Kindle EBook Downloads: Free ebook sample of "Masters of Horror: The Anthology" by Triskaideka Books

PAGE 7

Joesph Mulak

Wounds

PAGE 18

Angel McCoy

The Barnes family reunion

PAGE 32

Carole Gill

Truth Hurts

PAGE 45

J. C. Hart

It’s all in the Cards

PAGE 59

Marty Young

Fireflies of the Bushfire

PAGE 75

Jennifer Brozek

Cost of Job Security

PAGE 85

Scott M. Gorisak

Home Sweet Home

PAGE 98

Karen Johnson Mead

One Day

PAGE 106

Lee Pletzers

Teeth

PAGE 123

Bob Morgan Jr.

Ladies of the Scale

PAGE 136

K.K

Visitation

PAGE 148

Larry Kokko

The Clifton House

PAGE 157

Jason Warden

Once Seen

PAGE 179

William Cook

Devil Inside

PAGE 193

Richard Barnes

Something Unpleasant

PAGE 207

Mark Edward Hall

The Fear

The stories —It’s all in the Cards, Fireflies of the Bushfire, One Day, Something Unpleasant, and Devil Inside— all use British spelling, while all the other stories are standardized US spelling.

Thank you

Triskaideka Books

Wounds

Joseph Mulak

Somewhere on the mountain, a hand reached out of the snow. A few seconds later, a second hand appeared. Both were placed firmly on the ground and the small form pulled itself out of the snow, resting on its knees for a few moments before standing up.

It examined its surroundings. This place seemed somehow familiar, but it didn't know why. It also knew that there was something it was supposed to do, but wasn’t sure what.

As it scanned the area, its eyes fell upon a familiar shape at the bottom of the mountain. Again, it had no idea why it recognized it, but it had some inkling it contained bad memories. There was something about this form in the distance that filled it with anger and hatred, but instinct told it to go there, so it began a slow descent down the mountain.

Mary O'Reilly had been staring out the window for most of the day, and continued to do so well into the evening. The sun had set so gradually she hadn't even realized it had completely disappeared and night had settled in. Even through the darkness and the flurries of snow, she could still almost make out its form in the distance, almost fifteen miles away. It was easier to make out since the living room was almost in complete darkness itself, lit only by a few candles.

The mountain seemed to be looking back at her, taunting her. There was something evil about it, Mary knew. It mocked her. She pictured it with a face. Eyes that stared at her and a mouth turned up into a malicious grin.

The only time she took her eyes away from the window were when she heard the sound of a glass being set back on the table, and she would glance over at her husband, Bob, to see if he was doing anything other than drinking himself into a stupor.

Of course, he wasn't. He sat in his chair facing the television, which remained off, taking small sips from a glass every few minutes. She would only shake her head at him and turn her attention back to the window.

After a few minutes, she heard him utter a groan and when she turned back in his direction she saw the big man slowly walk into the kitchen, not even bothering to turn on the light. She noticed that he didn't bother to bring the glass with him this time. She found out why when he returned, holding a forty ounce bottle of Glennfiddich by the neck in his right hand. Apparently he had grown tired of going back and forth to the kitchen and had found a solution to the problem.

Mary watched as he sat down and poured another glass. Again, she shook her head. For almost twenty years, this is how they spent January 23^rd.

She hated to see him like this. Normally, Bob wasn't a heavy drinker. A beer or two a day was normally his limit. Some days, he didn’t drink at all.

But, as it got closer and closer to the twenty-third day of the month, she noticed her husband’s mood get steadily worse. She knew however, come morning, he would be better, and by the end of January he would be back to his jovial self.

“He'll be coming tonight,” she said without looking away from the window.

“Uh-huh.”

She waited a moment, hoping that he would at least glance in her direction. Instead, he kept staring at the black screen of the small television set, sipping from his glass.

“So, you're just going to sit there and drink all night?”

“So, you're just going to stand there and stare at that damn mountain all night?” he shot back.

“Well, what do you expect me to do? I’d like to move on, but how can I if you won’t?”

He said nothing. He picked up the glass and downed it, then twisted the cap off the bottle and refilled it once more.

It had been snowing lightly when it had begun its trek down the mountain. By the time it had reached the halfway point, a full-blown blizzard had formed. It had trouble making out the shape in the distance through the blistering snow, but instinct told it which way to go. It followed this instinct and continued on, not bothered by the storm. It knew it had something to do and, even though it wasn’t yet certain what that job was, it would let nothing deter it.

It continued on its way down, knowing its duty must be accomplished before the light came.

“I think we should move back to the city,” she said. This time it wasn't just to break the silence, but she really felt the need to leave the place they had called home for several years.

She heard a rather loud sigh come from the chair. “Not this again.” The words came out almost as a whine. “We've already talked about this.”

“Yes, we have, but I don't think I can stay here anymore. I know we moved here for a reason, but that reason is gone. I don't see why we're still here.”

“And where do you think we should go?”

“Back to Halifax.”

“I like it here. It's quiet and I like my privacy.”

“So we'll move to somewhere outside the city, but I want to at least be near it.”

“Why? What's the difference?”

“People! That's the difference. Things to do. I mean, we can't even go to the movies here. We have two restaurants to choose from if we want to go out to eat, neither one of them is what I would consider to be a nice place. I want to be able to go out and do stuff. I feel cooped up in this house. I'm going crazy here. Please, Bob, let's move back.”

“Mary, we both agreed to move here.”

