Tag: Short Story

Halloween Extravaganza: C. Derick Miller: STORY: Diary of the Wolf

megHan

If you have not experienced any of C. Derick Miller’s works, this is a great opportunity to do so. Quite an interesting story indeed.

October 31st, 2019

To the finder of this diary, Happy Halloween! If you’re reading this, then you’ve managed to survive the carnage which will probably be taking place over the next few hours. I am leaving this diary to explain things. A confession, if you will. I seriously doubt I will live long enough to explain it in person. My name is Baxter and I am a werewolf. This is my story.

I figured Central Park would be the best place to finish this entry. When the time comes, there won’t be too many people around for my killing spree, but in this “city that never sleeps”, it’ll be just enough to get the attention of the New York Police Department. They should put an end to this once and for all. Let’s just think of those few, helpless victims as casualties of war. That is the perfect way to describe this curse. The inner beast is winning the battle over my humanity and it’s time to bring in some outside help. I’m sorry this is the way it must be. I’ve found no other solution.

I always wanted to see New York City before I died. It’s everything I ever imagined. Getting off the bus at Port Authority and Times Square was breathtaking. The sounds, the smells, and the fast-paced lives of people fighting for position on the sidewalk were enough to make me want to cry. After diving down the closest subway tunnel, I stood there amongst the locals and observed their frantic way of life from a distance. The ancient scents coming from the tunnels were overpowering, especially to me. Unfortunately, I couldn’t explore them without drawing attention to myself. Instead, I hopped the train two stations down and landed at the gateway of Columbus Circle. If there was a way of avoiding this plan, I could see myself living here forever.

I’m skipping a bit due to excitement and overwhelming awe, not to mention the nostalgia from every television show and movie I’ve seen since childhood. If you, kind reader, are a New Yorker, I’m sure you no longer get this sensation daily. I weep for you. I’m sitting on a bench next to the Alice in Wonderland statue. Even though I am not facing it, I am excited by the sounds of children’s laughter as they climb all over it. There is a cool breeze blowing from the pond nearby and a dozen remote-controlled boats are riding the choppy waters. The scent of money on Park Avenue is what brought me to this exact spot, though. When it all comes to a head, I can only hope I take a few of them out before I’m gunned down like an old west bandit. They’re evil people, more so than I, and a shake-up of their lifestyle is long overdue. Oh, my dearest reader, I pray one of those destined victims isn’t someone near and dear to you. If so, you have my sincerest sympathies.

This all began exactly a year ago just before I separated myself from military service. Still a little on edge from an extensive tour in Afghanistan, I was ordered to live out the remainder of my Army days in the quiet confines of Fort Huachuca, Arizona. Not being the type of person who frequents the bars and malls of the nearby city, I would take long journeys into the Huachuca Mountains to explore ancient caves and abandoned mineshafts. For the sake of my sanity, I would go alone to quiet the nightmares of battle which still haunt me to this day.

A month passed and my wife and two daughters finally arrived at our new home. They were staying with her family in Texas. During my deployment, they preferred the familiarity and comfort of her parent’s home over living alone on the military base and hearing horror stories from returning soldiers. Seeing the truckloads of flag-draped caskets unloaded from cargo planes daily was something my wife and I didn’t want our children to witness. If I hadn’t been so desensitized by the military brainwashing I received during my initial training, it would’ve shaken me as well. In my opinion, the battles of those misguided souls had ended. When their energy reached the unknown of the great beyond, they no longer had to fight against an enemy hidden around every corner. It is a tough life but I somehow survived. God bless those men and women who endure the haunts of battle. It never seems to end, and you can’t run from it.

The more I tried to play the role of ‘father of the year’ while bouncing children on my knees and keeping the lawn looking green, the more I wished for solitude. My thrashing around from night terrors and waking up in pools of sweat was causing a wedge between me and my beloved. There was no way for her to understand what I’d been through and I wasn’t willing to take the time to explain every gory detail. She was better off not knowing. Besides, most of those experiences can’t be put into words easily comprehendible to someone who’s never witnessed a child being blown to pieces by the bomb strapped to his back. How do you tell an angel about the time you forced a bullet into a beautiful, young woman’s head just because your superior officer ordered it? The fact that Heaven will detain me at its gates due to what I’m about to do in this park doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Heaven barred me from entrance long ago because of my wartime actions, I’m certain. No big loss, right?

When I reached the point when I could no longer take any more, I packed a week’s supply of food, a lightweight tent, and disappeared into the wilderness. I told my family it was the only way I could cure myself before I chased them all away forever. My darling wife agreed without argument. It was almost like she was pushing me out of the house. I didn’t pick up on the red flag. I took off into the darkness without a second thought. This journey would soon become the undoing of all I held precious.

On the third night of my sabbatical, a famous Arizona monsoon swept through the mountains. As the trodden pathways became waterfalls, my tent and gear were washed away, and I was forced to seek shelter in one of the abandoned mineshafts which litter the mountainside. That was when our paths first crossed

The largest wolf I’d ever encountered in the wild stood before me in the shaft. He’d obviously had the same idea regarding shelter. He stood his ground at the entrance of the tunnel allowing me no escape. As the seconds ticked by like hours, I mentally pleaded for him to flee in the opposite direction. It was all I could do because I was too frightened to speak. The wolf proved quickly that he couldn’t read minds. Like lightning, he attacked me. As I fought for my life, I began to realize that I was losing the battle. He soon overpowered me, and my struggle and troubles of this world would be nothing but memories in the minds of those unfortunate enough to remember my presence. Suddenly, the fighting stopped. He stared at me with a satisfied grin across his canine face and left the tunnel. As I braved the storm, I bled profusely on the ground, mixing red into the collected puddles of rainwater along the mountain pathway. My vision faded in and out, but I could see his eyes in the darkened distance. I wasn’t sure if he was following to finish the job or escorting me toward my oblivion. Regardless, I lost consciousness near my vehicle parked on a nearby road. I was certain it was the end.

I awoke the next morning in the Huachuca soldiers’ hospital attached to machines forcing life into my tattered body. To the amazement of the medical professionals surrounding me, my wounds had mysteriously healed in the night. There were no signs of the attack or the struggle with the wolf I’d met in the tunnel making the experience seem more like a bad dream than an actual event. I was treated for exposure to the elements and released to return to duty. I headed home.

Over the next few days, I spent every spare moment visiting the campsite but never found any signs of my belongings, blood, or the wolf. Not believing I had imagined it all, I accepted the fact the monsoon had washed it all downhill and I would never receive the answers I sought regarding our fateful meeting. I returned to my home earlier than expected and witnessed what is possibly the worst vision a man can endure. It made the experience of war seem trivial in my already troubled mind.

I stood in the doorway of my bedroom for an eternity before I realized I was no longer a mere human being. I never saw his face as I patiently waited for him to finish what he was doing. With each thrust of his lower body hidden by the blankets, the sanctity of my marriage was erased. Although I couldn’t be seen in the darkness, my vision was becoming clearer as my anger intensified. She gripped the unknown man tighter as her eyes rolled slowly upward into her head. That was the moment when everything disappeared. I have no recollection of the events which followed on that evening other than what I discovered the next morning. The pieces of the puzzle I’d left for myself were easy enough to put together.

I slaughtered the two of them before either knew what happened. The blood-spattered walls led me to believe it wasn’t a gentle passing. Although the man had been mutilated beyond recognition, my wife’s face was still intact. Oddly enough, her frozen expression was one of surprise and it showed none of the pleasure she emoted prior to my initial transformation. I was blanketed with an odd sort of satisfaction until I discovered both my daughters in the next room. Their lifeless bodies showed no signs of struggle as though they’d been taken while sleeping. A single slash to each of their throats and a spray of blood on the nearest wall was all the evidence I needed. My life was forever changed. I grabbed what little clothing and food I could carry and headed once again into the mountains on foot. I knew once the military discovered the horror on Jeffords Street, everyone would be on the lookout. A supernatural fit of rage had reduced me from a decorated soldier to a murderer over the course of one evening. I didn’t even have time to shed a tear for the loss of my loved ones on that fateful day. Almost a year later, I still haven’t.

