then took a bus, one from each end, to the middle and were now singing what the reporter claimed was Amazing Grace.

When the roadblocks were removed, several police cruisers from both sides of the border rushed to the second set of roadblocks, which were the diagonally parked school buses. The reporter joked, that the officers had better not pass those buses, the flashers were on. Just then, all twenty-five or thirty people mounted the railing and dropped one hundred and fifty feet to the black water of the Detroit River. Some in the WBUZ lounge cried out as though their words could prevent the jumpers from falling. Some stared in silence, while others gasped loud enough to give themselves a start.

Jack shuffled back to the control room. George looked up to see deep sorrow in the eyes of a man who he could not remember ever being anything but happy. "Jack, what happened?"

He just shook his head, put on his headphones, and sat in front of the second-chair microphone with a blank stare on his face. When the song ended, George was about to play another, but Jack held up a hand without saying a word. George stopped what he was doing, he sat in silence as Jack recounted to their listeners the scene he just witnessed, live on the TV.

Shortly after four that afternoon a severe thunderstorm dumped four centimeters of rain on parts of Windsor, leaving hundreds of people without power as crews scrambled to repair dozens of downed power lines. Detroit news teams reported thousands of people in the dark in Oakland County. The blackouts on both sides of the border accelerated the frenzy of zealots and looters. Police, fire, and ambulance sirens were everywhere.

By the time the sun would have been setting on Canada Day, were there a sun to set, over four thousand suicides were reported across the country. CNN stopped reporting the suicide count in the United States when the number reached seven thousand. Police everywhere had to stop arresting looters because the jails were full. Fourteen police officers had been killed on duty in North America, including three in Toronto and one in Calgary.

As the absent sunrise continued across the Pacific, accompanied by footage from North and South America, panic spread almost immediately. Hundreds jumped into the black water of Tokyo harbor. Bobbing briefly before disappearing below the surface; thousands rushed to temples from Kobe to Sapporo where many were injured by the crushing force of humanity. Similar scenes were occurring across Asia and eastern Europe.

In Paris, the Eiffel Tower was closed to the public to prevent suicides. Hundreds of Londoner's, held a candlelight vigil in front of Buckingham Palace as though Her Majesty could bring the sunrise.

At midnight, Jack Steele sat alone in the control room. Wally had called in to say that if Jack was going to stay all night, they did not need him. Annie had answered the phone when Wally called and told Jack he sounded frightened. "We're all scared, Annie," was his reply. He told Annie to go lie down on the couch in Bill's office.

"Good morning people, this is The Buzz and I'm Jack Steele. I've been here at the station for about nineteen hours now. It was dark when I got here and as you all know it's still dark." He paused. It felt as though that silent moment was actually several minutes. He was not a religious man, but in that moment, Jack Steele was asking God for the wisdom to say something, anything, that might help to bring calm back to his listeners.

"About ten minutes ago, the last hint of daylight over the east Atlantic was replaced with the same darkness we you can see out your windows." He took another pause, sipped from a can of diet Coke, then continued. "Now the only thing to do is wait calmly, peacefully, yes most of all peacefully, with the rest of the world to see if the sun will rise today, this second day of July, 2008. An untold amount of chaos, a global natural disaster of Biblical proportion has taken the human race hostage." He looked through the doublepane glass window into the hall; Annie, flanked by Bill, Bob Plunk the manager of advertising, and even Joe the night janitor. He felt like a zoo exhibit. Was there a sign on the other side of the glass, Please Don't Feed the DJ?

He looked directly into Annie's eyes through the glass. "Panic has been the rule of the day. Panic. How many people died today, how many damaged lives were left in the wake of all those suicides? How many Mom and Pop businesses won't reopen after being picked clean by looters or burned to the ground by vandals? Let's all of us take a moment. Just take a deep breath and remember that as people, as human beings, we have the ability to choose the right thing to do."

Jack was still looking as the crowd on the other side of the window stood, watching. Watching and hoping. Yes, most of all, hoping. It was as if his words had a chance, a real chance of reaching somebody. He wondered, could it be, could his words convince just one person to go down the correct path? One person saying to his friend, "Hey man, don't bust that window, or leave that guy alone, he didn't do anything to you."

Annie stood, arms crossed, a tear trickling down her left cheek. She looked twelve. A little girl looking at Jack, hoping he had an answer that was going to save the day. The world had gone crazy, and somebody had to have an answer.

"I'm going to play you a song while I check with our news crew." He grinned then winked in Annie's direction. "Here's John and Yoko with a message we should all listen to."

When he joined the crowd in the hall, Bill held out his hand. Jack took it and Bill said, "Give Peace a Chance, eh? Right on, man."

Jack just turned and slumped down the hall to the lounge. The room was empty; Bill was the only one who followed him. The two men took a seat without saying a word. On the TV, a reporter stood on the deck of an American aircraft carrier off the west coast of Morocco. His face glowed like an orb, reflecting the light supplied by a source unknown to the viewer. The graphic below informed the audience that they were watching Jason Spears, off the coast of Africa. At the bottom of the screen, a tickertape of news scrolled along, including things like, martial law in New York City, Chicago, and Atlanta. Records were set for suicides in a twelve-hour period, violent crime reports, and TSE and Wall Street losses.

It was a calm night on the water, the breeze was barely enough to muss Jason Spears' over-moussed hair. Behind him, the light dissipated into an abyss of total nothingness. He could have been floating in space instead of what should have been dawn at sea.

He was rambling on about what was obvious to the whole world by now. It was dark, and it shouldn't be. Big deal, tell us something we don't know. The guy used a tone and facial expression that said, "Breaking news, see it here first."

In the middle of a new onslaught of useless statistics Jason Spears froze. He just stared at the deck in front of him. It was like he was seeing something so unbelievable it robbed him of his ability to speak, or move; it looked as though he forgot to breathe. His cameraman must have picked up on what the problem was because the shot dropped from the Jason's face to the deck of the ship. A thin white line appeared to split the ship on a diagonal, from bow to stern.

Spears walked over to the line, which widened by the second. Jason held out his hand and reached across the line. The camera did a close-up of Jason's arm, a bar of white light glowing across his forearm. Seconds later smoke began to rise from his sleeve. He screamed and pulled his arm away from the light.

"Jesus, did you see that?"

"We're sending live video Jason," the cameraman reminded him.

"It looks like the sunrise just might happen today," Jason announced, regaining his composure. "I'm no scientist, but it looks to me like all of the Earth's daylight is shining down on a tiny strip of planets surface. Get a shot of that Rocky."

The strip looked to be two, maybe three inches wide. Steam or smoke was rising up from the deck where the light touched. Rocky panned overboard, a close up of the ocean showed steam billowing up into the thin band of light. The ship moved through the light, which had now doubled in width. The flag over the bridge was brilliantly illuminated, then burst into flames.

All hands, including Jason and Rocky, were ordered off the deck. A small fire started on the flight deck as the sun's concentrated rays fell on what appeared to be a puddle of oil, possibly left from an equipment repair. Jason informed his viewers that he had been ordered inside and the screen went black.

In the lounge Jack and Bill stared at the blank screen until someone at the CNN newsdesk in New York came on, explaining that Jason Spears would be back momentarily. "A guy could get a quick tan on board that ship, eh Bill?" Jack said with a nervous chuckle.

"Can you imagine the panic that footage is going to bring?" Bill answered. "If that band of light comes across land, it will leave everything it passes in flames."

Jack began to flip through stations, getting more frustrated each time he pressed the button on the remote. One station after another reporting what had happened. It seamed that Jason Spears had the scoop on what was happening.

"Try CNN again, maybe that guy Spears is back on," Bill said.

On CNN, Jason Spears was on screen. He was below deck, explaining that the ship was turning west to get completely out of this light. It would be a few minutes before he would be permitted back outside.

"Shouldn't you go check on Annie?" Bill asked Jack. It was more an effort to break the silence than a real suggestion.

"She'll be fine, she has more on the ball than the whole lot of us combined." They exchanged a nervous glance.

Not wanting to listen to the drivel that was coming from CNN's news desk, Jack said, "When that kid is done school, do us all a favour and give her a job."

"Maybe I should give her your slot."

Before Jack could answer, Jason Spears had returned to the air. He was outside again. It was an eerie scene. The ship was in darkness again, but just off the starboard side a wall of daytime fog swirled in the carriers slipstream. It appeared as though the ocean were evaporating faster than the intense heat of the sun could burn the mist away.

Rocky panned from the blackness on the port side to the wall of thick grey fog glowing off the starboard. The edge of fog, as well defined as a white circle, cast down on a stage by a spotlight in the rafters above. The grey mist swirled in an upward motion, then spilled into the darkness as it rose above the sea.