“Yes, because we didn't want to raise kids in the city. We wanted to move somewhere we thought would be safer for them. Well, I don't think that applies anymore.”

He downed his drink and filled the glass once more.

“If you fill that glass one more time, I'm going to smash that bottle over your head.”

“What is your problem tonight?”

“My problem? I should be asking you the same question. It's been almost twenty years. I wish you would hurry up and get over this so we can both move on. I think moving back will help us do that.”

“Get over it? We're not talking about a pet or something here, Mary. This isn't something you just get over.”

“I know it's not. But it's been so long. How long do you want to live like this? You have to learn to forgive yourself. It was an accident.”

“Yes, but Jonathan's still dead, isn't he?”

“Yes, he is. But it's not your fault.”

“Who's idea was it to go for a hike in the mountains? In the middle of winter, no less. What was I thinking?”

“You were thinking that it would be a nice way to spend time with your son. I let you go. I didn't know how dangerous it would be. It's as much my fault as it is yours.” There was a long pause as she waited to let him consider her words. Then she continued, “Maybe we should get counseling.”

“I doubt it’ll help.”

“It couldn't hurt to try.”

“Except for the fact we can't afford it.”

“I'm sure we can find a way. We have issues that need to be resolved.”

“Like what?”

“Like what?” she yelled. “Like the fact that you’re letting this eat you up inside for twenty years! Seriously, Bob, I think you need professional help. You need to realize that Jonathan is dead and it's not your fault. In fact, maybe he died for a reason.”

She saw Bob's head peek out from behind the back of the chair. “What reason could there possibly be?”

Mary felt a lump in her throat, making it difficult for her to express the thoughts she had kept secret from her husband all these years. When the idea had first occurred to her, she was ashamed of herself. But as the years passed, the idea made more and more sense to her.

“I think God took him.”

“God?” His astonishment was obvious. “You think God killed our son?”

“Well, you weren’t working. We just about lost our home. We could barely afford to feed ourselves, let alone our son. He was suffering. I think God took him to heaven so he wouldn't suffer anymore than he already had.”

“You've got to be kidding.”

“Why? I think it makes sense.”

“Because if that were the case, why is there so many kids still suffering. Why doesn't God just take them all up to heaven? If anything, it would have been to punish us.”

“Punish us for what?”

“For having a baby when we knew there was no way we could afford it. We were being selfish, Mary.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because it’s true. What right did we have to bring a kid into the world? No job, no money. We were selfish and that’s all there is to it.” He paused to take another drink. “But the problem’s been taken care of now, hasn’t it?”

She turned to look at him, shocked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Just that Jonathan’s not suffering any-more.”

Mary eyed him suspiciously, knowing there was something he hadn’t told her. She decided not to press the matter, however, since she was tired and didn’t feel like arguing anymore.

“I’m going up to bed,” she said. “Are you coming?”

Bob shook his head. “I’m going to stay up and wait.”

She knew he would end up drinking until he passed out, as he did every year, but she chose not to try to convince him to give up and come to bed. Past experience told her it would be useless. Instead, she climbed the steps leading to the bedroom without so much as another word.

The small figure had finally made it to the bottom of the mountain, and the storm showed no sign of calming. Still, it knew the way. The shape was much closer now—it must be if it had once again become visible through the storm, but it could also feel its hatred growing as it neared the object. It knew it was almost there. It wouldn’t be long now.

Bob continued to sit in the chair, not having moved since Mary had gone to bed. The house was completely silent. Most of the candles had gone out by now. Only one remained lit. The bottle beside him was almost empty, but it hadn’t done the job tonight. The memories still remained. That shouldn’t have surprised him, but it did. It was the same every year. He drank until he could barely remember his own name, yet the events from that night, so many years before, remained with him.

Guilt and shame invaded him as he remembered everything that had happened.

The discussions between him and Mary came back to him.

He remembered he had suggested putting the boy up for adoption. As far as Mary was concerned, it was out of the question. Jonathan was her son, and no one could love him and care for him as well as she.

So, despite Bob’s protests, it was decided that the boy would stay.

It’s not that Bob didn’t love Jonathan. Quite the opposite, in fact. Bob loved him more than anything, which is why he wanted to give his son up for adoption. He had spent eight agonizing years watching him grow up and suffering as he did.

They couldn’t afford to feed him properly, which meant the boy was malnourished and weak. With every passing day, Bob hated his wife more and more as he was forced to watch Jonathan go without things he needed. They had even spent a winter with no heat, and were forced to wear their winter coats, mitts, and toques all the time, even as they slept.

Even Mary, who had been a healthy weight when she and Bob had first met, had dropped down to under a hundred pounds and Bob, who had been slightly obese, was now at his ideal weight.

He had tried several more times to convince Mary to allow the boy to be adopted by a family capable of taking proper care of him, but Mary was adamant that only she could love him as a mother loved her son.

Finally, Bob could take no more.

He went to refill his glass once more, and realized the bottle was empty. He put it back on the table, and closed his eyes.

Eventually, his body could keep itself awake no longer. His fatigue combined with the alcohol he had consumed took its toll and he unwittingly drifted into unconsciousness.

The small figure had finally reached its destination. It was a small two-story house, and something inside the creature knew it had been there before.

It spent a moment or two gazing at it trying to remember why it had been here in the past and why it was here now.

It opened the door and walked in. Everything was quiet and dark, except for a single candle resting on a table. It found itself mesmerized for a moment by the flickering flames. Then it turned to find a man sitting in the chair, his eyes closed. It stared at the man, trying to figure out how it knew him.

