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Current Issue: May 2012, Issue #36 |
Guest Poet Candice James
THE ROOM
Inside this sinister paradigm of doom
Surrounding me with unholy noises,
The walls vibrate with the dirge of the undead
And crack under the high pitched screech of rabid bats.
Eerie, ghostly vapours
Trickle in under the warped petrified doors
Of this floating room of secrets I’m locked in.
Guest Poet John Taylor; Photo credit Chris Daw
Come into the garden, Maud,
It’s a lovely day outside
Come into the garden, Maud,
Whilst the sun is in the sky
Step across the threshold,
And lift your head up high!
Come into the garden, Maud,
It’s a lovely day to die…
Guest Author Arthur Davis
Ronnald was a busboy. He was neither imposing nor content. He was delighted, as was his bent, to roam the city when he wasn’t cleaning tables, and take hold of any vehicle that passed his way and lift it, passengers and all, high over his head for whatever length of time pleased him.
Walter Lincoln, who was not impressed by his last name, as it was his tendency to change it every few days, was plainly quite docile and, though he stood on the same street corner every day hawking newspapers, he never sold one. But that didn’t dampen his aspirations, or his confidence that one day he would make it big.
Ronnald spent most nights bussing tables at local nightclubs. It didn’t matter how many patrons had been eating or drinking or the extent of the mess they left. He was a master of movement and hand speed, of depth perception and dexterity. He was also a born juggler, if only of dishes, cups and glasses. Ronnald was naturally gifted at what he did, and when you’ve been so blessed and you embrace the measure of your potential, there is nothing you can’t accomplish.
Ronnald could clear thirty or forty tables in the same time another busboy would take to clear a half dozen. When he was in one of his really productive moods, he could work the night shift clearing and cleaning all the tables at two clubs, as long as they were close by one another. He never thought to ask for more money for his labor. He collected the same check whether his station included a dozen tables or many times that number. (more…)
Guest Author David Rhodes
The curtains were drawn over all the windows, and only a reading lamp on a small table next to a recliner was lit, with an aged leather bound book splayed under the lamp. Drake noticed Lee gazing at the book.
“Are you a fan of the classics, Officer?”
“Actually, yes, I am. But that’s not the reason we’re here Mr. Drake.”
“Yes, I already know that you’re here on business, so let’s get to the matter at hand, shall we?” he said in that pure English accent. He didn’t look any older than Thad Wendt.
“Mr. Drake, what is that horrible smell? It seems to be coming from everywhere,” Fisher asked.
“Well, I imagine part of the reason the last residents moved out was because of the rodent problem.”
“Actually,” Lee said, “a man committed suicide in the master bedroom, after being accused of shaking his baby to death.”
“Well, no matter,” Drake said, and the two policemen looked at each other slightly bewildered. “I saw a lot of things from my days in London, so nothing really shocks me.” (more…)
Guest Author Glenn James
It sang like a mournful lost lover, the winter wind through the treetops, and Carey reached out to it with all his heart. The lost song of the wind caressed and called to him, reaching longingly out as she called down the chimney in the dead of the night, whistling between the houses like a lost soul, and treading the forest roof like a searching ghost.
It called to Carey achingly, as he paused in his walk through the forest, eyes closed and face raised to the black and bare February branches against the cloud-chased winter sky, and lost himself in her song.
It was an ancient Beech wood, surprisingly close to the city centre, and it was his sanctuary, his refuge. Reforestation was being encouraged all along the line of the ancient woodland track, and Carey walked here all the time at night, enjoying the simple serenity away from modern life. He hated the intrusive, unsympathetic cut of amber streetlights dissecting the night, and longed for older days when a soul could take pleasure in his surroundings: For days long gone, when you could walk uninterrupted and treasure the dark caress of the wind in the trees, and look forever at the eternal unfolding variety of the stars, (and actually see them), without any of their wonder being diminished by cheap artificial light.