For weeks, I searched for the wolf who introduced me to this hell and didn’t bother leaving me a copy of the rule book. Changing night after night in the forest, I knew I’d perfected the art of hunting because I never woke feeling hunger. As a matter of fact, I never felt hunger for traditional foods again. My basic human needs were being met upon the arrival of the moon by a monster I couldn’t control. It wasn’t long before the taste of wild game could no longer satisfy the animal who controlled my destiny.

I began waking morning after morning closer to the gates of the military base. Finally, I came to my senses in the living room of an officer’s house surrounded by a horror similar to the one I’d experienced in my own home. Luckily, this man was single and lived alone. He was the only human casualty on that visit, but his rank and stature within the military would bring the authorities down hard and my chances of survival were slim against their numbers and power. For the sake of survival, I ran as far away as I could. I knew my wooded sanctuary would soon be crawling with soldiers in search of the cold-blooded killer who brutally murdered one of their own. I took to the highways, changing my appearance and mannerisms with each town I visited.

I discovered that truck stops were an easy place to obtain what was needed to continue my freedom. During daylight, I made the money necessary for survival by changing tires and other things weary drivers didn’t care to deal with. By night, I preyed on the prostitutes who gathered in the truck yards to make a quick buck from the road barons. These ‘lot lizards’ were easy pickings. Most of them were drifters with little or no family to search for them or provide identification. It was enough to keep me going. No one missed them or inquired regarding their disappearances.

It was the ‘pop’, I believe, which kept me wanting more. There’s really no better way to explain it. The puncture of teeth through skin and into flesh as the majestic, coppery fluid sprays into your awaiting throat…that’s the true joy of murder. I’m not sure if it’s an animalistic pleasure known only to cursed individuals like myself or perhaps repressed, childhood memories of simpler times. I would sit and do the same with fruit from my grandfather’s knife on balmy, summer evenings. Neither of us would speak a word as the unforgiving sun set along the western bank of his favorite fishing spot. No, we would just sit motionless in the near darkness atop a rotting log, devouring apples, and praying for submerged bobbers. I can’t help but wonder if my family ‘popped’ on the night their lives ceased to be. Deep down, I know the true answer but refuse to acknowledge. They all ‘pop’. Every single one.

As the months passed fifty or so miles at a time, I began to realize it was a statistical probability that I would leave a loose end at some point. It was destiny. How long did I really think I could carry on that way without being caught? Were there only so many lucky breaks one man is allowed in a single lifetime? If so, I knew my supply was running dangerously low. I began to tire of hiding and nightly struggles to stay alive. Ultimately, though, was THIS truly living? Never again would I have the comforts of home. Never again would I kiss someone goodnight or hug sleeping children in their warm beds without fear of killing them when the beast turned off sanity’s switch.

As I was sitting in a Flying J waiting room with a dozen or so sleepy truckers, I became overwhelmed by my intense sense of smell. The harsh scent of the road was something I could no longer stomach. The smell of greased wheels and hard days without time for showering was making me weary of my newly adopted lifestyle. My first instinct was to linger in the room until after dark and attempt to take them all on at once. With any luck, one would reveal a hidden weapon and send me down my eternal path to redemption. Snapping out of it, I realized I was selling myself short. I was too good of a person to be remembered as a truck stop murderer. No. If I were to go out by assisted suicide, I had to do it in the most epic way imaginable. As the tired theme song of an overplayed, syndicated television show played through the muffled speaker of the flickering black and white television set, I began to devise my plan for the ending of this story. That is what brought me here. I may not be remembered as someone nice, but I’ll forever be remembered.

The usual fever has begun to set in as the sun disappears behind the apartment buildings of Park Avenue. The steady stream of taxi cabs is slowing as the residents of this great city find their way home to catch tonight’s episode of whatever. Most broadcasts will be interrupted by reports of the terror I’ll cause. Soon, this diary will end and be left for discovery upon this very bench. The lycanthropic curse won’t allow me to write after the transformation. Hell, why would I? The only thing the beast cares for is flesh. The frightened, unarmed victims of Central Park will have no way of stopping me once the moon has risen. Those poor, unfortunate souls. Still, they are necessary – necessary for me to live another day or for my death if the authorities arrive on scene in time to end me. I can only hope the parents of these children playing nearby are responsible enough to take them home soon. If not, they wouldn’t be the first child casualties of this curse. A harsh lesson to learn but one to be forever remembered.

With any luck, they’ll all scream in fear causing my retreat deeper into the park. After all, most people don’t linger here after hours of darkness. Decades of negative media propaganda have stirred fear among the locals regarding the demeanor of Central Park when the sun goes down. I find it calming. Lovers at the beginning of their relationships walking hand in hand without a care to what lies just beyond the tree line will soon find out what really happens when you throw caution carelessly into the wind. Their deaths will be a public service aimed at future victims of purse snatchers and rapists who prey on the weak. Maybe I’ll get lucky and take a few of the criminals out in the process.

I can feel the beast coming forth as I write these final words. To you, the unsuspecting discoverer of this journal, I wish you well. Don’t keep this find to yourself. May you never take for granted your friends and family, for companionship is humanity’s only true treasure. May you cherish each breath entering your body and exhale with renewed life into this unforgiving world. Every sunrise is a new beginning, but each awakening of the moon summons the evil which hides within us all. I’m certain to not be the only one who’s ever possessed this curse. I’m sure I’m not the only one who looks upon the moon with both satisfaction and fear. Take those you consider dearest and hold them tightly. You never know when another one like me will come along. You, too, could unexpectedly become the victim of the beast’s hunger. You never know…

It’s starting…

I can feel it drawing nearer…

I can’t control it…

I can’t…

Good luck…

Happy Hallowe…

Home 1: A Taste of Home

Toby Liberman is nearing the end of his rope. After a fateful confrontation with his wife’s lover, he is chased into the woods only to be discovered by an unidentifiable creature. He is attacked and rendered unconscious. Upon waking at the scene of a gruesome triple homicide, Toby is arrested as the sole suspect and thrown into a jail cell with a strange man that knows way too much about his predicament. The stranger reveals to Toby that he now possesses the curse of the werewolf. Using his new-found strength to flee his captors, Toby begins to discover that things are not what they seem in the sleepy town of Twin Oaks, TX. Now hunted by law enforcement, as well as the town’s gun toting civilians, Toby seeks vengeance against his false accusers and embarks upon a quest to clear his name once and for all.

Home 2: Far from Home

A Curse Beyond Comprehension. A Power Beyond Belief. A Girl Far From Home.Katie Liberman is your typical eighteen-year-old college student…or at least that’s what her family thinks. Picking up five years after the events of A Taste of Home, Katie has dropped out of school and embarked upon a dangerous quest to find Kurt Jimmerson, the New York City attorney responsible for her family’s werewolf curse. Unknown to her, the attorney’s grip on the ‘City That Never Sleeps’ is tighter than imagined and she’ll need any and all help available to be victorious. But… where do you find friends when you’re Far From Home?

Diary of a Gonzo Ghost Hunter

Most people run away from the unknown. Me? I chose to run toward it and never look back. Unaware of the consequences of my actions in small town Texas, I dove deep into paranormal research. It consumed my entire life. Taken from a decade of personal journals and interpreted by Rae Louise, Diary of a Gonzo Ghost Hunter is an extremely honest journey down a road less traveled. What shadows lurk in the darkness outside of bedroom doors? I was determined to find out.