A feeling of déjà vu came over it. It seemed to remember being in this room before, looking at this same man as he slept in that exact chair. But the memory wasn’t a good one. For whatever reason, its hatred only increased. It didn’t take long to realize that its anger was directed toward the man.

Slowly, his eyes opened. The man stared at the creature for a long time, not saying anything. The creature stared back, trying to discern what it was about this man it hated.

Finally the man spoke to it.

“Mary was right. I don’t know how she knew, but she was right.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I wanted to believe it, but I had to be sure.”

Still, it said nothing. Just kept staring at the man before him.

“I’m so sorry,” he continued. It noticed water coming from the man’s eyes and it was having trouble discerning his words. It had to focus to understand him. “I waited so long just to tell you that.”

More water came and the man had an even more difficult time speaking.

“Please understand, I only wanted what was best for you.”

The creature reached up and felt the back of its head. There was a hole big enough for it to put a finger into and feel inside. It used its finger to feel the inner contour of the hole, causing a memory to come flooding. It was back on the mountain. The man was there too. It remembered being so happy the man had taken it there. It had wanted them to spend time together. It had run ahead, dragging a sled and laughing as the man walked slowly behind.

When it had stopped, and was looking around, he heard the man whisper something. It had sounded like, “Please forgive me, but this is the only way.” The next thing it heard was a loud noise. It felt a jolt of pain in the back of its head pushing it forward and into the snow. Next, there was only darkness.

It looked up at the man, who was still crying. Something came to it. “F-f-father?”

The man smiled. “Yes,” he said. “I am your father.”

There was another long pause and they regarded each other.

“I'm sorry,” the man said yet again. “I couldn't take care of you properly. I couldn't let you suffer, and I didn't know what else to do. Can you ever forgive me?”

It didn’t recognize the word “forgive.” It looked at this man and felt only anger and hatred. That was all it knew.

The man kept staring at it, not blinking, as if waiting for an answer from it, but it didn’t know what to say. It may not know what it meant to forgive, but somehow it knew it didn’t want to.

Its instinct kicked in once again, and it leapt on the man, knocking the chair and both of them backward. It landed on top of the man.

His eyes gave away his fear, but he didn’t struggle. He lay there and let the creature sink its teeth into his throat. Not hard at first, just enough to draw blood.

The man was breathing heavily and whimpering silently, but still didn’t struggle. It was as if he felt he deserved to die.

The creature looked into the man’s eyes. The fear and hurt in them made it feel something he hadn’t in a long time, if ever. Compassion. It had intended to hurt this man as much as it could. Revenge was the only thing it knew up to this point. But seeing this man as it had never seen him before, vulnerable, made it feel sorry for him. It no longer had the urge to torture him.

In one quick movement, it leaned in and tore his throat out in one bite. The man’s body went limp and his head thumped back, hitting the floor. Blood poured out of his throat.

The creature knew it had accomplished the task it was meant to. It wiped its mouth and left the house, making its way back up the mountain and knowing it would never come back to this house again.

The Barnes Family Reunion

Angel Leigh McCoy

“Hanging wouldn’t be so bad,” said my cousin, Wolf. “I read in a book that if your neck doesn’t break, the rope cuts off the blood to your brain. People think you die ‘cause you can’t breathe, but the truth is, you die ‘cause your brain can’t get any blood. You pass out pretty quick too, so it doesn’t hurt for long. Trouble is, it makes your face poochy and blue, and your tongue sticks out. So much for leavin’ a good-lookin’ corpse. Though, I suppose it’s better than blowing off your face with a shotgun.”

Wolf’s brother had used a shotgun. He was a mess.

My dad remarried. The wedding took place in our backyard, a year to the day after my mother went away, on my fifth birthday.

Every year, my stepmother hosted a family reunion on that date. She made coleslaw, potato salad, Jello salad, and fruit trays. She baked oatmeal-raisin cookies, sugar cookies and pies; and she decorated everything with “Happy Anniversary” banners. The invitations said, “It’s our anniversary,” and were signed, “Robert, Cindy and Jacob,” in my stepmother’s handwriting.

The entire Barnes family showed up to celebrate the anniversary of their wedding, of my birth, and of my real mother’s absence. No one ever mentioned my mom, not if I was in earshot, but they’d cast sympathetic looks at me while they talked behind their hands. Most of them thought she had run off.

My dad mingled, stoic as a fence post, nodding and shaking hands. He worked at the paper factory, hefting boxes of paper like they were pillows. His upper arms bulged inside his shirt sleeves. He had a flat-top haircut that he imposed on me as well. He rarely spoke, and I can’t remember a time when he didn’t have a beer close at hand, unless he was on his way to get one.

On those anniversaries, once the adults were too trashed to come looking for me, I’d slip away to my room and bring out the scrapbook I kept hidden deep in my closet. I’d look at the happy pictures and remember my less-than-happy last hours with my mom. It was my fourth birthday. She was yelling at him. She was angry. She said she was leaving.

My dad just stood there, not saying anything, not doing anything…until he quietly took a handful of her hair and pushed her head down in the dishwater. He held her there until she was quiet too.

Every year, at the anniversary party, just before the barbecued meat was ready, my stepmother would waddle over to stand at the end of the picnic table, in the backyard, push her bleached perm-curls out of her face, raise her beer bottle to the crowd of relatives, and deliver her speech.

It always began, “If y’all will indulge me for a minute.” Her southern lilt came out when she was speaking in public, as if she had suddenly become dainty. Conversations halted when she started her speech. Everyone knew it was the precursor to the serving of the food.