"The daylight over the sea has widened to a half-mile or so," Spears reported. "A naval submarine is in the water below the fog taking temperature measurements." Spears went on to explain the air temp was one hundred eighty degrees Fahrenheit in the fog, and the surface water had risen seventeen degrees in the thirty minutes since the searing light first split the sky.

Satellite footage, along with film from a helicopters and planes showed a orange grey wedge of fog, shaped like a section of a citrus fruit, extending from north of Iceland to the edge of Trinidad.

"Well Bill, it looks like the sun will rise on time today."

"It sure looks that way."

"I sure hope the AC doesn't go on the fritz."

They both laughed the same nervous laugh, and then Jack announced he was going to lie down in Bill's office. Bill went back to give Annie the news as best he could.

At five-thirty, Annie went to Bill's office to wake Jack. They both shuffled back down the hall where Jack took his place in front of the microphone. He put his head set on and waited for The Guess Who to finish their song. While he waited, he read a synopsis of what had taken place since the sunrise. Yes, it was a day late but the sun did rise over the east coast. Down the entire eastern seaboard, record temperatures were being recorded. The fog was so thick rolling off the ocean that it was hard to tell that the sunrise did come. However, come it did. Record high temperatures continued as daybreak greeted Quebec then eastern Ontario. A record sixteen tropical depressions were stirring along the west coast of Europe and Africa. A particularly strong tropical storm was forming off the southern shore of Iceland, which threatened to send a full-scale hurricane toward Newfoundland. As the sunrise headed westward across the country the extreme heat lessened. Records were still being broken, but the heat was at least tolerable.

"I've been at this station for about twenty-five hours now," Jack began as he looked up from the newssheet. "Based on information we have been following through the night, the sun will rise on schedule today."

Jack and Annie exchanged smiles then Jack continued by recounting a seemingly endless list of human weaknesses. From looting to suicides, the list was sad, and to be mentioned on the list was a dubious honour to be sure. In comparison, the animals went about their business, as if the sun had not taken the day off. The flowers that closed at sunset and opened in the morning had done so even though the sun didn't come up. So why, Jack mused, did this event send the world's human population into such a tailspin?

He paused and checked the wall clock. It was a hideous LCD display, black numbers on a grey background, and it read 5:58:32. "Well we have about thirty seconds to sunrise, and I would like to introduce you to someone who has been a huge help to me since this started. She played music for you all out here while I gathered new bits; she ordered the pizzas; took her life into her hands going to Tim's for coffee; and most of all she made sure our advertisers got their share of airtime. Annie come over and say hi."

Annie shook her head but Jack gave her a wink and waved her over. She shuffled tentatively toward Jack and he motioned her to sit in the guest chair. She sat and put on the headset hanging on the arm of the chair.

"Ladies and gentleman, the sun has officially risen on Windsor," Jack announced. "This is Annie Dupont. She is a student intern here at the BUZZ and she volunteered to stay and help me get through this ordeal."

Annie leaned toward the microphone and said, "Good morning Windsor."

"Good morning indeed," Jack added.

"We have been inundated with awful, sometimes gruesome images of how low we humans can stoop over the past 24 hours." Annie was reaching to remove the headset and Jack shook his head. "I am going to play a song for you and when the song is over I want some people to call in and give us some stories, some positive stories of human behavior during this oddity of nature." Jack reached up, removed his own head set, and gave his final word for the day. "Annie is going to handle the calls so treat her with the same courtesy you would me. On second thought treat her better than that." Annie was shaking her head vigorously, as George Harrison began to sing Here Comes The Sun, Jack put his hand on Annie's shoulder, told her she would be fine and walked out of the Buzz and into a beautiful sunrise. 

# Alien Agenda Interview

1) Who are your literary influences outside of the horror genre.

Somer Canon: This is going to sound so weird, but I adore Dave Barry. He's a humor columnist who writes a syndicated column for the Miami Herald and I've been reading him for decades. I have six of his books and I read little bits of them when I start feeling too heavy with myself and my material. For me, I think it's good to remember not to take things too seriously and it's totally fine to write horror, but with tongue firmly planted in cheek.

Glenn Rolfe: I tend to get my non-horror from the library. A few that stuck out for me were Mary Miller, John Feffer and Mo Daviau. Check them out. Never would have read their books if not for the Gardiner Public Library.

Sister of Slaughter: Roald Dahl and Tolkien

Mick Ridgewell: Shortly after finishing the first draft of, The Nightcrawler I met a mystery writer, Louise Penney whose career was just beginning to take off. She was very encouraging and I stayed in contact for some time and she continued to support my goal of being published. Also, my family has been devoted fans of the Harry Potter series from the beginning.

2) When did you decide to take the jump from reader, a person being taken into new worlds and on adventures to author, creator of worlds and adventures for readers to enjoy?

MR: I was at the pharmacy waiting for a prescription when I found a copy of Stephen King's On Writing. When I finished reading it, I began The Nightcrawler. I had no clue what I was doing but I enjoyed the process and continued.

GR: I started after the fall of Leisure Books and Dorchester Publishing. I honestly got freaked out that I'd never get more of those types of stories. I decided to start writing my own. The fact that anyone reads them still amazes me.

SC: I had sort of a crisis happen in my life. I had always been putting my dreams of being a writer on hold for various reasons and that crisis turned out to be the kick in the pants that I needed. I realized that life is short and getting shorter and if I didn't go for it, I'd regret it and who the hell needs that?

JRT: I've written stories in notebooks for years. Never planned on sharing them, just trying to entertain myself.

SoS: We've dreamed of being writers since we were little kids but really took the leap when we turned thirty which was five years ago.

3) Why do you write? Who do you write for?

SC: I write simply because I have to. I gotta. For years I wrote blogs and long MySpace posts and journals and secret short stories. I've always done it. As for who I write for, well, I write for me. I want others to like my writing, of course, but I'm entertaining myself over here and being able to be comfortable with that makes this all the more fulfilling.

MR: I started writing because I enjoyed reading, and just wanted to see if I could do it. When I am writing, I am creating something for me. I will say that having a reader let me know that they enjoyed my books and are waiting for future titles makes me want to write for them as well.

SoS: We have always written for ourselves, it was always what we enjoyed doing with our free time. We write because we have to, it makes us feel happy.

GR: I write because it's fun and it's healthy. I've always written songs, and always had that place to vent. Now, I write books. Same deal. I always write for me.

4) What is your favorite part if the process? What part do you struggle with?

SC: Somewhere in the middle of the project, I'll start to really get to know my characters. They're not ideas anymore, they're complete people and that never fails to please me. I think the thing that I struggle with the most is making sure that I don't overdo certain personality quirks in my characters so that I don't have stories full of hollow cliches but rather complicated and sometimes unlikable people. When I go back and edit first drafts, I'm always finding those kinds of mistakes and I cut them out with glee.

SoS: We love making up storylines, it's our favorite part. Editing is the tough part for us.

MR: The thing I most enjoy about writing is those special times when I get up from my computer thinking I wrote something really great. Maybe it was a whole scene, or a paragraph or just a single line of dialogue, but something that made me tell myself that, "I don't suck at this."

GR: Finding out what happens next. For me, it's not much different from reading. I find these characters and get caught up in what's happening to them and around them. I always struggle with editing. My grammar sucks.

JRT: Getting out of my head for a while is a good thing. The struggle? Coming back.

5) The horror genre continues to be overwhelmed by authors who are men. How can current authors help encourage and support women coming into the field?

JRT: Women are fucking scary. There's no reason they can't be at the top of horror. What do you care who wrote a book as long as it is good.

MR: If there is a typical horror writer, it is probably someone unlike me. I didn't have a burning desire to be an author ever since I learned to read. I had what many might consider a boring life, raised in small town Canada, in a happy home. I went to college and became a computer programmer. I now live in the same small town and am raising my kids in what I hope is a similarly happy environment. There was no drama to kickstart my creativity. When I was in my fifties I decided to try and write a novel and it turned out okay. So I guess my answer to all the women out there is, if you have a story to tell, tell it. If I can find some readers who enjoy my writing, anybody can.

SC: There has to be an effort put forth by the community to not only buy the works of those established and beloved men, but those of women and other minority groups. As a woman writer, I've been relieved to find that the horror community at large tends to be very welcoming to diverse voices. Sure, there are some stinkers out there and even the good guys can be forgetful about inclusion from time to time, but we're trying. Something else that I've found helpful is to reach out to those authors who are not in the ruling demographic. Write an email and let them know you enjoyed one of their works or you like their online presence. We all have low days and an email like that can reinvigorate a person and get them back to tapping the keys and putting out more stories.