What’s it like to walk in the shoes of a ghost hunter? It’s all here. As someone who lived through what you’re about to experience, it is difficult for me to read. For some, it will be the fuel that drives their curiosity. But for others … let it be a warning. Every step you take toward the dead leads you further from the living.

And Hell Followed: An Anthology

Seventeen authors re-imagine the biblical apocalypse and all the hell that follows in sixteen horrifying tales. What if the prophecies of Revelation hit today? What sort of craziness and evil would ensue? With this list of excellent authors contributing, it’s sure to be a Hell of a read! 

Wrath James White 
Sam West 
The Sisters of Slaughter 
Jeff Strand 
K Trap Jones 
C Derick Miller 
Christine Morgan 
Patrick C. Harrison III 
John Wayne Comunale 
Hyäne Sawbones 
Delphine Quinn 
James Watts 
Wile E. Young 
Chris Miller 
Mark Deloy 
Richard Raven

Halloween Extravaganza: Kelli Owen: STORY: Childhood Ghosts

megHan

One of my favorite things to receive, when I ask for a guest post, is a surprise story… especially when it’s one that I’m not quite sure is actually a story at first.

I hate Halloween. I haven’t enjoyed it for years. The last time I participated I was six years old. That was the year Luke Brown died.

The year we killed him.

My dad had left the previous spring, or rather he just didn’t come home after work one day. Mom had started working two jobs and tried hiding the fact she cried herself to sleep almost every night. We didn’t have much back then, just each other. But mom still had spunk. She risked her new waitress job in the name of Halloween and stole a white tablecloth for my costume.

At that age you believe in all the monsters you mimic in costume, the monsters that beg for candy and giggle. At six years old, it’s exciting to become one of them for a night, and I absolutely believed in the ghost I was to become. Mom cut eyeholes and draped the stolen cloth over my head. I stood on a chair as she cut some from the bottom so I wouldn’t trip. I was the happiest little ghost in the world that year.

Or at least I started the night that way.

After skipping my way to every lit porch in my neighborhood, I stood on the sidewalk with several kids from school, our parents gathered further down at the corner.

Kids are cruel and will pick on others for any little thing. My father had decided we weren’t good enough for him, which made me a pretty easy target to other first graders. Fortunately, Luke’s dad had been arrested the night before—for something I didn’t even understand back then—and the other kids had a new target. I went along with it all, happy to be off the hook for the moment.

Until I became the center of attention.

“You just gonna stand there, Sarah?” Josh glared at me through his Spiderman mask. I had been nodding my approval at their remarks, staying on the good side of the miniature lynch mob, but I hadn’t actually said anything.

“No, I just…” I had no excuse. At six you’re not quick enough to react when afraid, so I did the next best thing and diverted attention back to the other target. “I heard they’re coming to get Luke’s momma next.”

The crowd of over-sugared under-mannered six-year-olds turned back to Luke as one. They were like creepy little Village of the Damned kids, except they didn’t look alike—they were a circus version in their Halloween costumes. Spiderman was the leader, but the homemade princess was definitely next in the ranks. The juxtaposition between Bailey’s glitter-covered innocence and the sneer that curled her painted lips around sharp teeth and a sharper tongue was startling. Next to her stood Zack, in a homemade pumpkin outfit, which would be silly by today’s standards, but as the playground bully he could dress as whatever he wanted and no one would have said anything. Rounding out the crew was little Kelsey, appropriately disguised as a witch. A twig of a thing, she didn’t need words to intimidate—her stark black eyes were all it took to quiet a person.

Zack started the next round of Luke’s punishment by shoving him toward Josh. The girls closed ranks and formed a circle around the sheepish boy ironically dressed as Dracula. They giggled as they took turns pushing him like a Bop Bag. The back and forth turned into a round-the-clock motion, and I worried I was going to have a take a turn. The reality of that was painted in blue eye shadow, as Bailey lifted a glitter-covered eyebrow at me and used only a fingertip to shove Luke my way.

I was afraid. I know that now. But that night I only cared about being part of the crowd without being the victim. I pushed Luke toward Josh. I pushed him hard. I think I was hoping he’d fall and stay down. Looking back, I think I was apathetic to his situation. I have to think so. I have to hope I wasn’t really responsible for what happened next.

I never expected Josh to sidestep.

And I didn’t think Luke would stumble outside the circle and off the curb.

Mr. Boardman never saw him. Later he told everyone the black costume and black cape against the night was too hidden, too dark, even in headlights.

I’ll never forget the way Luke’s body folded over the front of the Cadillac when it struck him. I’ll never forget the way it sounded when his limp body slid up the hood and slapped against the windshield like a flyswatter against a sofa. I’ll never forget the way his mother’s scream echoed in the night, covering the roar of Mr. Boardman’s engine and subsequent squeal of his tires.

That was ten years ago.

I’ll be seventeen in December, if I make it through tonight.

Fear, shame, whatever the reason, I didn’t talk to the other four again until five years after Luke’s funeral, when I saw Bailey crying in the bathroom at school the morning after Halloween. It was the first I’d heard of Kelsey’s accident. She told me she’d been with Kelsey the night before, when the old wooden garage door slammed down suddenly and killed her. Bailey swore Kelsey screamed “No, Luke!” right before she heard the crunch and watched Kelsey’s can of A&W Rootbeer roll down the driveway. We called her crazy. We said it was guilt.

We changed our minds when Zack texted Josh the following Halloween. The message was one word: Luke. Zack’s parents found him under the basement fridge; one of its wheels across the room like it had suddenly popped free and toppled the unit over, crushing Zack without warning.

When Luke died, the other four had continued to celebrate the holiday and tradition of Trick-or-Treating, as if nothing had happened. Not me. I stayed home and handed out candy. Mom tried to get me to play along. She bribed me with some great costumes over the years, but it was all wasted money—I wouldn’t budge from the house. I couldn’t. I heard the tires and the scream and the slap of Luke’s body every Halloween. Hell, I heard it every time I shut my eyes until I was eight.

The year after Zack died was the last time I even answered the door. Spooked enough by Kelsey and Zack’s unexpected deaths to become superstitious, both Bailey and Josh decided to stay home as well. It did Bailey no good. Luke didn’t care if we celebrated or not.

They say she lived long enough to call 911. They say her ribs were broken and lungs punctured by the tree limbs and broken glass the sudden windstorm sent through her bay window. Bailey’s final words on the police recording were supposedly, “I’m sorry.”

I never thought Josh and I would talk after that night on the curb so long ago, but we became friends out of necessity. The rest of the school thought the connections between the deaths were all an urban legend created by the bullies to keep younger kids in check. If they’d bothered to pay attention, they would have realized Josh and I never spoke of it—only others did. And whenever it was mentioned, our eyes showed nothing but fear.

Fear won’t keep you alive though.

Far from any type of perceived danger, Josh spent the next Halloween night in his basement rec room, playing Nintendo and trying desperately to busy his mind and calm his nerves. We called each other every hour on the hour to check in. When the sacks were full of candy and the street’s porch lights were all off, we thought we were in the clear. We presumed Luke only came back during the hours of Trick-or-Treating.

We were wrong.

I never heard anyone explain why the ceiling fan was even turned on in October, but it was. It was still going when the cops arrived, wobbling off center with a missing blade. No one ever said if it had a crack or loose screws, never explained how the fan blade broke free. They only talked about the decapitation my mother claims was pure gossip.

Four funerals in four years…

It’s Halloween again. The last year has sucked. This is not what sixteen should feel like. I’ve been completely pushed out of any and all cliques at school. I don’t have one single person I can call a friend. People are afraid to associate with me. They know I’m the last one. They know what I know—when I’m gone, the Halloween deaths will stop.