“Thank you for coming to help Rob and me celebrate our anniversary. On the day we got married, we were blessed. Lord knows why, because we both made terrible mistakes before that…” and everyone laughed, “…but God saw fit to grant us a miracle. He gave us a second chance at happiness.”

They’d kiss, and the gathering on the lawn would cheer, raise their beers in salute, and drink. By that time, most of them were half-lit.

“Oh,” my stepmother would add, “and it’s Jacob’s birthday.” She’d search the crowd for me and blow me a kiss if she found me.

When I was nine, she blew me that kiss, and I flipped her off. My dad came after me. “Stop right there,” he growled, when I turned to flee. “You run, and it’ll be twice as bad when I catch up with you.”

He had to dig for it in my fist, but he got hold of my finger. He bent it all the way back. I heard the pop through crashing pain.

“Okay, everybody,” my stepmother said, white-faced, as my dad dragged me to the kids’ table and sat me on the bench, “the burgers are comin’ off the grill. Get ya a plate, and don’t forget to take a big helping of Marcy’s potato salad. She’s outdone herself this year.”

“You don’t get up from there until I say you can,” my dad said.

Questions of “What’d he do?” rippled through the crowd. And, “You didn’t see? He flipped Cindy the bird.” They laughed. Serving spoons clanked against bowls. Someone peeled the plastic wrap off Marcy’s potato salad. “Little shit. I reckon he won’t do that again.”

I never did that again.

At the anniversary two years later, I was eleven, and I made him mad again. I took my plate of food and sat beneath the old apple tree, in the far corner of the yard. The tree’s branches dappled the sunlight and whispered in the breeze. The sweet mushy aroma of rotting apples brought back memories of my mom’s apple sauce and apple butter, of the steam rising off the pan where she was boiling the apple slices, of how she looked standing there, sweaty in the heat of the kitchen, of her smile, of her touch.

I knew my dad hated it when I sat there. The moment he saw me, he came at me, grabbed me by the arm and lifted me to my feet. My plate of food went flying. My hamburger exploded; coleslaw, pickle relish, and ketchup splashed across the splotchy grass.

He wrenched my arm, put his hard, reddened face close to mine and said, “What’d I tell you about sittin’ under this tree?”

He’d told me not to do it, because he knew I knew.

I’d been sitting on the spot where he’d buried my mother. I’d done it on purpose. It was worth the split lip.

On their eighth wedding anniversary, my thirteenth birthday, the ninth anniversary of my mother’s death, my thirteen-year-old cousin Wolf found his way to my room. He stood in the doorway, dressed in black jeans and an old leather jacket that was too big for him and too heavy for a summer’s day, and he said, “Happy birthday.” He pulled a dirt-encrusted marble out of his pocket and tossed it to me. “This is for you.” The marble had a streak of rusty red inside, a nosebleed captured in amber. It was a shooter, not just any old marble.

“I was gonna keep it for myself,” he said. “I found it down at the park. But, since it’s your birthday, and all… well, I reckon I found it for you.” He stepped into my room. “Nice ceiling fan,” he said. “You know, if a guy were to put it on high and line himself up just right, on a ladder or something, he could stick his head in and have it hit him on the temple. It’d kill him quick, if he did it right. Trouble is the chances of timing it just perfect—on purpose—are pretty damn slim. People die that way by accident all the time though. Funny, don’t ya think?”

Next to Wolf, I was the all-American boy, with my flat-top, striped shirt and Levi jeans. My wardrobe never varied much, purchased by my stepmother, pieces replaced as I wore them out or grew out of them, always practical. Whereas I was beige on the outside and black on the inside, Wolf was black throughout. We became inseparable.

The summer following my fourteenth birthday, Wolf and I went to the county fair. We took a pass through the 4-H barn. We strolled between the grunting, stinking pigs in pens. Hay and mud clung to our sneakers, and Wolf, pinching his nose against the stench, said, nasal and squeaky, “I read in a book that pigs will eat anything you put in front of them, even people.”

The pigs watched us with their beady eyes. They stuck their filthy snouts through the bars at us, sniffing and grunting. Their ears pricked up as we approached, and they lifted their matted heads.

Wolf commented, “I suppose, if a guy didn’t have any starving dogs around, he could throw himself in a pen with starving pigs, and they’d eat him to death.” He swatted at a biting fly.

Outside the barn, we stood looking at the rides. “What do you wanna do now?” Wolf asked, but before I could answer, he said, “Let’s ride the Ferris wheel,” and so we did. Sitting in the swinging, metal car, high over the fair grounds, we watched the people get smaller and smaller, then bigger and bigger, smaller, bigger, smaller, and when the ride stopped with us at the very top, Wolf said, “We’re 48 meters up. That’s 144 feet. That’s like…15 stories or something. You’d think that a guy who jumped from here would sure as hell be dead, but it ain’t always so. I read in a book where this one guy jumped off a Ferris wheel and walked away ‘cause he landed on sand.” Wolf leaned out over the lap-bar to look down, and the steel basket pitched forward.

I said, “My great-uncle was sliding down the balcony in my great-great-grandpa’s house, and he fell off. He fell twenty feet or something. He died. Cracked his head right open.”

“That’s what I’m talkin’ about,” Wolf replied. The Ferris wheel jerked as it started up again, and our car rocked. Wolf was thrown back in his seat.

I told him, “Everybody said it had to have been an accident. He was only fourteen.”

“We’re fourteen.”

“Yeah.”