GR: I was in that same boat. Outside of Anne Rice, I never read horror books by women. Why? I'm not sure. When I joined the Horror Writers Association, that all changed. There are so many talents writers and many of them are women. Just look at the ladies here in this book: Somer Canon, Michelle Garza, and Melissa Lason. They kick ass. And I feel like, in the last couple of years, the ladies are starting to rise up. You also have Amber Fallon, Mercedes Yardley, Kristin Dearborn, JH Moncreiff....

SoS: People can help women writers by noticing them, spreading the word about them and being mindful to include them in anthologies so people can see how awesome horror women are.

6) What advice do you have to offer younger people who think they have an interest or passion for writing?

SC: Sit down and write. Once you've started, keep going. If you have the interest, that will get you started. If you have the passion, that will keep you going. You just have to prioritize it and don't be afraid of it. Have a little faith in yourself and push.

MR: Writing is no different than anything else a person might aspire to do. You need to see what the best people in that vocation are doing, and then practice. If you want to play in the NHL, you have to watch hockey, play hockey and practice. If you want to be a writer, you have to read books, read more books, write, and write more.

GR: My daughters like to write. It warms my heart. So, coming from that prospective, I think the big thing is just encouraging them to go for it. Showing interest and asking them about the characters. You can tell by talking to people if they have passion for something. We tend to get excited talking about our favorite things.

SoS: Our advice to young writers or new writers is always the same. Never give up, keep the words flowing by any means necessary, don't compare yourself to others and give it your all.

JRT: Just do it. 
Thanks for reading these stories and hanging out with us for a bit.

Hope to see you next time!

Check us out at: ALIEN AGENDA PUBLISHING

Read on for sample chapters and order links to our 2018 Summer of Horror series. 
The beast will howl!

The Beast of Brenton Woods

Copyright © 2018 by Jackson R. Thomas

The eyes in the dark shouldn't have been there. Twin yellow moons peered at him. Ben's heart pounded, and his mind zig-zagged in ten different directions. He couldn't decide whether to scream, run, or piss his pants.

"Ben, are you there? Come in, over."

Tyler's voice seemed to explode in the darkness. Ben scrambled for the walkie-talkie on his hip, dropping it in the process.

A hulking shape shuffled through the trees.

"Ben? What are you doing, man? You're freaking me out. Over."

A low, guttural sound rumbled from behind the trees to his right. Ben slowly crouched and picked up the cheap communication device he'd gotten last week for his birthday.

I'm only thirteen. I'm too young to die, right?

He rose, taking cautious steps backwards. He prayed Tyler would stay silent.

The thing before him stood— a towering, white, furry monster among the pines and hemlocks.

Ben pressed the TALK button beneath his thumb. "Tyler, RUN!"

With that, Ben turned and hauled ass. A ferocious growl accompanied a loud, thunderous crack behind him.

"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God," Ben cried.

Branches smacked him in the face and the toes of his Chuck Taylor's seemed to seek out every root on the ground. He stumbled, but managed to maintain his footing as he barreled through the woods.

He didn't want to look back, but forced himself to do so. He couldn't tell if the creature was still in pursuit, and he couldn't hear anything over the noise he was making, but there was no way in hell he was slowing down.

Right then, he crashed into something and went sprawling to the forest floor.

"Jesus, Ben, what the hell?" Tyler said.

"Get up, get up," Ben said hurrying to his feet and grabbing his friend by the arm.

"What? What is it?"

"Just go!" He shoved Tyler forward. They didn't stop. Not even when they broke past the tree line and raced by the tent in Ben's backyard. Ben ripped the backdoor open and practically dove inside. Tyler rushed in behind him before slamming the door shut.

"Lock it!" Ben said.

Tyler did as he was told.

"Ben? What are you boys up to?" Ben's mom peeked her head into the kitchen.

"Mom, there's something..." he tried to catch his breath. "There's—" He bit back the word monster–There's an animal...something huge out there. It chased us."

She came into the kitchen holding a glass of red wine, dressed in sweats and her Red Sox t-shirt.

"Where? In the backyard?" she asked.

She started toward the door.

"No! Don't open it," Ben threw his body next to Tyler blocking the door.

"Stop it, Ben. You're starting to creep me out," she said, placing her glass on the table. "Now move away from there."

"Mom, I...I don't know what it was, but it was big and it...it was coming after me." He questioned this even as he said it. Had it chased him? It certainly felt like it.

"Benjamin Oliver Cutter, move."

Tyler ducked and got behind her. Ben knew when all three names came out of mom's mouth, you did what you were told or suffered the wrath of Susan Cutter.

He stepped aside. "Please, just don't go out--"

His mother unlocked the door and opened it.

Ben and Tyler peeked over her shoulders searching the yard.

"Hello?" his mom said.

The perfectly clear night didn't even whisper a reply.

"Well," she said.

A howl called out from somewhere far off in the distance, deep back in the forest.

"I want you boys sleeping inside tonight. Understood?"

They both nodded as they retreated, giving her space to come back in. She closed the door and locked it, before walking to the fridge to fetch her box of wine.

Ben watched as she refilled her glass and took a sip.

"You want to stay down here with me and watch a scary movie?" she asked.

Ben saw the weak smile crawl over Tyler's face. "Nah, I think we've had enough monsters for the night. We're just gonna go to my room and play some video games."

"Not too late, okay?"

"Sure, Mom."

"If you boys change your minds, I'm gonna settle in down here and watch _American Werewolf in London_."

He usually loved his mother's twisted sense of humor, but as he thought about those yellow eyes, the horrible growl, and the shape rising among the shadows, he found it hard to crack a smile.

.....

Susan Cutter's brave front disintegrated after the boys went upstairs. She didn't want to think about the grave possibilities Ben's ramblings could mean. She walked to the living room window and gazed out at the backyard. Was it out there? Was it back?

Oh God, what did it want with her son?

It wasn't possible. Scott was gone. And so too, the legend of the Beast of Brenton Woods. Susan dropped the blind and returned to the couch and her box of wine. There was no way she'd be getting to sleep tonight until the box was emptied.

Rather than the werewolf classic she'd joked with Ben about, Susan put on Downton Abbey and tried not to think about the secrets she'd been living with.

.....

Up in Ben's room, Tyler started up the PlayStation and gathered up the controllers.

"Not yet, man." Ben said. He walked by Tyler and stepped to his bedroom window. Up above the trees against the pure black of night, rested a bright eye in the sky. His gaze cast to the woods. Whatever it is, it's out there. Somewhere.

"Should we go to the tent and get our stuff?" Tyler said, sitting at the edge of Ben's bed.

"No. We can get it in the morning."

"Okay, well, are you gonna tell me what the heck happened?"

Ben turned around. "Dude, this is freaking crazy."

"What? What did you see?"

His mind screamed its name. _Werewolf._

"My dad told me once about these woods." Ben thought back to that moment with his father. His dad always seemed larger than life and a mountain among everyone else in his young life. But that day, he seemed like a regular guy. Weak, scared, and small.

"He told me that back when he was a kid in the eighties, two young girls were found mangled up by the creek. The authorities said it was an animal that attacked them, but never what kind. My dad said he'd seen it, and that it was no regular animal."

Tyler inched forward on the bean bag.

"He was camping out there with his older cousin, Skinny, when they heard it howl. They were by the Point, ya know, where Jeff Carew and Freddy Kendall had their old fort, remember?"

Tyler nodded.

"Well, dad said they were scared shitless, but after what happened to those girls, he had to try to see it. I think he thought he could help catch the killer."

"What? Your dad was nuts."

"I know, right? But he says they walked out to the edge and got halfway down the pass, when he saw it. The beast was standing down there with its huge back to them. Fur white as snow. They booked it back home just like you and me tonight."

"Jesus."

"He said he only saw it that one time."

"Okay, you just, like, made that all up, right?" Tyler said.

Ben shook his head from side to side.

"Come on."

"I always thought he told me that story to keep me from going off too far, ya know? But I...I saw it, man. I saw it, out there tonight."

Goose bumps came alive up and down his arms.

"Holy shit, what are we gonna do now?" Tyler said.

Ben gazed out at the full moon. His father's words replaying in his head: _Two young girls found mangled by the creek..._

"I don't know, man."
CHAPTER TWO

For Conway Yates, the night was the only time he felt comfortable. He often wished he could find a way to make its beauty last all day. The peace, the quiet, both seemed to struggle against the wants and needs of daytime folks. If vampires existed, they would have the ultimate life. Live by the moon, surviving on the blood of so many useless and pathetically distracted men and women. He hated to be nasty. Not all people were self-centered assholes.