Here, you could recapture something of that shadowed pleasure. The wind ran her fingers searchingly through his hair, and spread the long tails of his coat wide like the canvas of a tall ship, as Carey stood alone in the night with a blissful smile. And when Carey happened to open his eyes in the light of a crescent moon, he discovered with some surprise that he was not alone. Way above him, high over the treetops, he thought he saw something move. (more…)
Altman Speaks out on Her new Novel Trilogy and the already amazing success she is having,…”I am overwhelmed” the author says when she is asked about it, not that it is flying off the shelves or off the internet, but so few really know about it as of yet , It has only been out in Hardback less than 30days and out on Kindle about 45 days….and for the time it has been out, it is selling, on it’s own it seems to have it’s own special angels wings……
Just in the last two weeks their has been Hollywood Press all over it. being compared to Twilight,
“It is crazy when I think about the merchandise in the works fro the Cinderella Chronicles Trilogy,…some of the major players in this field whom are making the dolls that Look so much like me, it seems so surreal yet so odd, and normal at same time, we have over 50 pieces that are in the works, from sport drinks to energy drinks to clothing toys etc…”
“As I speak with Joseph, and was interviewed here in his magazine in September, things have come along way…,” (more…)
Guest Author Arthur Davis
You had to be there. Lorraine Cassidy was. At five foot-two and a hundred and six pounds, the brown-eyed Cincinnati nurse with a penchant for Bakelite bracelets watched Hector Ramarez gun down his brother in the alleyway that lead to the courtyard separating their buildings.
She wasn’t the only one who heard the muffled pistol shot, just the only one who responded by vomiting up her dinner. It was not that she was more sensitive or curious than most. She had already passed her quota of violence at precisely three-nineteen in the afternoon when a woman was carried into the emergency room screaming and cursing and, oblivious to the handle of a nine-inch hunting knife protruding from her right side. This was a neighborhood where screams and arguments and threats built up after dusk and reached a crescendo by midnight, and were unrelenting on weekends. There was no point in clocking the hellish environment where the Ramarez brothers tried to eke out a living off of stolen cars and sometimes a little grander enterprise.
Lorraine Cassidy witnessed more than a murder that night. She would be witness to the end of her own life. Of course, she could not know that at the time. The horror of working in the emergency room at Oakdale Hospital for three years and in a trauma ward in her previous job had inured her to the most horrific possibilities life could conjure. After a point, as one of her friends said after joining the trauma team, “you just stop thinking and feeling and set your brain on automatic. You switch off when you get there and switch back on when you leave.’” (more…)
Guest Author Glenn James
An attempted burglary at the ancient Worcester Cathedral results in two very curious and disturbing discoveries: One of the intruders is found in a fathomless coma before the great East Doors, and a curious and disturbing book is discovered close to the tomb of the notorious Plantagenet Monarch, wicked King John…. Unfortunately this is just the start of a series of shocking and unprecedented haunting’s, whose cause go back a very long way indeed…..
Part Two: Books and Bindings
By Glenn James © Copyright Glenn James 2011
When Tracey Trancey was found in an unconscious state, below the great East doors of Worcester Cathedral early in the morning by a shocked Verger, he made an uncannily intuitive leap in the dark that something must be amiss. He had just found the scattered crowbars, torch, and levers down by King John’s Tomb, and quickly putting two and two together he made a quick search of the perimeter of the building. He didn’t expect to find the perpetrator lying in such a mangled state right under the great East window, and was on his mobile to the old bill before he thought to check her pulse. When he rather shamefacedly thought to do so, he found she was dead to the world, and anxiously informing the constabulary about the situation he half ran, half walked back to the Verger’s Office, where his news bulletin caused considerable consternation and much dropping of digestives into hot tea.
The rather sinister little book, with it’s deeply embossed skin covering, was not immediately noticed amongst the scattered tools, and went unregarded for some time. It bided it’s time quietly. (more…)
Guest Author David Rhodes
Had there not been a screen on his mother’s bedroom window, Thad would have been even more startled than he had been at what he saw there. In fact, for a little while he had been downright frightened, his heart flip-flopping as he walked into that room and flicked on the light. The blinds were raised, the window slid open, and on the other side of the window was a face staring into the room. It was void of any facial hair, and one of the first things Thad noticed was how pale it looked. The man’s eyes (for it was obviously a man) were wide and moist, unblinking, and the mouth was slightly open, revealing slender teeth.
Thad barely had time to react before the face was swallowed up by the night, and although the window was open, the face was gone without a single minute sound. No footsteps, or rustling through the grass on the side of the house. He did not even see which way it had gone.