Wolf and I gorged ourselves on cotton candy and both fell asleep in his parents’ station wagon on the way home. They dropped me at my house and waited until I’d gone inside.

My stepmother hated dirt in her house, and she hated worse having dirty shoes at the front entrance—the visitor’s entrance. My shoes had mud caked in the grooves of the soles and halfway up the sides. I had come in through the front door, half-asleep, and half-comatose with sugar overload. I leaned against the wall and began to take off a shoe.

My stepmother began to shriek. “Look at you! You stupid son of a bitch! What have I told you? Not in my house! Holy Jesus, you smell like shit. Get out!” She tried to push me back out the door.

I had one shoe on and one half-off.

She shoved.

I stepped on my own shoelace and lurched to the side. My arm slammed into the door jamb. It hurt.

“Wait a minute!” I cried. “Let me get my….”

But she just gave me another shove, both hands on my chest. “Get out of my house!” Her voice had risen even higher, louder.

“Stop shoving me, you stupid bitch!” I screamed at her.

“What’d you call me?” She shoved me again, and this time, I raised my arm to swipe her hands away from me. My forearm came up under her chin, hard enough to make her teeth clack and her head snap back.

“You hit me!” She held her jaw, eyes wild with fury.

“What’s going on?” My dad was coming down the back hallway.

“I can’t deal with him anymore!” My stepmother slammed the door in my face and threw the deadbolt.

I stood there, fuming, staring at the door, one shoe in my hand. I hit the door with the shoe. Pig shit and mud splattered across it. I hit it again and again.

The neighbor’s porch light came on.

My dad didn’t lose control often, but when he did, he was as unpredictable and as deadly as a cobra. I knew that about him, but I was too angry to be quiet.

When he came after me, I egged him on. Some might say I had a death wish. “It had to have been an accident,” they’d say. “He was only fourteen.”

Wolf lived another six months before he made his first real attempt. Later, he described it as his trial run. In the middle of the night, while his parents were sleeping, he went out to the garage, started up the station wagon, and then lay down in the back with his hands crossed on his chest. His dad found him. He was unconscious, barely breathing, but not dead. He spent a couple months in hospitals after that, first one to fix his body, then one to fix his mind.

“You know,” said Wolf, speaking to no one in particular, “if it wasn’t for that horrible taste—the exhaust, ya know—that’d be a sweet way to go, but that smell gets in your nose and your mouth, and it’s hard not to cough. I thought for sure I was gonna hurl, and no guy wants to be found with chunks all over him.”

That same year, my dad’s youngest brother died with his head in a gas oven.

Wolf was sixteen, and had just gotten his driver’s license, when he turned goth. He listened to Bauhaus songs like “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” and Siouxsie and the Banshee’s “The Ghost in You.” Black became his wardrobe. Wolf wrote poetry with lines like, “I am dead and gone. It won’t be long.” He read aloud the poetry of Keats and Poe, and Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, in English and in his burgeoning French.

“C’est l’Ennui! I’ve got a big ennui!” Wolf said. He was translating the introduction to Les Fleurs du Mal. “His eye brimming with an involuntary tear, he dreams of gallows while he smokes his hookah. You know him, reader, this delicate monster—hypocritical reader—my kindred spirit—my brother!” Wolf nodded.

My grandpa, on my dad’s side, murdered my grandma with an axe. He hacked off her limbs, then cleaned everything up. He wrapped grandma in a sheet and stuffed her in the laundry tub. Then, he sat down on her and drew a kitchen knife across his own neck.

When he heard about it, Wolf said, “Hey, you got your murder in my suicide. Hey, you got your suicide in my murder! Two great tastes that tastes great together.”

Later, he also said, “Sometimes, I think a guy just doesn’t want to go alone.”

A few months later, Wolf’s dad, my uncle, drove the station wagon over the median into oncoming traffic. He took three others with him when he died, including Wolf’s mother, my Aunt Marcy of potato-salad fame. I’d often wished that my uncle had been my dad, but when it came right down to it, he’d been an accomplice like the others. He’d watched, maybe even laughed. He’d never questioned. He’d been a Barnes through and through.

He’d called my dad one night, a few weeks before he killed himself. “Robert,” he said. “Is there anything I should know? Anything you want to tell me? About Jacob?”

My dad hadn’t confessed anything, of course. I don’t know what I’d have done if he had. It might have changed everything.

I had been telling my uncle the truth in midnight whispers that seeped into his dreams. He had started questioning then, and the answers had withered his soul until he had nothing left.

“The majority of people’s lives are absurd,” Wolf told his psychiatrist. “We’re like ants performing the same tasks day in and day out. We delude ourselves into thinking that what we do serves a greater purpose, but the world of the living has no greater purpose. It is the ultimate in perpetual motion and faux progress.”

Wolf’s second attempt was after his parents died.

He finished off his entire bottle of Paxil and proceeded to run around the neighborhood in a state of delirium, in his underwear, until his muscles seized up on him, and he collapsed on a neighbor’s lawn with police and rescue surrounding him. He’d hunched, gagged and puked a slick spew of milk, pills, and pop-tart.

“Poison,” Wolf said later, “is not the way to go.”

My stepmother put poison in the brownies she’d baked for dessert. She knew my dad loved her brownies.

Over the years, my whispers to her had been merciless. I told her time and again how wonderful my mom had been and how much I’d loved her. I told her about her husband, my dad, the murderer, and what he’d done to my mom. I told her what he’d done to me and how he’d lied to her about where I’d gone. I wasn’t living with relatives. There were no other relatives—not anymore.