Conway sipped from the tumbler of scotch. He always had a glass on the back porch at midnight. Rain or snow, he'd set in his rocker, have his drink, and say hello to Heaven. A damn shame that most didn't realize paradise could be found if they just know where to look. Tonight was clear as they come. His favorite, though he didn't mind a nice rain storm or even watching fat snowflakes drift down from the sky. But when it was nothing but twinkling star lights against the perfect blackness, he could howl at the moon. Vampires, werewolves...he loved monsters–they knew about the night. He nourished his appreciation for the darker side of literature for hours every night. No less than two hours with a book prior to his drink on the porch and no less than another two hours when he came back in. Right now, he was nearing the end of Jack Ketchum's _OFF SEASON._ It featured a different type of monster—man, the scariest of them all.

He was nearly finished with his drink when a deer stepped out from the woods next to his shed. Black eyes gazed straight at him, yet were so calm the animal seemed rather flippant about his presence. He'd always had a way with nature, with all things nocturnal, really. From his tenting days as a kid, all the way up through now, they seemed to sense his love and disposition for serenity. The glorious creature stepped into the yard before being startled by something in the shadows behind it.

Conway swallowed the last of his scotch, set the glass down, and leaned his elbows on his creaky knees. The devil could come stomping from the forest and Conway still wouldn't be able to hop up and run. His track days were decades and decades behind him. He sat, quiet and still, waiting to see what the deer would do. Or what exactly had its haunches up.

Everything fell silent. The cicadas, the frogs, the owls...his skin broke out in goose flesh. A voice inside told him he should forget about the deer and the thing in the dark and just head back to his book.

And lock the door behind you.

The deer hadn't moved. Paralyzed by... _what?_

Conway started to rise, his knees both tightened and creaked, vocalizing his arthritis. The crack of wood and the growl that reverberated across the yard and into his chest made him freeze. He was now short of breath. Oh Lord, no.... not now. A pain shot up his left arm as his right knee gave out, dropping him to the porch. The deer broke across the yard followed by a shadowy blur of fur.

He listened to the wet thud and the animalistic grunting coming from his lawn, but he couldn't see what was happening. His heart felt like a stone in his chest. He moaned, regretting it instantly.

The beast appeared in his blurring vision. A mountain of viscous stone, thick and daunting, the wolf man climbed the steps; blood coated its white muzzle and spread a grisly map across its massive chest. Conway remembered something his memories had somehow misplaced—The Beast of Brenton Woods. The white wolf. And this was to be his final thought as the raging monster arched its back and howled into the night. The heart attack was taking him, but not before the fangs crunched into the side of his head and came away with half his face.

The beauty of the night sky went out.

Read the rest of THE BEAST OF BRENTON WOODS
Wherever you run...he's waiting for you!

The Nightcrawler

Copyright © 2012 by Mick Ridgewell

When the elevator doors opened, Scott Randall stood just fifty feet from sunshine and freedom. His mood lightened as he padded toward the glass doors leading to the street. The late morning traffic in Detroit ran steady in both directions and pedestrians crowded the sidewalk. When he reached for the handle to open the door, his cell began to ring. The display identified the caller to be Thomas Andrews.

Scott's shoulders slumped and his gaze shifted from the phone, back to the door and the sunny day beyond. However, it was not the bustle of Woodward Avenue he saw. He saw a man, a man whose appearance was so eerie and sudden it gave Scott a start and he dropped the phone. At the same time, he muttered an involuntary "eeah." To describe this man as an unpleasant sight was like calling a hurricane 'breezy weather.'

A sudden sense of unease came over him. He retrieved the phone and flipped it open. "Scott Randall."

"Scott, this is Sarah. Thomas asked me to let you know that we added your copy of the amended contract to Bill Wheaton's folder in error. Would you like us to deliver it to your hotel?"

"That won't be necessary, I haven't left the building yet. I'll be right up." He ended the call not waiting for a response then looked through the door. The ugly man had disappeared. He didn't come in. Scott was sure the doors hadn't opened while he spoke to Sarah. He leaned toward the glass and looked north, then south. The entire front of the building was glass _._ He saw no sign of the guy. _He should be there. How could there be no sign of him? He must have blended with the rest of the foot traffic._

When the elevator opened on the top floor, Scott walked into the lobby of Campbell, Sawyer, and Thomson, an industry leader in computer graphics and web design. The walls were covered with awards: plaques of bronze and pewter, on polished wood backings. Hung on the walls flanking the elevators, framed poster size prints of successful campaigns were each illuminated by a mounted halogen lamp. Directly opposite a polished oak reception desk and behind it, glass shelves displayed more awards of etched crystal and polished silver, mostly for computer graphics design.

Scott set his briefcase on the crescent shaped reception desk in front of Sarah, an attractive young woman with dark hair, green eyes and an inviting smile.

"You called?"

She handed him a folder, which he secured in his briefcase, then placed it on the floor and immediately returned his gaze to her.

"I have an afternoon to myself, can I buy you lunch? That place we ate at yesterday was nice."

The raised panel doors of the boardroom closed with a thud. Sarah's face flushed and they both turned in the direction of the noise. Scott nodded to the four men and two women from the meeting he had been in ten minutes ago. They were all dressed in dark designer suits. Bill Wheaton, a pudgy balding man, nodded back then returned his attention to the five gathered around him. They all spoke in hushed tones, all the while referring to the maroon folders in their hands. Embossed on the cover of each folder was a silver cobra, its hood flared and ready to strike.

Scott watched Bill's every movement while he doled out tasks and poked the folder with his index finger. Bill's eyes locked on each member of the assembly when he addressed them. The gleaming marble floor reflected their every move. When the gathering finished, all but one dispersed in smaller groups. Office doors opened and closed in the distance, the buzz that flooded the lobby with their appearance now gone. The mundane click clicking of keyboards and chatter of faint voices somewhere beyond the reception desk was the only sound left.

With the others in Bill's huddle gone, Thomas Andrews crossed the lobby to join Scott. He smiled but the smile hadn't reached his eyes. His eyes held a look of relief.

"Wow, some meeting."

"An excellent result for both sides, though," Scott answered.

"No doubt about that." Thomas led Scott away from the desk. "I'm glad I caught you before you took off. You can't leave Detroit without seeing her."

"I'm sure she's a great ride," Scott replied, his impatience unnoticed by Thomas.

It wasn't that he didn't want to hear what Thomas had to say, he just wanted to get some sun. After spending months preparing this deal and the last two days locked in negotiations, Scott was ready for some relaxation.

"I'm serious, Scott," Thomas continued. "The '69 Charger is in my opinion the best muscle car that Chrysler, or anyone else for that matter, has ever made."

"The Charger is a great car, but most of our clients aren't looking for old muscle cars. They all want flash. They see James Bond driving the newest Aston Martin, and they have to have it yesterday. At Cobra, we find a way to get it for them without waiting in line for a year or two."

"All I'm asking is you see the car. Make a few calls. If you think you have a client interested, drive her to LA. See the country from the ground instead of thirty thousand feet. You said you were due some time off."

Thomas, a tall man with dark blond hair and blue eyes, hadn't made Junior VP of Graphic Design by taking no for an answer and he wasn't going to start. Scott looked short standing next to him, but he could have been one of those guys; the men you see plastered all over the walls of hair salons, deep set dark eyes, chiseled features, flawless complexion, shiny dark hair. They were both handsome, athletic and looked like poster boys for Hugo Boss.

Scott stood listening to Thomas with something less than rapt enthusiasm. His focus repeatedly wandered to Sarah.

Sarah stopped typing and looked up. Scott sent a wink her way and she returned a flirtatious smile.

"What time does your flight leave?" Thomas asked.

"Just before 7:00 am."

"Well, enjoy your afternoon. Tonight if you don't have plans, we can meet for dinner, say sixish. It's on me. I can pick you up in the Charger. We can cruise for a while after dinner. Show you what a cherry ride she is. You have to eat. Right?"

"Sounds good, Thomas. See you at six."

"Awesome."

After Thomas left, Scott returned his attention to Sarah.

"So, about lunch?"

"I can't today. We have a staff meeting. Attendance is mandatory," she said, rolling her eyes. "But I can meet for a drink after work if you want."

"Can't. I just told Thomas I'd meet him for dinner. Can you meet me for drinks after dinner?"

She slid a Post-it across the desk and whispered, "My cell number."

##  Chapter Two

Growing next to the pasture fence on the westbound side of I-80, a large bush was the only green visible in any direction. It stood about seven feet tall and just as big around.

Seated crossed legged in the small patch of shade the bush provided, a young man sipped water from a flask. The small pointed leaves on the bush providing Roger Morris some shelter from the sun hung slightly limp, distressed and thirsting for rain. Roger wore khaki knee-length shorts and a white Aerosmith T-shirt. His short light red hair lay flat on his head. Roger left his home in Vermont three weeks ago, sometimes hiking and other times hitching across the country for the summer. On the ground in front of him lay a large blue backpack. The type of pack the sporting good stores sold to serious hikers, campers and rock climbers.