My mom doesn’t believe any of it though. She says there was a logical reason for each of them and the dates are just coincidence. While others call it a town curse, she smiles and reassures me there is no such thing. I thought she just said it to make me relax, but she believes it enough to have gone out with Cheryl tonight. Tonight of all nights.

AMC is playing a horror movie marathon but the television is only on as a distraction, background noise. I’m not paying attention to it at all. I’m babysitting Cheryl’s six-year-old, like some kind of karmic punishment, and watching the clock. Mom should be home any minute. It’s five to midnight and little Riley’s sugar high has crashed her into a crumbled heap of sleeping princess on the couch.

Five minutes. I just have to wait five minutes and I think I’ll be in the clear. At midnight, it won’t technically be Halloween anymore.

Except someone knocked on the door a minute ago.

The front light has been off since mom left, hours ago. But the streetlight is just strong enough to illuminate the porch. Through the curtains I can see a Dracula costume and pumpkin candy bucket. A pale hand reaches up and knocks again. Harder this time.

Four minutes. I stare at the grandfather clock in the dining room, willing it to tick faster. Headlights relax my jaw as I see mom’s car round the corner.

“Sarah.” The whisper comes from behind me and I spin to see Luke standing over Riley, his wooden stake prop raised high over his head.

“No!” I try to lunge for him but am frozen in place.

The ticking from the dining room is the only sound I hear. Time slows as I watch the stake come down. The pink of her princess costume slowly change to red as the puddle spreads. I hear myself scream as I regain control of my legs and run to the couch, grasping at the air where Luke stood.

I don’t even realize I’m crying as I look down at Riley, her eyes wide in silent shock. I don’t hear the front door slam open, or feel the hands that pull me away from Riley’s still form.

Later they’ll say it was me they saw in the window. They’ll claim it was fear and superstition and guilt. They’ll know the truth, but they’ll never accept it.

They’re too old to believe in ghosts.

Kelli Owen is the author of more than a dozen books, including the novels Teeth and Floaters, and fan-favorite apocalyptic novella Waiting Out Winter, and the Wilted Lily Series. Her fiction spans the genres from thrillers to psychological horror, with an occasional bloodbath, and an even rarer happy ending. She was an editor and reviewer for over a decade, and has attended countless writing conventions, participated on dozens of panels, and spoken at the CIA Headquarters in Langley, VA regarding both her writing and the field in general. Visit her website for more information.

Teeth

All myths have a kernel of truth. The truth is: vampires are real.

They’ve always been here, but only came out of hiding in the last century. They are not what Hollywood would have you believe. They are not what is written in lore or whispered by the superstitious.

They look and act like humans. They live and love and die like humans. Puberty is just a bit more stressful for those with the recessive gene. And while some teenagers worry about high school, others dread their next set of teeth.

Vampires are real, but in a social climate still struggling to accept that truth, do teeth alone make them monsters?

Wilted Lily 1: Wilted Lilies

It’s not that Lily May Holloway is a broken, battered teenager recently escaped from her kidnapper. 

It’s not that she may or may not have killed him to escape. 

The question on Detective Travis Butler’s mind is — what exactly does the death of little Tommy Jenkins have to do with her kidnapper? 

And why does the man behind the one-way glass want the detective to entertain Lily’s tales of speaking to the dead… and being able to hear the thoughts of the living?

Wilted Lily 2: Passages

Lily May Holloway can hear the thoughts of the living, and speak to the dead. She’s done so since she was little, and been shunned for it.

As a new student at McMillan Hall, a private school with other teens who possess a variety of psychic gifts, she finds she isn’t necessarily unique. Or safe.

Acceptance is no longer her only concern. 

Staying alive is.

Passages, book 2 of the Wilted Lily series, picks up where Wilted Lilies left off…

Left for Dead/Fall from Grace

LEFT FOR DEAD

When Susan’s 8-year-old daughter is brutally attacked, she becomes consumed by her need for revenge but mere punishment is not enough. Susan learns that sometimes those being given the lessons are not those doing the learning.

FALL FROM GRACE

Grace has spent seven years adjusting to the tragedies of her youth. She has become a smart, sexy, complex teenager, who is nothing short of dangerous, as she teeters on the edge of the abyss and smiles at the monsters inside.

Halloween Extravaganza: Martin Berman-Gorvine: STORY: Mischief Night

megHan

I’d like to welcome back Martin Berman-Gorvine, with another short story written specifically for the Halloween Extravaganza. I always look forward to his submissions, and I hope you enjoy this story as much as I did.

Mischief Night
A Tale of the Age of Moloch

By the time Lisa Henry broke out of the Castle, it was already Mischief Night. That meant she had just three days to live before she would be taken out when Black Mass ended at midnight, tied spread-eagled to the hood of Jack Kolver’s 1963 Ford Thunderbird, and become the Virgin Sacrifice Unto Moloch with a flick of the Pastor’s knife.

Since she was understandably unhappy at this prospect, she had done everything she could think of to avoid becoming Prom Queen of the Class of 1982. As a Nice Girl who was also stunningly gorgeous, with large almond-shape dark eyes and a lustrous mane of black hair, she had her work cut out for her to avoid her unspeakable fate when she started school last fall, her senior year at Chatham’s Forge High School. But she gamely did her best. She started by getting roaring drunk on moonshine for Homecoming and ralphing all over Mr. Goff’s spit-polished tasseled loafers. Since the shoes were the guidance counselor’s pride and joy, and he had the power to bust her Student Caste from Nice Girl all the way down to Slut, she figured she was set. Instead he wiped off the shoes with a damp paper towel, escorted her to the staff bathroom, and held back her hair as she finished emptying her stomach.

She tried talking back in class, even taking Moloch’s name in vain in Religion class with Mrs. Larssen. The old biddy merely patted her on the head and told her to calm down. Well, there was the more direct route to getting relabeled as a Slut. Her boyfriend, Chad Miller, was even more popular than she, a clean-cut blonde Jock who was the star Grabber for the Cheetahs in their blood-soaked grudge-match Games against the Linwood Lions. In the highly unlikely event that Lisa’s head did not end up separated from her curvy body and propped up like a gruesome hood ornament on the T-Bird the morning after All Souls Day, everyone expected her to marry Chad and have like a dozen kids, which would play hell with her figure. That prospect was only slightly more appealing than the sanguinary option, so she cheated on Chad with gusto and abandon, juicily smooching random guys in the crowded school hallways between class, making out with his best friend Jimmy “Punch-Drunk” Jones in the bleachers as the stands were filling up for a Game, and consummating her loss of innocence one memorable night during a January thaw with Frankie “Four-Eyes” Feldstein. Since Four-Eyes was the Platonic ideal of a Nerd and Lisa the foremost Nice Girl of the Class of ‘82, fucking him in full view of the T-Bird altar was a double sacrilege, a heaping of Caste Miscegenation on top of Unauthorized Sex. Poor Frankie took the full brunt of the punishment, though he went to his death on Chief Punisher Ariadne Mitchell’s dreaded Impaler shrieking that it had been worth it, and Lisa got off scot-free.

Chad laughed off Lisa’s betrayal. After all, he had been boinking Chelsea Everard, the Chief Cheetahs Cheerleader and another so-called Nice Girl, since sophomore year. But Lisa still held out high hopes she would get pregnant. Then Goff would have no choice but to bust her down to Slut. Even though that meant she’d probably end up a Holy Ho in the Consecrated Cathouse after graduation, it would still beat becoming Moloch’s All Souls Day treat.

No dice. There was blood in her panties, regular as pit-and-pendulum clockwork, and Lisa was inconsolable. Her mother tried to comfort her. “You don’t understand, Mom!” she wailed. “I’m gonna be the next Virgin Sacrifice!”

Mom’s cheek twitched. “You’re thinking a bit much of yourself, aren’t you, young lady? The way I hear it, Chelsea’s a shoo-in!”