She began to fear my dad, to jump when he entered the room, and to take extra care not to upset him. I was patient with her. I fed her fears. I made her realize how unimportant she was. I brought her to the brink of her own nothingness, and I made sure that when she decided she was ready to go, she took my dad with her.

In her final days, she tried to go about her business as usual, but my whispers threw her off kilter. While my dad was at work, she dug through his drawers and his boxes in the garage, looking for paperwork or a phone number scribbled on a scrap—anything she could use to track me down and prove to herself that I wasn’t dead.

Whereas before, she’d been content to accept my father’s explanations at face-value, my whispers had made her obsessed with finding evidence, a clue to vindicate or convict him.

She found me, right where I told her I’d be, in the garden, deeper than flowers required. The shovel snagged an arm bone. She knew what it was. She dug until she unearthed my shoe, the one I’d lost, the one he’d tossed in on my chest, the one encrusted with pig sty mud. She couldn’t touch it. At first, she couldn’t look at it. It took her awhile, but I encouraged her.

I was patient. I waited. I whispered. I coaxed.

She was crying, the tears streaming down her face, her whole body shaking, but I knew she wasn’t sad. She was scared.

She covered me back up, then went inside, showered and changed.

That afternoon, she baked the brownies.

My dad, ever the stoic, ate in silence. It didn’t take long for the poison to affect him. He rubbed his hands over his face, lightly at first, then more harshly. He put his head in one hand and let the other flop onto the table. “I ain’t right,” he said, but his tongue had gone numb.

I stayed nearby, watching. I’d never dared whisper to him. Even after everything, I was still afraid of him. But then, with his stomach beginning to heave against the poison, I found the courage to say what I’d always wanted to say.

I leaned in close and whispered, “I hate you.”

“What’d you do, Cindy?” he asked, chin down, eyes turned up so that the whites were thick pools beneath black pupils.

My stepmother just sat there with her perfect brownie, untouched on the plate in front of her, vanilla ice cream melting across it.

My dad doubled over. Leaning on the table, he got up on his feet. He stumbled toward the telephone. He wasn’t ready to go. He was going to fight it the whole way, just as I’d hoped he would.

My stepmother had taken the upstairs phone off the hook—a stroke of murderous brilliance, if I do say so myself.

I heard the rhythm of my dad’s breathing change as he listened to death on the phone line. He dropped the receiver and clutched his chest. When his convulsions started, they started violent. He fell to the floor, body quaking. The convulsions eased into shivering. His breathing, too, went from ragged to slow—too slow. His face took on the same lax, stoic expression he always wore, but his eyes revealed the pain caused by the fire in his belly.

“See you in Hell, Robert,” my stepmother said and dug her fork into the brownie.

Despite our predictions to the contrary, Wolf survived high school. He failed P.E. with pride, but got straight As in Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. At the end of it, he was accepted to M.I.T. and entered the Philosophy program.

In college, Wolf uncovered a whole new layer of knowledge to feed his obsessions. He studied rationalism, nihilism and existentialism. He read Plato, Descartes, and Nietzsche. It was Nietzsche who said, “That which does not destroy us makes us stronger,” to which Wolf added, “and then we die.” He dove into the works of the master philosophers. He sat in coffee shops with books piled around him, and I sat there with him, listening to him talk and reading over his shoulder.

Wolf had big ideas, and everything our other family members might have cared about paled in comparison. He was finding worlds in grains of sand.

I whispered the truth to Wolf. He heard me better than anyone. He knew I was there, telling him things. He investigated, and he involved the police. They found my mom, and they found me.

Toward the end of junior year in college, Wolf made his third and final attempt. He stayed in his dorm room, in silent meditation, for a whole day.

When he finally spoke, he said, “I’m the last Barnes. Everyone else is gone.” He said, “Are you here, Jacob? I’m ready.”

“You don’t understand,” I whispered to him. “You’re the one who lives.”

“Our genes imprison us,” he murmured, as much to himself as to me. He sat cross-legged on the flat, hard twin bed.

He says, “All the great philosophers are saying the same thing,” voicing his thoughts aloud, giving them substance. “We have to split open the man to release the god trapped inside. It’s Dadaism, turning flesh and blood into energy and light, into the flow of atoms and the spark of energy that we are. It’s Nietzsche’s Superman. It’s Augustine’s City of God whose gates are shut to those who cling to the City of Man.”

I told him, “You’re different from the others. You’re not nothing.”

Wolf’s brown eyes shone as if he knew the secret of the universe. “Camus said that the only truly serious philosophical problem is suicide.” He smiled. “And I have to agree with him.”

He opened his book bag and took out the paper he’d been working on for weeks or decades. The title read, “A Philosophy of Life and Death.” The author was listed as Wolf Elias Barnes, and it was dedicated to Jacob Barnes, me.

“It’s my magnum opus,” Wolf said. “I wrote it for you, Jacob, because of you. I never forgot you.” He dipped his hand back into his book bag and drew out a gun. He put the barrel to his head, just behind his ear.

“Don’t,” I whispered, but he didn’t hear me. My magic worked over time, whispers in the dark, suggestions from the shadows, reminders of sin and sorrow. Those were my tools. I had no power in the immediacy of the moment.

Wolf’s eyes, lit by the golden light of late afternoon, didn’t waver. He looked upward, into infinity, and held his breath. His mouth curled up at the corners and twitched in anticipation.