In July, the late afternoon sun blazed high above the horizon in the heartland. A small sign beside the highway read "York County". The highway cutting through the Nebraska landscape looked like two lines painted on a sheet of plywood, angling slightly inward. In the distance the lines became one and terminated where the ground met the sky. As straight as the edge of a ruler the horizon stretched on in endless monotony. Above the line the sky was completely blue, any clouds that lingered after sunrise long burned off by the scorching rays. Below the line, an endless sea of yellow, sun dried pasture.

There was little to break the boredom of this near barren landscape. The fence poles that stood like sentinels on each side of the highway only accentuated the monotony. There were cattle in the distance. Most were lying down, lethargic from the heat. Cars sped along the interstate at seventy or eighty. It was easy to see how the dotted white line and relentless dull grey strip could be mesmerizing. Weary motorists would not even notice the speedometer climbing until the unwelcome flashing lights of a state trooper brought them out of their mind-numbing trance.

Roger took a sip of water from a flask, replaced the lid and put it in a side pocket of his pack, and then from a different pocket he removed a map of the lower forty-eight. A winding orange line highlighted his route. He put his finger on the line and slowly traced his progress. He had hoped to be at the Grand Canyon by now. Last Friday he had accepted an invitation from a dairy farmer to spend the weekend. Working in the barn, Roger learned more than he ever wanted to know about milk. He didn't need to work his way across the country, he just wanted to see the dairy farm. The journey, not just the destination, was a big part of his planning, so he would get there when he got there, but the canyon remained the main attraction of this trip and he was anxious to see it.

Following the orange line to Vermont, his mood turned melancholy. He missed his family and friends. He allowed his mind to carry him back to the morning he left for this adventure. Millie Morris, Roger's mother, worked out in the garden. Millie spent every morning from Memorial Day to Columbus Day, in the yard gardening. It was an odd shaped yard, almost triangular. Off in a corner separated from the main yard the pool looked almost lonely. A white fence surrounded the house and at its base, flowerbeds exploded in every color, like a scene from Munchkin Land.

Laughter from the house must have grabbed Millie's attention from her garden. She looked up and waved at Roger now standing by the window. With a smile that wasn't completely happy she put her gloves with her gardening tools in a basket at her feet and crossed the yard to the back door.

"Well, it's about time you boys woke up." Millie said walking into the kitchen. "I suppose you're hungry."

"Bacon and eggs sounds good, Ma," Roger replied. He sat at the kitchen table with Ed the morning he left. Ed had been his best friend ever since he could remember.

When she turned to start their breakfast, Ed held his hand up for a high five. She watched their gesture through the corner of her eye, and her lips curled into a knowing smirk. Roger noticed his mother's amusement and gave her a wink, causing that smirk to blossom into a giggle. They played the, "We're just dumb boys" game so many times and they still thought she was clueless.

Roger was startled back to Nebraska when an eighteen-wheeler pulled onto the shoulder of the road in front of him, coming to a stop about fifty yards beyond. The breeze that made the heat tolerable moments before had died off leaving a white dust cloud to linger over the truck, giving it a preternatural eeriness.

He watched the truck, still shrouded in a halo of limestone powder. Cars had little effect on the cloud, but a large red transport hauling a load of cattle passed and the vortex from the big rig speeding by caused the airborne powder to swirl.

A shadow appeared through the dust at the back of the trailer. It came directly toward him. It was a man, his image getting clearer with each step. When the driver emerged from the murk, Roger wondered what the man wanted. It had to be coincidence that this driver picked this spot to stop. Even if the guy could have seen him from the cab of the truck at highway-speed he would've needed a half mile to stop that rig.

When the man got to within ten feet of the bush he began to pull down his fly. Roger decided this was a good time to get up and continue hiking up the road.

The driver jumped and yelled, "Whoa Nellie, you scared the living shit outta me, boy." He wiped his brow with the back of his hand and continued. "Been needin' to piss for about an hour now. Saw that bush from about a mile back an figured it's as good a place as any."

Roger just smiled. "Well, I was just about to leave anyway. I'll never get to the Grand Canyon sitting here daydreaming."

"You figure to walk to the canyon from here, kid?"

"Sometimes I walk, sometimes I hitch."

"Well, yer welcome to ride along with me a ways if ya like. I'm gonna stretch my legs a bit but if ya wanna ride, I could use some conversation."

"Sounds good," Roger replied, and then he looked out to the road and watched a red Grand Prix zip by while the trucker urinated behind the bush.

"Name's Pete," the man said emerging from behind the bush holding out a hand to Roger. He faced Roger with his arm extended and offered a smile that was both friendly and disarming.

Roger didn't want to be rude but shaking Pete's hand after what he had just shaken was out of the question. While reaching down for his pack he told Pete his name and thanked him for the ride.

Pete laughed a bit looking at his outstretched hand. In a southern drawl he said, "Can't say as I blame ya there. I wouldn't shake my hand right now either." He reached into his pocket, took out a small plastic bottle and squeezed some waterless hand cleanser into his palm. He rubbed his hands together vigorously, as if he were standing at the sink of the men's room. "Great invention these," he added, holding up the bottle for Roger to see. "Ya never know, with all them stories on the news about SARS and swine flu and bird flu, I always got one of these." He put the small container back in his pocket, "Birds and pigs, damn and shit, eh kid? Who'da thought we'd be catching flu-bugs from critters?"

Pete motioned toward his truck. "Been sittin' in that thing for six hours. My ass is about to go numb."

They both laughed and Roger extended his hand, "Roger Morris. Where are you headed?"

"Salt Lake City. Gotta load of Pringles on board."

Roger looked over at the truck. The dust cloud had moved out over the field. The man with the mustache that adorned every can of Pringles looked back at him. Only this Mr. Pringle was bigger than a horse.

Pete wandered around in the grass, "This heat is something eh, Rog?"

"Sure is."

"I tell ya, son, when this run's over I am gonna take a few days and sit in my chair with the AC blowin' right on me." Pete looked at his new companion, staring at the western horizon with a forlorn expression. "That canyon ain't goin' no place, Rog. You'll be there soon enough."

"It's not that. I like to look at the land. It's so different from Vermont. Have you been to Vermont, Pete?"

"I've been to every state in the nation. Except Hawaii. If I can't drive somewhere, then I ain't goin'. You never catch me in one of those planes, no sir."

The older man talked constantly. When he wasn't talking about himself he pumped Roger for personal information. Roger tried not to be too forthcoming. He had spent enough time in chat rooms on his computer to be cautious about giving too much detail, but Pete had a way of putting him at ease.

##  Chapter Three

Outside, the din of the city came as a welcome change to the numbing silence of the office tower. The heat however was stifling. Scott struggled with his computer and briefcase while trying to remove his jacket. He slung the garment over his shoulder. His mood soared. He took a deep breath of the stale, Motor City air. Not even the midday Detroit smog could diminish his euphoria. His accomplishment would be unparalleled at Cobra Exotics. Add to that, he could finally take a week or two to relax. Relax and bask in the pleasure of that knowledge.

His eyes followed a blonde wearing tight shorts until she disappeared from sight, then he turned and walked directly into someone. He gave a halfhearted apology, not bothering to see whom he had bumped into, not until the odor registered in his brain. It was the scent of decay, of mold or old newspapers decomposing in a wet basement. It was stink, to an infinite degree.

He looked at the dirtiest human he had ever seen. The man wore soiled jeans that were more charcoal gray than blue, and a gray overcoat. The overcoat in the heat of midsummer looked out of place. His greasy hair hung over his ears and had definitely not seen a comb in ages. His unshaven face had deep creases, hollow cheeks and jaundiced looking eyes.

The bum held out his grimy hand, "Spare some change?"

Scott sidestepped the vagrant without acknowledging him and made to stride by. His progress halted when a hand firmly grasped his arm just above the elbow. His anger boiled over as he spun around and met the piercing stare of the panhandler.

"You were there, I saw you run," the hobo said.

"Get the fuck away from me," Scott muttered jerking his arm free. His anger had abated, replaced by fear. He didn't know why he feared this man. He had no idea what the man meant by his accusation. Nevertheless, Scott saw something in those eyes that scared him.

"You didn't see her face," the bum said, his wide-eyed gaze drilling through the younger man standing before him. "I still see her face."

"Just fuck off," Scott croaked.

"Okie-dokie," the bum replied. He cocked his finger like a gun and clicked his tongue while pulling an imaginary trigger. Without another word or even a second look, the bum walked away and in moments faded into the pedestrian throng.