Thad jumped back into the hall, out of sight of the window. Heart pumping double-time, breathing as if he had just ran a long distance race – he managed a peek around the doorway, and saw nothing in the window. The intruder had not returned. (more…)
Guest Author Paul DeThroe
Bonzai was a twelve year old boy with an active, some would say, wild imagination. Where others saw only the typical, he saw the fantastic. He had no friends to speak of, no siblings and he was a latchkey kid, meaning his parents were always at work when he got home from school. Even worse for him, his parents usually worked late, so Bonzai was alone most of the time. He lived in a house that was remotely hidden in the woods. It was a beautiful house that sat at the end of a long driveway, far away from neighbors and hence, any other children. He spent most of his time playing games by himself in his imaginary world.
His father, who was a businessman, would often tell Bonzai that he should put his imagination to good use by being artistic; creating music or writing. Bonzai would just laugh at his dad and go back into his own little world. His only ambition had always been to become a dragon slayer. The problem with that was that dragons had been extinct for many centuries. But he wouldn’t let that stop him; he would just create his own dragons.
He felt most at home amongst the trees that surrounded his house and his world. Pine trees were castles to Bonzai, especially the ones that had huge limbs that drooped all the way to the ground and could easily hide him from his enemies and his parents. Willow trees were his fortresses, for the same reason. Oak trees would play the role of evil dragons. They were the biggest, strongest trees in his yard and therefore presented the biggest challenge for him. Fallen limbs from the “dragon” oak trees would serve as his swords. They were strong enough to handle the constant abuse that he put upon them by bashing them into the dragon trees without splintering like the easily broken pine limbs or the too limber willow branches. (more…)
DIMENSIONS, LIGHT AND WHIMSY
Candice James
Copyright 2010
I’m sitting outside on a cool balmy night
And pondering the science and laws of light
The glow on the horizon is a sizzling twinkle
And I’m wond’ring about a space time wrinkle (more…)
Guest Author Jesse Langley
I woke up late with the sun streaming through my bedroom window and setting off an internal panic alarm somewhere in the vicinity of last night’s pancakes. I was halfway into a pair of chinos and shrugging into a wrinkled blazer while stuffing my feet into penny loafers when I realized it was Saturday. I wasn’t late to class after all, but I was up entirely too early for a Saturday morning. I looked over at my alarm clock. 8:15. I glanced past the alarm clock briefly and considered my rumpled memory foam mattress longingly. But the panic of thinking I was late for class had already jumpstarted a three-coffee equivalent of adrenaline in my system. Going back to bed would be useless. I grabbed a scarf out of the hall closet and went into the kitchen to inspect the coffee situation. There was still half a pot of yesterday’s French roast sitting cold on the counter so I poured a full mug and gulped it down before heading out into a nearly empty campus. (more…)
Guest Author Andrew Owens
Opening my eyes I saw what appeared to be a collage of newspaper clippings stuck to the ceiling. The words seemed all but a blur as my eyes strained to focus in the dim light about the room. Perhaps it was because my mind also felt in a haze and perhaps that is why it took me more than a minute to register my surroundings and the restraints binding me.
I tried to sit up and quickly discovered that I was unable. My outstretched arms were bound with handcuffs to the wooden board beneath me and the best I could manage with my legs was to bend my knees as I realised that my ankles had been tightly secured together with leather straps.
Where am I? Why am I here? Oh no, please!
“Help! Help! Somebody! Anybody! Help!” I yelled wriggling upon the makeshift table constraining me.
“No one can hear you, Mr. Wilson. No one at all, apart from me that is,” a soft voice stated from the shadows shrouding the thin figure sat in the corner of the room in the direction of my feet. The indistinguishable stranger stood up and slowly walked towards me. I could not make out her appearance but I knew that my captor was female. (more…)
| The Bouquet
She was petal soft,
The Locket |
 Guest Poet Jackie Summers |
Guest Poet John Taylor; Photo credit Chris Daw
For many years I traveled far upon a ship of sleep,
My body ageless, kept alive,
While I in conscious dreams survived,
My destination distant stars,
I rode upon a wave of hope and left a dying Earth.
Aeons passed as if in days as I in perfect slumber lay
Yet finally my vessel stayed,
Orbiting a yellow globe,
The seventh round a seventh star,
A soulless, barren, deathless world –
For what place can there be for Death
Where there is naught to die? (more…)
Guest Author Alex Knight
Marilyn phoned her friend, former employer and mentor, Richard. “Daniel’s been having affairs with women all over the country; I have the proof. We’re finished.”