“That dog, with her simpering smile and her strawberry-blonde curls? Puh-lease, Mom! It’s been blondes three years in a row, and everyone knows that Moloch likes a little variety!” She vowed to herself she’d get knocked up no matter what it took, but Chad just chuckled and pushed her away when she tried to corner him, and to all the other guys she was radioactive after they had been forced to watch Frankie’s agonizing death.

In the end, Lisa was right to worry that she would be Chosen. She was smack in the middle of Moloch’s spotlight when the high school gym ceiling rolled back to reveal the shadowy, towering form of the bloodthirsty god on Prom Night. She screamed and tried to run, but her classmates and teachers formed a solid ring around her, and the god’s enormous claws closed around the waist of her bright pink sequined gown and bore her away, wriggling and straining against the iron grip, to the Castle for her ritual four-month imprisonment.

Lisa the Apostate refused to surrender to her fate, chipping patiently away at the crumbling concrete walls of her cell with her metal food tray. The Castle was a former National Guard armory, built in 1922 when Chatham’s Forge was a part of the United States, and its structural integrity had been compromised forty years later when the Russkies nuked nearby Philadelphia during the War of the Judgment, also known for some inexplicable reason as the Cuber War. Maybe the nuke bombs were shaped like cubes, or something. Lisa had never been one to pay attention in history or any other class; Nice Girls were discouraged from doing so, anyhow. It was just as well—knowing how and why Moloch had really come to power in the shattered post-World War III world would have driven her to despair. As it was, she industriously flushed the dust from her work down the cell’s toilet each day, until the pipes filled with cement and the stench became unbearable. Nevertheless, she persisted, and broke out to the empty neighboring room on Mischief Night, not that she knew the date by the time she freed herself and ran down the stairs in her soiled Prom dress and pumps, a shit-stinking Cinderella.

It can’t be this easy, she thought as she barreled through the front door of the Castle and charged down Boot Hill in the darkness, making a beeline for home. As she ran, the sight of blazing trees in front yards brought home to her how much time had passed while she was imprisoned in the Castle. Mischief Night was an old tradition in Chatham’s Forge. Every year, Army draftees soaked bales of torn-up old copies of Moloch’s Truth, the local newspaper that was sold in town as toilet paper, in a vat of corn oil. Then they fanned out down the deserted streets at dusk, draping them over tree branches in the yards of those the Pastor had designated Enemies of Moloch. (Gasoline would have been preferable as lighter fluid, but since the War the stuff was worth its weight in molten gold.) When the air-raid siren atop the Town Hall went off, the trainee soldiers set the trees alight for the greater glory of Moloch, and his Enemies counted themselves lucky if the flames didn’t spread to their homes.

None of this was Lisa’s concern at the moment. Her parents were strictly orthodox, her little brother Ralph even more so; thus, there was zero chance of their big old oak tree being torched. Cutting across strangers’ backyards, ignoring the barking of the German shepherds their rich neighbors kept as guard dogs, she arrived gasping for breath at her own back door and began pounding on it, yelling for her family to let her in.

A few seconds later Ralph yanked the door open. In the four months Lisa had been gone he had grown at least an inch and his hair had darkened. “Pee-yew, Sis, you stink,” he said, pinching his nose between thumb and forefinger.

Mom’s fretful voice came from behind him. “Who’s making all that racket and breaking curfew? And didn’t I tell you to clean out the drain field for the septic tank?”

“I did, Mom! The smell is Lisa!”

“What are you talking about?” Mom demanded, shoving him aside. “Lisa is—oh, dear Moloch, it is you! What are you doing here?”

Having planned for this moment, Lisa burst into carefully rehearsed tears. “Oh, M-Mommy! It’s so awful! The Pastor himself came to my cell and told me I’m unworthy to be the Virgin Sacrifice! I’ve never been so humiliated in my life!”

Mom’s big dark eyes bulged. “But why? What did you do, young lady?”

“Let me in and I’ll tell you all about it.” Mom shut the door behind her, but immediately started gagging at the stench. “G-go take a bath first! I’ll have to call your father at work to come deal with this! You are going to be GROUNDED for a very long time for messing up Moloch’s Sacrifice, missy!” Lisa ran upstairs, her heart soaring, as Mom called Dad at his night watchman’s job at the Punishment Farm. It’s going to be all right, she thought, as she stepped out of her Prom dress and into the freezing, beautiful spray of their bucket-shower. Instead of hating the sandpaper-like soap that was all they could afford, she luxuriated in it and its faintly sour smell. I actually escaped! All I have to do is lie low for the next three days, the Pastor will grab Chelsea instead, and I’ll be home free!

As she was drying herself off she heard the front door slam, followed by her father’s voice. Daddy sounded angry, but how could that be? She’d always been his favorite. Disgrace to Moloch or no, wasn’t he overjoyed that his only Lee-Lee had returned to him alive?

He was not. She only caught snatches of the snarled conversation he had with Mom, but they were more than enough. “Naïve idiot!” he said, followed by a slap, a loud thump and Mom crying. He hadn’t hit her that hard since she was a freshman! Then his footsteps thundered up the stairs, hard enough to make the floorboards vibrate. Lisa dove for the door, turning the lock in the nick of time. “Open up! Open up, you MONOTHEIST!” Dad roared, rattling the doorknob as he followed up with a string of swear words that were almost as bad. He was throwing all his weight against the door as Lisa slammed the window open and jumped out, still clutching the towel. She wrapped it around herself and ran blindly, her tears streaking out behind her like rain off the windshield of a speeding car, a sight unseen in her world since before she was born. Her adrenaline was running so high she didn’t even notice she’d twisted her left ankle until the pain began to slow her down. As she limped up an unfamiliar street by the light of a burning TP’d tree, she also noticed she’d lost her towel and began to sob. There was no way out. Dad was going to raise the alarm and in minutes, everyone in town would be out hunting for the Lady Godiva of Chatham’s Forge. They’d tie her to a stake and heap damp pine branches beneath her feet, to smolder and roast her alive, slowly. Ariadne Mitchell would design a brand-new torture rack just for her. Moloch Himself would tear her intestines out while she watched…

In the normal course of a person’s life, ruminating over all the terrible things that might happen is worse than useless, it is maladaptive, a cause of anxiety and overall misery. At this moment of peril for Lisa, however, this mental tendency did the job it had evolved to do and spurred her to action. She didn’t want to die, and if she was doomed anyway she wasn’t going to go out on Moloch’s terms. So she limped down the street as fast as she could, heading by instinct toward the darkness at the edge of town.

Everybody knew there was nothing outside town but radioactive woods filled with cannibal Mutants. To protect his people against them, mighty Moloch had erected a big, beautiful Wall that was invisible to the naked eye but would slice you in two if you tried to walk through it unauthorized. Only Army raiding parties were allowed out, to enslave select Muties and drag them back to the Forge. And yet, it was whispered that if you kept your eye on Brandywine Creek, which cut through the center of town, you’d notice that it flowed through the Wall as if the barrier wasn’t there. So if you could hold your breath and duck under the water at just the right spot, and push yourself forward for just the right amount of time, escape was possible. Only someone truly desperate would attempt it, however, because the creek was shallow and narrow at the point upstream where it crossed the Wall, and filled with raw sewage at the downstream end.