Scott brushed the sleeve of his shirt where the filthy hand had been as though he could simply whisk the whole encounter away. The man's face, those eyes were burned into the backs of Scott's eyes and he squeezed them shut in an attempt to banish the image. He couldn't fathom a soul beneath that repulsive exterior. He didn't really consider him a person. It was a thing, just street vermin. They should exterminate it with the rest of the creatures prowling the streets and alleys. A few steps along the sidewalk in the opposite direction, he stopped to look back over his shoulder. Scott felt the need to make sure the bum was gone.

He resumed his walk and put the incident out of his mind. This was the beginning of his vacation and he wasn't going to let one unpleasant altercation ruin his day. The only thing he needed to concern himself with was what to do next.

It was much too early in the day to go sit in a hotel room. He couldn't imagine himself watching Oprah, or Ellen, or Jerry Springer. He had no idea what people watched at this time of day. If he were in LA, he would be in the office, or meeting with a client. He wouldn't be watching TV. Before he got to the end of the block his shirt clung to his skin, damp with perspiration. Sweat beaded his face and stung his eyes. He needed to get out of the suit.

In his room, Scott immediately set up his laptop, then changed into shorts and a golf shirt while his computer booted. He sent emails to the office indicating the deal went much better than expected. After checking his voice-mail messages, he hit the street again.

He had lunch on the patio of Antonio's Pasta House, a place plucked right out of a World War II movie. It had small circular tables with red and white checkered tablecloths on the sidewalk in front. The waitress wore a knee-length skirt and a white apron, her long dark hair tied back in a ponytail. She wasn't pretty, but with the right makeup and lighting he thought she could look okay.

Relaxing with a glass of iced tea after lunch, he recognized the same foul smelling bum he'd bumped into earlier, now standing across the street. When the man saw Scott look at him, a yellow smile riddled with gaps noticeable across the fifty-yard separation added to his unsightly appearance. The bum again pointed his finger like a gun, winked, then trundled up the sidewalk and out of sight.

Nevada Bob's was Scott's next stop. He hadn't planned to shop for golf equipment, but his eyes lit up when he walked by and he couldn't resist going in. To reward himself for finalizing the deal of the decade for Cobra Exotics and to cap off the whole trip, he decided to treat himself to a new set of golf clubs. He spent about an hour hitting balls into a net. He tried every brand of clubs in the store. In the end, he went with the King Cobras of course.

He had been in his room just long enough to shower and dress, when the phone rang. The clock radio by the bed showed five fifty-one. He couldn't help being amused by Thomas' punctuality.

He picked up after the second ring. "Hello!"

A woman replied, "Mr. Randall, this is the front desk, you have a visitor in the lobby."

"Tell him I'll be right down."

He made one last check in the mirror. He pulled a loose thread from his pressed taupe Dockers and brushed the sleeves of his navy-blue golf shirt as if to remove lint. Satisfied with his appearance he left the room.

In the lobby, he immediately spotted Sarah.

"Hi Scott."

She still wore the pinstriped suit she had on at the office. The way he ogled her it was obvious he noticed the camisole she wore under the jacket earlier was no longer there. Her heels made her about the same height as Scott. Not that he noticed. He focused on the fabric of the jacket. The way it formed to her breasts.

"Well this is a pleasant surprise. Will you be joining us for dinner?"

Holding her purse to her bosom, Sarah smiled politely, reached into the bag and handed him an envelope. "Thomas asked me to bring this over for you."

When he tore it open two keys fell onto the floor. He picked them up recognizing the Pentastar engraved on them. They were Chrysler keys and had to be for the Charger.

There was also a note in the envelope.

Scott,

Sorry I can't make dinner. Emergency came up. Enjoy the Charger tonight, it's in the hotel parking garage. Call me on my cell if you are interested. If not leave the keys with the hotel front desk. The documentation for the entire restoration is in the glove box. There is a reservation in my name at Pierre's on the Avenue for six-thirty. The desk clerk at the Hotel can give you directions. Have a great meal; the bill is taken care of. If I don't hear from you tonight I'll talk to you next week.

Thomas.

p.s. Sarah volunteered to deliver this. I'm sure she'd be happy to join you for dinner.

Scott folded the letter and put it in his back pocket. He looked at Sarah and said, "So I guess we can get an early start on those drinks."

Frowning, she said "I really can't. Something came up just as I was leaving the office to come here and I have to get home. Enjoy the rest of your stay." She turned and began to walk toward the revolving doors that opened on Woodward Avenue.

More on reflex than actual thought Scott called out, "Sarah." She stopped, turned, but she didn't walk back to him. Scott ate her up with his eyes as he made his way to her, hoping she wouldn't see the eagerness in his gaze.

When he drew near, he saw her demeanor change. A defensive stare replaced her warm smile. She stood with her arms folded in front of her. She clearly wanted to leave.

"Listen," Scott said. "I was supposed to go to dinner with Thomas tonight."

Sarah shifted her weight back on her heels, her eyes not quite meeting his. She had the look of a woman resisting a sales pitch for a used car.

He softened his voice, "He's made reservations at a place called Pierre's on the Avenue. Do you know it?"

"Yes, we have a lot of client dinner meetings there. It's very nice, I'm sure you'll enjoy it." She answered with confident proficiency. Arranging for client dinners must be right in her wheelhouse. She seemed to relax, as though she were back at the office dealing with a mundane task to assist a client.

Scott studied her for a moment trying to get a read. They had an enjoyable lunch yesterday and this morning she seemed open to a late drink. Now she was acting distant.

"Yes, I'm sure it's very nice but it would be infinitely nicer if you would join me."

"I really can't," she said.

Her words left no room for interpretation, but her eyes responded to his compliment. Sensing victory Scott put on his best lost-puppy expression and threw another pitch.

"Listen, I've been eating alone in my room the past two nights. I would really appreciate some company. Besides that, you would get a great dinner on the company's dime. Then if you're not sick of me after we finish dessert we can go out in Thomas' Charger and drive the shit out of it. That'll teach the prick for standing me up. Come on, what do you say?"

"Okay, I guess I could have dinner." Her eyes warmed a bit at hearing the way he referred to Thomas, but it was no more than a glance shared between strangers passing on the street. He could see that her mind was definitely somewhere else.

"Excellent!" Scott said. "Do I need a jacket at Pierre's?"

She nodded.

"Shit, do you want to wait here while I go up and get one?" To his surprise, she started toward the elevator.

They said nothing on the ride up to the seventeenth floor. Just stood there like strangers, Scott thinking things were looking quite good for some after dinner frolics. Sarah stepped out first and he followed, watching her ass while she walked down the hall.

"Just there on the right," he said.

He pulled a jacket from the closet and swung it over his shoulder, "Okay, let's go."

Read the rest of _THE NIGHTCRAWLER_ now!
Eternal life... just bring them to me!

Skinner

Copyright © 2016 by David Bernstein

The sky was ominous and dark, like a crinkled piece of carbon paper. There hadn't been a storm in the forecast. Golf-ball-sized snowflakes were coming down as if a pillow fight were taking place in the heavens above. The blacktop had disappeared a few miles back, replaced by a sheet of deepening powder. The surrounding forest—consisting mostly of pine trees, bear oaks and maples—was blanketed in what seemed like a continuous sheet of white. Needle-lined branches were weighed down, hanging low like the shoulders of depressed mental patients.

"I think we should turn around," Aria said, gripping the passenger-side door handle. She had a round face, full lips, beautiful piercing blue eyes and auburn-colored hair that shined with radiance every time she moved her head.

"Are you nuts?" Mark asked from the middle row of seats. He put his arm around Sara, his girlfriend of two years. "I've been promising my baby a weekend away for some time. Used half my vacation time for this trip."

"We'll be fine," Rob said, patting the Jeep Commander's steering wheel. "This bad boy was made for weather like this."

From the third row of seats and sitting next to his girlfriend, Spencer, Jeff said, "Yeah, who knows when Rob's boss will let him use the cottage again."

Rob glanced in the rearview mirror at his lanky, redheaded friend. "Are you saying I've peaked?"

"Let's hope not," Jeff said. "But it'll probably be a while before you close another client like Wellman. You have to admit, you got lucky landing him."

"Luck had nothing to do with it," Rob said. "I pursued that whale for two weeks. Hard work and determination were the things that got the deal done. I'm a born closer, you'll see."

"Stockbrokers are nothing more than excellent voice actors," Jeff said. "At least the really good ones. You scumbags don't really know what's going to happen. You call people up, read from a pitch sheet, get them all excited about it, sound busy and convince those rich assholes to take a chance at being part of the next big thing so they can brag to their buddies how they have this killer broker who made them rich or got them in on some hot deal."