Truth Hurts

by Carole Gill

They trusted Tony Sutton; it was as simple as that. Handsome, erudite—a fixture of London society, a bon vivant—a must have at every party. And a great fan of horror films and books. He had written one or two horror novels himself, but his writing was considered outdated. His publisher Greg Winton had told him to try to update his work.

“Ah my dear man, I don’t think I can ever write what I don’t feel,” he had replied.

Greg let him go. He had a brighter star on the horizon. Desiree Dawn, formerly known as Harriet Pringle had come out of left field. Greg Winton’s new Dark Love imprint line with its focus on paranormal romance had really taken off with Desiree’s books leading the way.

Her kind of books seemed to be all the rage with their tales of handsome vampires—romanticized blood suckers invariably attired in crushed velvet—cursed to walk the earth as the undead but with regular and satisfying sex from a variety of libidinous ladies.

Desiree’s recent Innocents of the Night Series had even caught the attention of some Hollywood types. When Greg heard that, he had decided to invite her and her boyfriend to dinner at one of London’s best restaurants in order to tell her.

He had hinted all through dinner that he had fantastic news for her but refused to tell her until after dessert.

At last the time came.

“My darling! You’ve done it again! It’s a film they’re talking about!”

Desiree, devastating in black satin with her favorite two-legged poodle, Scott in tow, was delighted. “A film? Really?”

“Yes and well—I’ve saved the best for last, my love!”

Obviously he was going to make her guess and so she glanced at Scott. “He’s too cruel! Tell him to tell us what it is.”

Scott started to obey, but Greg cut him off. “My old friend, Tony Sutton, is throwing a huge do at his place and he’s having movie people there! Two of them! A Hollywood director and screen writer and we’re all invited!”

“A party? When is this for?”

“Saturday!”

“Saturday, but that’s so soon! I have so much to do—a frock and—!” She stopped when she saw Greg was beginning to look annoyed. And since she didn’t want to appear ungrateful she gushed: “Oh heavens of course I’ll go—won’t that be wonderful, Scott?”

Scott stifled a yawn and waited for her to hand him her credit card because he had forgotten to ask for it earlier.

Botox treatment, her hair done and the purchase of a lovely Vivienne Westwood dress was all accomplished quickly and efficiently so that within three days Desiree was happily studying her reflection yet again.

The clam and onion diet had paid off. “Scott! Don’t I look thinner?”

No reaction whatsoever. He was in one of his truculent moods. She hated when he was like that, but he was and if she didn’t know it then she knew it when he asked, “How old is he?”

“Who darling?”

“That Tony Sutton—how old is he?”

Des froze. Being on the wrong side of forty, she hated when twenty-something Scott mentioned age. “What does it matter? He’s just eternal. No one really knows how old he is.”

“When did he make that first movie of his? That scary one—didn’t it come out in the 1950’s?”

She thought a moment. “Oh you mean Blood of the Werewolf? No love, it was the late sixties.”

“No, I’m certain it was 1957.”

“Don’t be silly.”

Scott looked it up. “Yes,” he said. “1957. Look.”

She walked over to the laptop. It was that movie site again. They must have had every bloody film that was ever made listed there. She wrinkled her nose. “Well I suppose he was barely out of school.”

“But Des—even if that was so, he’d be in his late sixties now wouldn’t he?”

Des threw her head back. It was one of her favorite diva gestures. “Well, however old he is, he’s still got his looks.”

“Good face lifts.”

Ooh he was being a right bastard today. He probably wanted more of an allowance. “There’s nothing wrong with a nip and tuck,” she replied. But he didn’t answer, which made it worse. “Well however old he is my love, he’s still attractive to the ladies!”

“Yeah desperate ladies!”

She felt like slapping him but instead put on her best coquette expression. “You’re not jealous are you? I’d never let him come between us.”

Some of the guests were already there. Others like himself who flitted in and out of the public eye. Sutton had lots of friends but these were his inner circle. More than friends really—friends came and went sometimes as the saying goes, but these—these were more like family. Close family that understood one another—that had the same values and needs and likes and dislikes—brethren almost.

Tony stood admiring them from afar. He liked to do that sometimes. Extracting himself from a situation to become a neutral observer. He did this now and he smiled, for he liked what he saw.

They were sitting on the terrace quietly waiting for the party to begin. There were three women, exquisitely turned out creatures, accompanied by three equally handsome men.

At first they appeared bored. Languishing as they did on lounge chairs or occasionally sauntering across the terrace’s tiled floor to gaze at the moon or glance sadly at one another.

Yet if they looked dreamy, their eyes gave them away, for a mad intensity burned there. Like a needful glow waiting for fulfillment.

Suddenly Tony turned to see his oldest and dearest friend Max watching him. Max, distinguished and with the bearing of an aristocrat, had, it seemed, always been his friend.

“You look pleased.”

Tony nodded. His equally handsome features were brightened by a satisfied smile. “I am! And so are you, you old rascal.”

Max laughed. “Thank you for that. I’d rather be called rascal than roué!”

“Why is that?”

“Roué is more derogatory for one thing! Whereas rascal is kind of devilish!"

Tony shook his head. “Devilish! Now that does suit!”

“You think?”

But Tony didn’t answer, instead he just smiled.

“You took a wrong turn.” Scott was sitting next to Des as she drove with Greg in the back.

“No I didn’t! I know my way around East Sussex!”

“Oh you do not! You haven’t any occasion to come here, it’s too posh!”

“Now now children, don’t fight. It’ll show on your faces and we don’t want that now do we?”

Desiree didn’t answer she was too busy glancing around. They had been on this back road for some time. Perhaps they were lost.