Lisa, of course, was truly desperate. So she followed her nose through the chilly night air, frantic to find the stink she’d just washed off. Somewhere she heard the barking of dogs as a posse was assembled to hunt her down, and she jumped as the air-raid siren blasted. There were shouts in the night. She stumbled on, dry-sobbing as she scaled fences, tripped over tree roots and stubbed her toes on unseen rocks. At last, she glimpsed firelight from a burning tree reflected off flowing water somewhere down below, and took off down the slope so fast she almost fell, twice. “Stop right there, infidel!” a man’s voice yelled. There was a loud crack and a bullet whistled past her ear. Lisa jumped off the bank, drawing a deep breath as she plunged toward the sewer outlet, though the smell was so foul she began to choke before she even hit the surface. Never mind. Just… have to… follow the current… but how far, how far? For a Forger, Lisa was a pretty decent swimmer, and she’d taken part in a breath-holding contest once where some Nerd passed out and turned blue. But she’d never tried to swim underwater before, and already her lungs were aching. Just… a little… further… Just… a little more… and I’ll be free, in the woods. She poked her head above the surface a fraction of a second too soon.

Now, if this was a made-up story, you’d expect to hear how Moloch’s magic Wall sliced the pretty girl’s head neatly off her shoulders, spilling her guts into the muck and proving that You Can’t Escape Fate. After all, Lisa was lovely, and terrible things are always happening to comely young women in Gothic tales. Moreover, in seducing poor Frankie Feldstein in hopes that she would be rejected as Virgin Sacrifice and Chelsea Everard would take her place, she was treating other human beings as a Means to an End, in violation of the Golden Rule, Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative, Martin Buber’s “I-Thou” philosophy, and numerous other religious and ethical precepts. Thus, the mythical force of justice should have gotten her. However, this occurred in real life, and she surfaced in the free air of the forest with nothing worse than a skinned elbow, although she did nearly die a few days later from the raging infection spawned by introducing raw sewage into an open wound. But a tribe of Freemen, as they preferred to call themselves, had already found her and were nursing her through her delirium, while curly-headed Chelsea died in agony and terror at the hands of Moloch and His Pastor, thus becoming the Virgin Sacrifice of the Class of 1982. For the rest of her life, Lisa would be haunted by nightmares of Frankie and Chelsea.

And that, kids, is the whole story of how come my left elbow looks like I have an enormous burn scar, and also why I scream a lot in my sleep. I hope you’re satisfied.

If you found this story terrifying, nauseating and utterly tasteless, you will certainly not enjoy Martin Berman-Gorvine’s four-book alternate history horror series, Days of Ascension, to which it is a prequel.

Martin Berman-Gorvine is the perpetrator of the four-book Days of Ascension horror novel series, of which Judgment Day is mercifully the last. All Souls Day (2016), Day of Vengeance (2017), and Day of Atonement (2018) were also published by Silver Leaf Books, in an inexplicable lapse of literary judgment and good taste.

Martin is also the author of seven science fiction novels, including the Sidewise Award-winning The Severed Wing (as Martin Gidron) (Livingston Press, 2002); 36 (Livingston Press, 2012); Seven Against Mars (Wildside Press, 2013); Save the Dragons! (Wildside Press, 2013), which was a finalist for the Prometheus Award; Ziona: A Novel of Alternate History (as Marty Armon), an expansion of the short story “Palestina,” published in Interzone magazine, May/June 2006 (Amazon/CreateSpace, 2014); Heroes of Earth (Wildside Press, 2015); and Monsters of Venus (Wildside Press, 2017).

Martin lives in Maryland with his wife and the younger two of his three sons, four cats, and two Muppet-like dogs.

Days of Ascension 1: All Soul’s Day

If a demon and its servants ruled your ordinary town, demanding an annual virgin sacrifice, would you have the courage to stop them? And at what price? This question confronts Amos Ross, Suzie Mitchell, and Vickie Riordan, high school seniors in the new horror novel, All Souls Day. 

In an alternate reality of the 1980’s, twenty years after the Cuban Missile Crisis triggered World War III and left the United States a devastated wasteland, the ancient, demonic god Moloch, whose worship was forbidden by the Old Testament, exercises absolute control over the Philadelphia suburb of Chatham’s Forge. The town is an oasis of prosperity that the nuclear war hardly touched, but its comfort comes at a fearful cost: at the high school prom every year, the prettiest and most popular senior girl is chosen by Moloch and his servant, the evil Pastor Justin Bello, to be spirited away to a former National Guard armory known as the Castle, where she is imprisoned alone for five months only to be beheaded and eaten alive by the demon on All Souls Day, the second of November, the anniversary of the war. And this year, 1985, it’s Suzie’s turn…

Days of Ascension 2: Day of Vengeance

What if you escaped being sacrificed to the evil god Moloch and banished him from your town at a terrible price in blood and destruction… only to become prey to gods more powerful and ruthless still?

Teenage friends Suzie Mitchell, Amos Ross, and Vickie Riordan are plunged into this terrifying dilemma in the ruins of their hometown, Chatham’s Forge, in a world devastated by nuclear war. Stumbling through the wreckage, they must confront the physically living but soul-dead remains of their friends and family, the vengeful victims of the old order in the Forge, the ascent of the powerful and seductive goddess Asherah, and worst of all… the deeds they themselves are tempted to commit in their rage and grief.

Days of Ascension 3: Day of Atonement

When human rebels overthrow a god of human sacrifice, only to bring about the rise of a goddess even more cruel and perverse, is there any chance human dignity and freedom can survive?

High school sweethearts Amos and Suzie have been surviving in the woods with their two little children and a small band of the like-minded for seven years, ever since they destroyed the bloodthirsty god Moloch. Their friend Vickie is with them, but she lives under a curse because she fell under the spell of the goddess Asherah, murdered dozens of people in her name, and then turned against her. Can Vickie overcome her overwhelming guilt and the curse that exiles her from human society—and can she and her friends bring Asherah down? And if they do, what new bloodthirsty gods lie in waiting? Find out, in Day of Atonement! 

Days of Ascension 4: Judgment Day

Twenty-five years ago, high school friends and lovers Amos, Suzie and Vickie destroyed Moloch, the evil god who reigned over their hometown of Chatham’s Forge, taking the Prom Queen in sacrifice each year. Together they have set up their own alternative society far from the Forge, which is now ruled over by an even more powerful and evil god, Ba’al. God Himself is hiding from this new threat in an abandoned 7-Eleven in Cape May, New Jersey. Can our heroes survive?

Release Day: To Be Announced

Halloween Extravaganza: Brian Martinez: STORY: The Basement Stares

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When Brian asked if he could share a story he wrote during my Halloween Extravaganza, I could hardly say no. Especially after reading it. Get comfortable and enjoy…

Warren hated that old house.

It was coming up on two years since he’d bought it. Everything in it creaked and leaked, from the basement to the roof, and everything between. It had bare, wooden floors that warped and leaned at crooked angles. Bathrooms wallpapered in heavy mildew and old cigarette smoke. Lights that blinked whenever he walked down the hallway.

And it was cold. Starting in the first months of fall, all the way through the dead of winter, the house was filled with a dampness that cut to the bone. Wind whistled through the old window frames, no matter how much he tried to block them up with blankets. Even when he could manage to stop a draft from coming in through one window, another would just take its place. The whistling unnerved Warren, like distant crying in the woods. He woke up shivering sometimes from the cold air pressing down on his chest. He’d started wearing thick socks and shoes around the house most of the time just to keep the feeling in his toes.

The real estate agent had called it a fixer-upper, but that was just a nice way of saying it was a money pit. A place where dreams went to slowly die.

Then there was the sound.

It didn’t happen every night, but sometimes, just after six-thirty, after he’d eaten whatever he picked up for dinner, it would start. Warren would be on the couch, trying to watch the news, when it would start somewhere deep down in the basement.

Ka-thump. Ka-thump. Ka-thump.

It was a thick sound, like footsteps but heavier. The basement door, which he always kept closed, was between the living room and the kitchen, where he rarely went. As he sat watching television, he would hear it move slowly up the basement stairs, one agonizing step at a time.

Ka-thump. Ka-thump. Ka-thump.