"Like selling real estate isn't a scumbag operation at times," Rob said. "I know how you hide a house's faults, covering shit up like noisy neighbors, rot and termites."

"Still, I'm not swindling millions out of people," Jeff said, "and bragging like I knew what I was doing."

"Keep thinking that, Jeff my boy," Rob said. "I'll admit, there are some unqualified people at the firm that don't know a thing about the market. And yes, they basically read from a script, but I'm not one of them. I've got an eye for stocks. I investigate and do research. My performance speaks for itself. I was right about Indek Industries because I know my shit. It's what's going to make me partner one day."

"Twenty-five and he's already thinking about making partner," Jeff said.

"I plan to do it by thirty and become a multimillionaire by thirty-five, give or take a year."

Aria slid her fingers through Rob's thick, dirty blond hair and massaged his head, her newly acquired engagement ring rubbing hard against his scalp. "That's right, babe. Don't listen to the doubters. You can do whatever you want. I have confidence in you. But right now, I need to have confidence in your driving, so keep your concentration on the road or I'll rip that rearview mirror right off."

"Yes, ma'am," Rob said.

As the SUV ascended the winding mountain road, the blizzard intensified. The flakes were coming down more rapidly, the snow heavier. Visibility was reduced to no more than a few feet. Rob slowed the vehicle to a paltry ten miles an hour. The Jeep's four-wheel drive was being put to the test.

Truth be told, he was beginning to worry. There had been no word of a storm on the news. When the flakes first began, he thought it was a passing storm, the equivalent of a sun shower. But it hadn't let up and had gotten much worse. He'd never seen snow accumulate so quickly. Thank goodness they had the Jeep or they might've had to cancel the trip. But he figured as long as he drove slowly, they'd be fine. He glanced at Aria.

She looked as stiff as a corpse in rigor mortis. Worry lines creased the corners of her mouth like rivers on a map. Her eyes stared through the windshield, unblinking. She hadn't let go of the handle since the roads had gotten dangerous. Her state did little to calm him, and in fact was making him more nervous. He needed her to loosen up a little. The Jeep's passengers' lives were all in his hands.

"We're practically crawling through the snow," he said, and rubbed Aria's arm tenderly, hoping to convey tranquility through his words and bodily contact.

Instead, she tensed, then she grabbed his hand and forcefully guided it back to the steering wheel. "Two hands on the wheel, please."

Rob wanted to laugh, partly from Aria's reaction, but also from the nervous feeling he had in his gut. "We're fine. This thing's heavy as hell and has four-wheel drive with all sorts of traction-control crap, so relax. We aren't going anywhere but to my boss's bungalow."

"Okay, just get us off this mountain in one piece and I'll do all the relaxing you want."

Rob glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Jeff leaning against the window with his eyes closed. Spencer rested against him, her head on his shoulder. He wasn't sure if they had fallen asleep, the couple having just been awake minutes ago, but he was grateful. Their ability to relax set his mind at ease.

Spencer was pretty, but not beautiful. She had soft-looking dark eyes and long, flowing silky brown hair. Her angular face and pronounced cheekbones went along with her thin lips and skinny frame, save for her recently enhanced chest, which, according to her, gave her figure some much-needed shape. She'd made sure to reveal her "girls"—as she called them— to everyone she came across, whether male or female, at the time.

Mark and Sara sat snuggled together, Sara's bleach-blonde hair mixed with his shoulder-length coffee-colored locks. They were watching something on her iPad and sharing headphones, both with grins on their faces.

Again, Rob thought about turning the Jeep around, heading back to the Lake George area and waiting for the storm to pass. They could stay at a motel where they'd be safe and warm, and then head out early the next day. But going back might be as dangerous as pushing onward, for they were double-digit miles from anywhere in either direction. So he kept on.

Every so often, they passed a pull-off area—flat ground where vehicles could park and people could stretch their legs or rest. He thought about stopping at the next one he came across. They could all sit for a spell and wait for the storm to let up, but the way the snow was coming down, he guessed they'd wind up sleeping in the Jeep all night. No one would want to lose an evening at the house. It wasn't like there was much farther to go, at least when it came to getting over the mountain. From there, it would take maybe an hour or so—depending on the weather—to reach their destination. Maybe the storm hadn't even breached the mountaintop, and the clouds were only emptying themselves out so they could get over the rocky protrusion. If that was the case, they could easily outrun the storm.

Thinking about how remote the area was made Rob's gut queasy. If anything happened to the Jeep, a skid-out or engine trouble, they'd be stranded. He was so used to being in populated towns and neighborhoods, seeing people out and about at all hours and where there was a gas station or some other place of business on every block. Up in the mountains the world was so different, so solitary. The last thing resembling civilization had been a dilapidated old gas station that sat a few miles before the mountain. A sign reading _Last Chance for Gas_ was plastered on the side of the establishment. The only person there had been a creepy old man, who Rob guessed was the owner. He felt his flesh ripple into goose bumps just thinking about the guy.

*****

The Jeep's gas gauge had read a quarter tank when the mountain loomed in the distance. He couldn't believe he'd forgotten to fill up when they were on the thruway, but no one else had said anything either. That's when he saw the run-down gas station. The scene oozed 1980s horror flick, with its faded gas sign flapping in the wind and the battered pickup truck that sat off to the side. A number of paint-faded and rust-spotted old cars—shells mostly—and a large broken-down farm tractor were tangled with overgrown brush, as if one day they'd simply be pulled into the earth and forgotten.

Rob wanted to keep going until he found a better looking place, a _named_ place like a Mobil or Sunoco station, where the gasoline hadn't been in the tank since the establishment's creation. But when he asked Mark if there were any other gas stations nearby, his friend said there was nothing around for miles. "To be honest, I don't remember this place being here. And I've traveled this road for the past fifteen years every fall. But hell, we might as well fill up. Gas is gas."

Rob pulled into the station. The gas pumps were stout and rounded along the top. There were no digital screens, only turn-style numbers like something from the 1950s. There were no _Pay Before You Pump_ stickers either, the notices something he'd grown used to seeing nowadays. He decided to put sixty dollars' worth of high-test in the Jeep, surprised to have the option at such a place. While he pumped, the numbers clicked when they changed and every gallon was met with a ding.

The station's interior smelled musty and dank, cave-like. The air was stale as if neither a door nor window had been opened in decades. The floorboards were warped as if they'd been underwater at some point, and creaked with every step. The spaces between the wood planks were caked with grime. A soda machine rested next to the counter, humming loudly like it was on its last legs. A row of candy bars sat below the counter in a metal rack, the wrappers lined with a lint-like sheet of dust. But the most disturbing thing about the place was the numerous wolf pelts—heads attached—that covered almost every inch of the walls and ceiling. Every snout was a frozen snarl and the canine teeth were bared. The dead beasts' eyes had an eerie life to them that sent shivers down Rob's spine and made the flesh along his forearms ripple into goose bumps.

"Man, this place is..." Spencer began, holding her manicured hands to her chest.

"Incredible," Mark said, finishing her sentence. His mouth hung open, his eyes taking it all in like a kid in a candy store. At six feet three inches, two hundred twenty pounds, he towered over everyone. His bushy long hair and full beard made him an even more imposing figure.

"Of course you'd say that," Spencer said. "But this is too much, even for a hunter like you."

"They can't all be real, can they?" Rob asked, walking up to a pelt and studying the head.

"Yes, they are all real," said a scratchy, high-pitched voice.

Rob turned and saw an elderly man standing behind the counter. A wolf's pelt was draped over him, the dead creature's head resting atop his own like a Davy Crocket coonskin hat. It wasn't a single coat though but appeared to be a patchwork of various pelts, each a different color. The garment was gorgeous and had been woven together with incredible skill.

The man had a long, narrow face. His skin was weathered and cracked with numerous wrinkles, reminding Rob of worn leather. Stringy white hair hung past his shoulders. The man's jowls wiggled like melted rubber as he glanced with eager-looking eyes from person to person. He looked to be pushing ninety, except for the eyes, which had life in them.

A smile broke over the man's face, and Rob thought he saw shark-like teeth, but then he blinked and saw that they were the yellow-stained, rotted teeth of a person who hadn't seen a dentist in years.

"Are these all yours?" Mark asked, still looking around in amazement.

"Mostly, but if I'm being honest, I had some help with a few," the old man said.