“Des, I still think you took a wrong turn!”

“Oh shut up will ya!”

Scott turned his head. “You see Gregg how her Queen’s English goes right out the window when she’s annoyed?”

“Oh shut your fucking mouth! You’re making me nervous!”

Scott harrumphed and sat staring stonily ahead. “I don’t see lights or anything in any direction! We’re lost!”

“I told you there wouldn’t be any road lights. It’s the country, darling.” She was starting to sound like Des again. She probably didn’t want to piss him off too badly. “It’s supposed to be two miles from the motorway. Just be patient.”

Neither of them answered her, which made her even tenser. But then a miracle occurred, or so it seemed, as a twinkling castle began to emerge from a copse of trees.

“There! You see? I knew I was right!”

The three of them gasped as it came into view. It was a spectacular sight.

“However could he afford such a place?” Greg was clearly in awe. “He hasn’t made a film or published in years!”

“Well even if that’s so, he does all those adverts in Japan and places, so he must earn plenty.”

Scott looked sullen. “I think it’s overdone!”

“Oh shut up Scott, it’s fabulous! I’ve never seen anything like it!” Desiree felt she had now come into her element. This was the kind of place she wanted to be invited to. “I can’t believe how grand it looks!”

She drove her Mercedes onto the driveway. “Look! Valet parking and everything! I wonder if we’re the first to arrive.”

They weren’t. There was Tony’s inner circle. “My, they are stylish.”

“They are attractive. I’ll say that,” Greg said.

“They look like well-dressed Goths and rent boys to me.”

“Well they don’t to me so don’t spoil it, Scott!”

Tony greeted them. “Ah my friends! Do come in, and let us await our Hollywood friends arrival!”

Tony introduced them all around. “These lovely ladies are my muses, aren’t you darlings?”

They were extremely attractive, if dressed rather violently Des thought. Swathed in black with black lipstick and gobs of black eyeliner they looked extremely Gothic. Beautiful, but sad, as though they were lost in some mournful yet romantic world of their own.

Desiree began to make mental notes for one of her stories.

Three of the men looked young, and Des noticed with amusement how attentive Greg was with them. They were beautiful boys really, delicately featured, sweetly pale, and they seemed to hang on his every word.

Soon her eyes fell on a particularly distinguished looking man Tony introduced as his oldest friend, Max.

“I can’t believe I am at last meeting you, Miss Dawn!”

Desiree sensed a blush coming on. “You’re too kind!”

Max wasn’t finished. “I have never read anything so remarkable in all my existence as your novels!”

Des began to giggle. “How charmingly put!”

She might have remained beaming at him had she not noticed the Goth sisters wrapping themselves around Scott. She sailed over and led him forcefully away. “Come darling, the tour has begun!”

The entrance hall was immense, marble floored and arrayed with Greco Roman statues. Off to the side was a magnificent library.

It was wonderful being shown around such a mansion, and Des would have enjoyed it more had she not been watching Scott out of the corner of her eye. It seemed he was seriously taken with those three Gothic pieces.

She could have hit him and happily ripped those simpering sirens apart if given the chance.

Max seemed to notice. “I think your friend is distracted, but then again so am I, for you are a distracting woman.”

The pleasure she normally would have felt receiving a compliment like that was dampened by her mood.

Tony noticed her discomfort. “Perhaps the upstairs tour later,” he said. “Let us have our drinks now.”

They were just being served when a servant announced the Hollywood guests had arrived.

The director was rather flamboyantly dressed—expensively attired, yet somewhat over the top with all sorts of necklaces dangling from his tanned neck. Des wondered how he got through the airport’s metal detectors.

The screenwriter looked more toned down with designer stubble and an Armani suit, and no jewelry at all except for his Rolex, which he made certain was visible.

The two looked in awe but tried to cover it up. “Damned delay at Heathrow!” The director said. Trying, Des thought, to sound British. “And you must be the author!”

Desiree drifted gracefully over to him. “I am. What a pleasure to meet you.”

“The pleasure is all mine, dear lady! This is Jason, Moving On’s best screen writer.”

Moving On, what silly names studios had nowadays, Desiree thought. But she smiled and twinkled.

“We’re so lucky to have him! He will do justice to your novel, my dear Desiree. Just you wait!”

A liveried servant came in just then to announce dinner. “Ladies and Gentleman if you’ll follow me please.”

Scott rolled his eyes but Desiree didn’t care she was too busy admiring everything.

If she was already impressed before, she nearly gasped when she entered the dining room, for it was opulent. Richly furnished with massive crystal chandeliers and fine china, she quite felt as though she was dining at Buckingham Palace.

There were four courses, each heavenly if unknown. She would have preferred to know what she was eating, but she didn’t want to look like a peasant.

Half way through the meal, the director began speaking of the movie. “Now naturally we’ll want your input as author—but we have a vision! A real idea of how we want to do this thing!”

Though delighted with the entire venture, Des began to suddenly grow uneasy. “I am committed to the essence of the story—I mean I wouldn’t like to see serious changes or anything.”

The screenwriter raised his hand. “I know what you mean. Your work is important to me—its truth will remain as you intended.”

“And so it should!” Tony said. “Truth should never be denied whatever the consequences!”

A strange thing happened just then as each of the three grimly attired ladies began to giggle. It seemed so out of character for them. They stopped as soon as they sensed their host’s displeasure.

Tony nodded to them.

As if on cue one of the women spoke: “Oh Tony, do show everyone your magic!”

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