For an entire year he’d been trying to ignore it. Pretend it didn’t exist. But each day the sound grew harder to block out. Tonight, as he tried to watch a movie for a change, he was just getting comfortable, thinking that perhaps he’d been left alone for the night, when the familiar sound started at the bottom of the basement stairs.

Ka-thump. Ka-thump. Ka-thump.

Moving slowly. Climbing the stairs, one at a time. Warren turned up the volume and leaned in closer to the television, straining to hear the movie he could already barely follow, but the sound only seemed to grow louder. It was a hammer on his skull. He closed his eyes and counted to ten, praying it would go away, but each count was accompanied by the sound echoing up from the basement, like the heartbeat in his own chest.

Ka-thump. Ka-thump. Ka-thump.

It mocked him. Teased him. Attacked him until he thought for the thousandth time about moving out. But he had no money left after what the house had eaten up, and he had his pride to think about as well. What would the neighbors think of him if he packed up, tucked his tail and ran off in the night? What would they say about him when he was gone?

And still, the sound came through the basement door.

Ka-thump. Ka-thump. Ka-thump.

When he couldn’t take it anymore, Warren turned off the television, jumped up from the couch and turned to face the basement. “Stop it!” he shouted, his voice echoing off bare walls and a sagging ceiling. “Just stop!”

He knew the sound wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. There was nothing down there but a long set of wooden stairs ending in a hard, concrete floor. If anyone could see him now, yelling at the air, they would think he was crazy. But Warren lived alone those days, and there was no one to think anything about him. He glared at the unpainted basement door, drawing up his strength. Willing it to be silent. But still it came, louder and louder, slowly rising up the basement stairs.

Ka-thump. Ka-thump. Ka-thump.

A laugh bubbled up in his throat. He was being ridiculous, of course. Scared of a door. He walked to it, still not believing, still not letting the possibility of it into his head. Step-by-step, foot-by-foot, he crossed the living room, feet dragging slightly on the warped floor, until he reached the basement door.

Ka-thump. Ka-thump. Ka-thump.

With the breath caught in his throat like a fish, Warren stared at the unpainted door. It hadn’t been opened in a year. Even through all those nights of listening to the sound move up the stairs again and again, of holding his pillow over his ears and praying for sleep, he’d refused to entertain the idea. But it was time that changed. This twisted game had gone on long enough. He had to end it while he still had one last nerve left to do it with.

Tonight was the night Warren took his house back.

But then, he noticed something. In the minute he’d been standing in front of the door, willing his hand to reach up and touch the handle, the sound from the basement had stopped. Except for the house’s frame creaking under the wind outside, the night was silent.

Warren reached up, heart booming in his chest like a man trying to escape his jail cell, and slowly touched the handle. It was cold and solid. Real. He almost laughed again. The idea that he’d been expecting anything else was ridiculous. That he thought his hand might pass through it like a hook through a jellyfish. With a deep breath he turned the handle and slowly, very slowly, opened the door, the long creak of an un-oiled hinge overtaking the throbbing in his ears.

The darkness of the basement seeped through the crack between the door and the frame. One sliver at a time, the basement stairs he hadn’t seen in a year were revealed to him. That long path beneath the ground. Old, uneven slats of wood dipping down into a pool of black thicker than paint.

Ka-thump-ka-thump-ka-thump!

The sound suddenly rose up the basement stairs faster than ever before. It came at him. Excited to see him. As if it was about to crash through the door and leap out at him.

Warren slammed the door shut and ran, ran to the front of the house, ready to escape into the night and never come back so long as he lived. His body was electric. His heart felt like it was clawing its way up his neck so it could crawl out his mouth. He’d never been so terrified in his life, never so sure of the danger that came for him.

With his hand on the front door, he stopped.

He took a moment to think about what he was doing. Where would he go? What would he say when he got there? With nothing but a crazy story in his pocket, who would take him in? Who would even believe what he had to say?

Knock knock knock!

The door came alive under his hand. He stumbled back, almost falling. Warren stared at the front door, horrified that he had not one but two doors to be scared of. But even in his panic, he knew something about the knocking on the door was different. It was a normal sound. Nothing like the one he’d lived with for the past year. With shaking hands he approached the front door again, close enough to put his eye to the peephole.

A worried face. And red hair. He sighed. It was the neighbor next door, the young woman who liked to garden. She lived on her own, he remembered, something about her parents leaving her the house. She looked like she was unsure of being on his doorstep, her body language saying she was about to leave. Warren considered staying quiet and letting her go, but something in him needed to speak to someone. Anyone. Even a woman he’d barely said a dozen words to in two years.

He opened the door. She looked back at him with concerned eyes, waiting for him to say something, but he didn’t know what to say. What could he say?

“Hello,” he managed.

“Sorry to knock on your door so late,” she said, “but…are you alright? I thought I heard someone shouting.”

He stared at her a moment. “Oh,” he finally said. He thought of his outburst a few minutes earlier. Yelling at a door. He was embarrassed to think anyone had heard that. “I…I was just watching a movie. I probably I had the volume too high.” He motioned to the living room. She glanced over, the living room visible from the front door, and saw the television turned off. “I was,” he added. To be fair it was true, just not what she’d actually heard.

Her face relaxed. “I’m really sorry, I shouldn’t have interrupted.”

“No, I’m glad you did,” he replied. It was the most honest thing Warren had said in a long time. She smiled, and for a second he forgot all about the sound in the basement.

“What was it?” she asked.

He blinked. “What?”

“The movie.”

“Oh.” He glanced sideways. “You know I already forgot?”

She put her hand to mouth and laughed. The friendly sound of it brightened his doorstep, and the night beyond. Was this what it was like to be normal? It had been so long since he’d spoken with someone, he’d forgotten what it felt like. To talk to a person. To make them laugh. “Doesn’t sound like a very good movie,” she said.

“No, I guess not.”

She nodded, brushing her hair over her ear. “Well, as long as you’re okay. I overreact sometimes, but honestly I’d hate myself if I didn’t do something and someone ended up hurt. I hear about this stuff all the time.”

“No problem at all. I’m glad someone’s looking out for me.”

She smiled, saying goodnight and apologizing once again for the intrusion. Before she left, she turned back to Warren, looking a bit unsure of what she was about to say. “Listen…I know you haven’t gone out much since…you know.” She shifted uncomfortably, as did he. “If you ever need an ear, I’m right next door. I know how lonely it gets in these big houses.”

“It does, I guess,” Warren said. Not knowing what else to say, he added, “Thank you.”

“No problem.” She paused again. “I never talked to her, but she seemed nice.” She smiled sheepishly, then gave a small nod and headed back to her house. Warren watched her go, then closed the door and locked it.

It was coming up on two years since he and Mary Lynn bought the house. Mary Lynn, with her black hair like a raven’s feathers, had been as nice as the red-haired neighbor when they first met. But the house had changed her. It changed both of them. Their fixer-upper consumed them until it was all they could talk about. All they fought about. When he thought of their last argument, his face still went red at the memory. That day he’d seen a side of both of them that still shook him.

The basement had fallen silent since he’d left. He went to it, feeling the deep embarrassment of a man who’d woken up from a screaming nightmare he’d sworn was real while he was in it. It was a completely normal, unpainted door, and he had to face the fact that what he’d been hearing, what he’d been experiencing in the last year, was the result of a man unprepared to move on.

He opened the door, not slowly this time, not with the reverence of fear, but like he would any other door. The squeak of its dry, brass hinges was brief, like the tiny yelp of a surprised mouse. Without flinching, Warren forced himself to look directly at the basement stairs, to see them for what they were. Earthly things of wood and nails, and nothing more.

As he looked down at the stairs, Warren felt a chill run through him. It started on his back, a cold spot like someone had pressed an ice cube to his spine, and it moved through his blood like a shadow over open ground. The tiny hairs at the back of his neck stood up as he felt the unmistakable presence of someone standing behind him, just over his shoulder. His nose picked up the hint of a familiar perfume. And yet he didn’t dare turn around. Didn’t dare look.