Rob approached the old man and placed three twenty-dollar bills on the counter. The air had a coppery scent to it now. The old man reached out with a shaky, red-stained skeletal hand—the fingernails cracked and long—and snatched up the cash. Looking past the old-timer and through a doorway, Rob saw a workbench and what appeared to be the remains of an animal upon it. Chunks of meat and body parts—intestines, bones, a heart and kidneys, among other things—littered the table. Knives of various shapes and sizes lay scattered about, all of them covered in blood. A wolf's pelt was drying on a rack, the floor below it dotted with crimson.

"Will that be all?" the man asked, cocking his head.

"Y—yes," Rob said. "That's it." He turned around and saw the rest of the group waiting by the door, save for Mark, who was still admiring the pelts, ever rubbing his hands over them.

Rob waited for Mark at the exit as the others went back to the Jeep.

"Be careful going over the mountain," the old man said. "Storm's coming."

Rob's eyebrows came together. "Storm? I kept an eye on the weather all week. There isn't a storm in the forecast."

"Them city folk with their fancy equipment," the old man said, shaking his head as if disappointed. "Always relying on machines to give them answers, to predict the future." The old man spat. "I feel it in my bones, boy. Storm's coming. Going to be a nasty one, too."

*****

At the time, Rob thought the old man was a crazy old coot and probably drunk on moonshine or some other kind of homemade booze. But now, driving in this horrible weather, he knew the old-timer had been spot on.

"Is this weather ever going to end?" Aria asked. He opened his mouth to answer, but said nothing, not knowing what to say.

"It should lessen when we reach the top of the mountain," Mark said. "The clouds are dumping whatever moisture they have in them so they can get over the peak. The other side should be clear."

Rob had thought the same thing, but hearing it from Mark made him feel better. Soon, they'd be in the clear.

"I hope so," Aria said. "This is getting ridiculous."

"Might not even be any snow on the other side," Mark said. "Just have to wait and see."

Rob silently hoped his friend was right.

If anyone knew winter weather patterns, it was Mark. Besides having spent hundreds of hours outdoor as a cable repairman, and now as a roofer, Mark had been an avid hunter since the age of twelve. He traveled backcountry roads all the time—including the one they were currently on—going on hunting trips with his father and uncle were a regular event. Mark hadn't missed a season yet. He was hard-core and had spent overnights in frigid weather almost every year. Though he grew up on Long Island, New York, his family was originally from the upper part of Vermont, where most of his relatives still resided.

Ten minutes after Mark's statement, the road leveled out. They had reached the top of the mountain and were now traveling along, more or less, even ground, though the road twisted and turned like a snake's trail.

Rob took the turns slowly, making them much less treacherous. The snow had let up a little, though it was still coming down and the pavement was covered.

Rob guessed either Mark was right or they had simply gotten ahead of the storm. Regardless, he was able to relax a bit, but not completely, thanks to the steep slope of earth off to his left. A wrong move could prove deadly. The mountain was full of numerous peaks and valleys throughout. Whoever had originally carved out the one-lane thoroughfare had decided circumventing the rock was the easiest course, making for a winding road. If he lost control—took a turn too fast or hit a slippery patch—a tumbling down they all would go.

There hadn't been another vehicle on the road since they'd left the gas station. There were no other tire tracks in the road save for the ones the Jeep left behind. The darkness crept in around them, seeming to overpower the bright headlights, as if it were devouring the illumination.

Rob and the others were pioneers, blazing a fresh trail across the uninhabited wilderness. He wondered how in the hell people traveled these parts before there were paved roads and motorized vehicles with four-wheel drive. But people had. Families in horse-drawn carriages, with their life's belongings piled beside them, had made their way over the mountain despite the weather. Some had likely died along the way, Rob guessed, but most survived. And back then, the roads were uneven, rut-laden dirt paths. It seemed remarkable to him and showed how resilient the human spirit could be. He felt silly for being scared and wondered what someone from the horse-and-buggy era would think of him.

They'd laugh at him, he thought, and jump at the chance to travel in such luxury. A smile formed across his face. If those people could do it, then there was no reason to think he and his four-wheel-drive vehicle would have any trouble. As long as he paid attention and drove relatively slowly, they'd all arrive at the house in fine spirits and in one piece.

"I need to stretch my legs," Sara whined. "There's nowhere to pull over, babe," Mark said.

"And I doubt you'd want to get out in this weather anyway."

"We should keep moving," Rob said. "I want to get farther ahead of this storm."

"Ahead?" Aria asked. "Looks like we're still in it."

"Well, yeah, but it's not snowing as heavily here. My guess: we'll soon be out in front of it and have a clear path to travel."

"Sorry, Sara," Aria said, turning back to face her. "But we ain't stopping."

"Bitch," Sara joked.

An overly loud and obnoxious howling erupted from the rear of the SUV. Rob, along with everyone else, knew Jeff had awoken. "Damn, I've got to pee," Jeff said.

Rob felt the back of his seat get kicked. He glanced in the rearview and caught Mark's stare. The two exchanged a silent conversation, Rob letting Mark know he understood how annoying Jeff could be and how he appreciated his patience.

Jeff often got on Mark's nerves. The two men were opposites when it came to their chemistry. Jeff was the quintessential funny man, while Mark was the serious, no-nonsense kind of guy. With the two men stuck in a car for hours on end, Rob knew tensions would be high for all, but multiplied by ten for Mark. The only one who seemed okay with Jeff was Sara. She always got along with the guy and laughed at his jokes, which only further annoyed Mark.

Even though Mark and Jeff were not the best of friends, they did manage to coexist and even get along on occasion—especially when not locked in a small space for long—because of their mutual friendship with Rob.

Jeff had been friends with Rob since elementary school. Mark and Rob met when Rob joined the football team in high school, Rob eventually becoming the quarterback. Mark was an offensive lineman, always protecting his ass. For Rob's sake, Mark accepted Jeff and all that came along with him, though at times, their conversations became heated, especially when alcohol was involved.

"Well, we aren't stopping," Mark said, smiling and sounding pleased, and probably hoping Jeff pissed himself.

"Sorry, man," Rob said. "We'll stop as soon as we can."

"Okay, guess I'll hold it or explode over everyone's luggage."

_Ewwws_ and a _that's gross_ broke out among the passengers, Sara the only one laughing.

The click of a seat belt being unbuckled sounded, and then Rob's arm—both hands supposed to be on the steering wheel—was shoved off the armrest. He looked down to see Sara's heart-decorated, sock-covered feet. She had crossed her legs at the ankles. He glanced into the rearview mirror and caught her grinning face. She was slouched down, as if lounging on a couch at home.

"Sorry, Rob," she said and winked, "but this girl's got to stretch her legs."

"As long as you're comfortable," he said.

He didn't like that she wasn't belted in, especially tonight. But it was better than hearing her whine and complain, which she could do exceedingly well.

"Very much—"

"Watch out!" Aria screamed, her words overpowering Sara's.

Rob's attention shot back to the view ahead. An old man was standing in the middle of the road, draped in an animal pelt. Their eyes met. Recognition dawned. It was the old man from the gas station. The eyes on the wolf's head flashed a bright yellow. The man grinned and Rob could've sworn he saw canine teeth. Knowing he'd never stop in time, he yanked the steering wheel to go around the old man. The Jeep went left. Cries of fright broke out as the passengers were jerked to the right. Rob tried to correct the vehicle's path, but the back end lost traction. The Jeep slid sideways, fishtailing. Rob hit the gas pedal, hoping the tires would catch and the SUV would shoot forward, but the tires only spun. He had no idea where the old man had gone and was afraid he'd hit him. But there had been no impact—at least that he'd felt.

The vehicle continued to slide before it came to a jolting stop at the road's edge as it smashed into a copse of skeletal-looking trees. Rob was slammed into the door's armrest, the seat belt keeping his head from hitting the glass. Then everything went still. The vehicle was at a slight angle. He exhaled, thinking they'd all be okay. It was just a skid-out, no damage. The worst case meant they'd have to dig themselves out if the four-wheel drive didn't do its thing.

Then something gave. The Jeep shifted.

The sound of wood splintering filled the air as the trees gave way under the vehicle's weight.

Screams broke out as the SUV tilted at a sharper angle, as if the ground had given out. A moment later, it went over the edge and began its tumble down the mountain.
Coming September 28, 2018

What kind of demons await you tonight?

For Richie, life's constant cheap shots are adding up. When he finds something is watching him, he never dreamed that it would show him everything that ever wanted.

When his son, James, comes to stay for the last month of summer, the changes in his father's behavior come to the forefront. What is his father doing staring into the window in the middle of the night?  
Was the fiery spark in the dark real? Or is James's imagination getting the best of him?

Summer's almost over.  
And life is about to change.  
Can James save his father? Or is it already too late?

The Window holds the answers...and the key.

The new and terrifying novel from Glenn Rolfe, author of _LAND OF BONES_ and _BECOMING_