As he stood there, frozen in fear, Warren’s mind drifted to that day more than a year earlier.

“Can you please paint this today?” Mary Lynn stood in front of the basement door, her small hands on her waist. “Please?”

Warren put down the black garbage bag he was carrying, stuffed to the gills with broken glass, moth-eaten pillowcases and old wires he’d pulled out of the spare bedroom, the one they’d never quite gotten to. “The whole house is falling apart, why are you so obsessed with one door?”

“Because it creeps me out.”

“And painting it will change that.”

She frowned at him. “We won’t find out unless we try.”

He wiped the dusty sweat from his brow with his forearm, leaving the garbage bag behind. “You can paint it, too, you know.”

“Maybe I would if I wasn’t busy cooking dinner.”

“I didn’t ask you to cook dinner.”

“Well, I don’t see you doing it.”

“That’s right, because I’m not doing anything at all. Right?”

It went on like that for almost an hour. The two of them argued louder and louder, forgetting all about the dinner burning on the stove, an expensive piece of fish gone black. They’d fought so many times already, but this time was different. This time the fight grew bitter and petty. Warren and Mary Lynn, standing in front of the basement door, screamed at each other about every dripping faucet and rusty nail in the house, all because he hadn’t gotten around to painting one door. They came to the point where Warren was flinging the basement door open, shouting that he would just take it off the hinges and remove it if it bothered her so much. Each time he did Mary Lynn slammed it shut, screaming all kinds of nasty things at him, things he never thought he’d hear from the lips of the sweet girl he’d married.

And then, in the heat of the moment, he did something he’d never done before.

He grabbed her arm.

She looked up at him, shocked by his behavior. Before she could pull away, he wrenched her over in front of the open door so she could look at the stupid basement stairs for herself. When she had a good, hard look at them, he leaned in close to her ear, so she didn’t miss a word.

“You’re so scared of the basement?” he hissed. “Look at it!” He didn’t recognize his own voice coming out of him. It didn’t even feel like him saying it. But before he could stop himself, before the little voice in the back of his mind could ask him what he was doing, Warren gave Mary Lynn a hard shove toward the stairs that bothered her so much.

Warren shook, unable to move. A pressure overcame him, and his eardrums felt about to pop. Whatever it was behind him, whoever it was, he could feel the hatred coming off them in waves, pulsing like blacktop in summer. Unseen lips drew closer. Close enough they could kiss him. With cold breath drifting across his neck, the shadow behind him whispered into his ear.

“Look at it.”

And then he felt it on his back.

A single push.

Warren tipped over the precipice of the basement door. Either the fear or something else kept his arms from working, kept his hands from stopping his fall. His head was first to hit the basement stairs. He heard a loud crack as his neck bent sideways, and a deep, sharp pain shot through his body, followed by a messy tumble down the stairs. He felt every broken arm, every dislocated leg as he flopped and rolled down the long set of steps, ending in a hard stop on cold concrete.

Warren couldn’t move his legs. His body was shattered, his breath shallow. His eyes rolled in his skull to look back up the distance he’d fallen, up the stairs that looked a mile long from where he lay, all the way to the basement door.

It was coming up on two years since he and Mary Lynn bought the house, and one year since she’d died. Yet there she stood, black hair like a raven’s feathers, blowing softly in the draft that never left. She was pale and beautiful and cold, her eyes diamonds cut from pressure and pain.

“Please,” Warren whispered. It was all he could manage to pull from weakened lungs.

With a light touch of her small hand, she closed the still unpainted door. The dry hinge creaked like a dead tree in the winter wind. Then all light cut out, plunging both Warren and the basement into pure darkness. The black encompassed him, surrounded him, drawing the precious heat from his shattered body. Finally, the old house, the house he hated so much, was finishing the job of bleeding him dry. He could no longer feel his feet, or really much else beyond the slowing of his own heart.

Gasping like a fish, Warren summoned whatever he had left and focused on reaching the stairs. They were somewhere in front of him, in the dark. By some miracle he got his arms to work, and he began pulling himself along the frigid basement floor, useless legs dragging behind him.

Barely able to lift his head, he clutched the bottom step and pulled himself up it. The strain on his broken neck was too much to hold. His head slumped, pounding against the wood. Yet still he didn’t stop. He couldn’t, not until he reached the top. Maybe there he could call for help loud enough that someone would hear him. Maybe the nice neighbor with the red hair. There wasn’t anyone else close enough to hear. No one else who cared.

One step at a time he dragged his cold body up the stairs and toward the door, hoping to be saved, praying to be forgiven, and one step at a time, his heavy head fell and struck the wood. A thick sound, like footsteps but heavier.

Ka-thump. Ka-thump. Ka-thump.

Brian Martinez is a science fiction and horror writer. He studied Film at Long Island University, and has been known to watch a John Carpenter flick on repeat until people grow concerned. He lives in New York with his wife Natalia and their pack of dogs. 

Martinez is known for numerous apocalyptic works, including A Chemical Fire, The Mountain and The City, and the Bleeders series. He also writes The Vessel, a Space Horror podcast on all major platforms. His works have appeared on screen and in print, as well as on Youtube and in audiobook. He is currently working on The Unseen, a major, multi-character Supernatural Thriller series.

The Unseen 1: Shallow Graves

He drinks too much. He can’t hold a marriage together. And he’s our only hope against the monster that just came to town.

Franklin Butcher is a young cop with a few rough years behind him. Freshly divorced, he decides to make a new start in the small town of Shallow Creek. What better place to coast until retirement than a town where nothing happens?

His plan doesn’t work. Soon people start disappearing, and Butcher is the only one who seems to want to solve the case. He believes a new couple in town are to blame for the vanishings, but the truth is even darker than he thinks.

Before he knows it, Butcher is drawn into an unseen world of supernatural creatures that has existed in secret for centuries. It’s also a world he has more connection to than he ever imagined. Because, like Shallow Creek, Franklin Butcher has a few secrets of his own.

The Unseen is a bold new take on familiar myths, from doppelgangers to vampires, to demons, monsters and more. This is a series that can’t be missed. But be careful- once seen, this world can’t be unseen…

Bleeders 1: The Read Death

Can the world’s biggest smart-ass survive the apocalypse?

All the news channels can talk about is the Red Flu, a nasty strain that came out of nowhere to wreak havoc on the population. There’s also something the government isn’t telling the public about the Red Flu- both the secret of its true effects, and exactly how it spreads. 

Brody Tate doesn’t care. He’s a young smart-ass living in New York City, locked in a dead-end job. His only concern is telling his boss where he can shove it. Besides, the news only exists to scare people, right? 

But something is wrong. There’s blood in his boss’s office. A woman is dead on the floor. 

His boss is eating the cleaning lady. 

He kills the man in self-defense- not that the cops believe him- and gets carted away for murder. As if his day wasn’t bad enough, his boss managed to bite him during the struggle. With the Red Flu tearing up his insides, Brody finds himself in a self-destructing New York, lost in the horrors of a crumbling city while fighting to stay alive. 

The question now is, if the Red Flu doesn’t kill him, and someone with it doesn’t, what will be left of him? What will he become?

The Mountain & the City

An epidemic has killed off most humans, turning the rest into beasts with sharp nails, keen senses and an insatiable hunger. Now, years later, a solitary survivor hides in a trailer above a dead city. This is life with the door and windows taped shut, where survival comes down to two, simple rules: stay quiet, and protect the air. 

One day, a visitor comes up the mountain. It’s a meeting that leads to a fateful decision, and a sacrifice that will change everything. 

Collected here for the first time, The Mountain and The City is a post-apocalyptic serial that has kept its faithful readers on the edge of their seats time and time again.