“You can’t do this yourself. Get back to the office and make sure someone is with you for the next eight hours at least. Hold an emergency sales strategy meeting; order dinner in for the whole gang. Just stay with people, the more the merrier until you hear from me again. I’ll handle it personally.”
“Richard, I don’t want him killed, just gone. Just talk to him for me. Tell him I never want to see him or speak with him again and that he’ll hear from my lawyer. ‘My lawyer’, I don’t have a lawyer. Do you know a lawyer who can handle this for me?”
“Relax, I’ll talk to him and arrange a lawyer to handle everything.” With that he hung up on his young protégé. His reassuring words comforted Marilyn as they were meant to, but Richard knew there was only on solution to this problem. It would be worth it to come out of retirement for this special contract, he had always known that Daniel was wrong for Marilyn. Perhaps now it was time for him to tell her how he felt. Marilyn had given up on the idea of children long ago and he was no longer her employer. She deserved to be loved and cherished and if she would have him, he would spend the rest of his life making her happy. (more…)
Guest Author Paul DeThroe
It was a cold day in Hell the day that Jack Frost died. The everlasting fires slowly started burning out, the brimstone stopped falling and instead of gnawing of flesh and gnashing of teeth, cold shivers overtook the masses of eternally damned sinners and demons. Not that this was unexpected, Jack Frost was a notorious sinner and it was well known that if he ever died he would become one of the chieftains of Hell. He had murdered thousands, if not millions of humans, countless animals, laid waste to entire armies and had been a global nuisance for thousands of years. But becoming a mere chieftain was far below his boundless ambitions.
Those that were being tortured as they waited in purgatory to be turned into full-fledged demons were pleased for the short reprieve from the eternal flames that licked their flesh with excruciating pain. Of course, their torturers, the demons of Hell, were none too happy. Their jobs and very livelihoods were in grave jeopardy because of the dramatic drop in temperatures; they could no longer torture newly dead souls with the former prodigious heat from the lake of fire. So, the demons formed a lobbying committee and took their complaints to the King of Hell himself, Satan Lucifer. (more…)
Guest Author Glenn James
It’s Alive!
Incredibly, Universal’s “Frankenstein” is nearly 80 years old. Like Lugosi’s “Dracula”, with which it shares it’s venerable birthday year, the film has become a horror icon of the 20th Century, and made a legendary star of its principal performer, the beloved Boris Karloff, and the monster which he, Colin Clive, Jack. P. Pearce, James Whale, and Junior Lemmlie unleashed on the unsuspecting world in 1931.
Gothic Fantasy Writer Glenn James has a deep seated love for their film, and took huge early inspiration as a writer from finding out that Whale came from the same part of the Midlands as himself in England. Whilst passing Dudley Castle on his route to college as a student, he discovered that it is widely thought to have inspired Whales watchtower in “Frankenstein,” and penned the story “A Shock to the System” during his journeys. This is a love-letter to Karloff, and Whale’s Universal films, and in celebrating the movies 80th anniversary, delves into where Dr. Frankenstein might have got his information concerning the reanimation of dead tissue….. (more…)
Author Glenn James
Gothic-Fantasy Writer Glenn James was haunted by a question: What would it be like if one vampire haunted another vampire? Out of this premise developed the conflict between his characters Skaler and Prince Germane, and the whole cycle of his Gosmanger stories, which are meeting with an excellent response: (“Pass the Remote” was published in The Eerie Digest earlier this year.) “Hungry George approaches the world of his vampires from a rather different angle and throws a revealing light on the shadowed Prince Germane….
“You never see Hungry George; you can just feel him feeding. It’s just one of those things, like an uncommon certainty that it’s going to rain, or that someone whom you know has died. One can simply just tell he has someone over for dinner….
On very rare occasions you can hear a bit of a struggle, but never for very long, and whatever is going on stays discretely behind that cracked and blistered door. Occasionally there are black dustbin liners, taken discretely away by a fellow from the dog food company, and they always seem to have shall we say a certain weight and organic volume, but questions are never asked.
Hungry George must be absolutely ravenous, because these bags of his table leavings are voluminous, and collected rather regularly. (more…)
Guest Author Alex Knight
The killer was certain there was no one with the victim. Only one car was in the parking lot, a baby blue Cadillac De Ville with the vanity plate SUMFUN. The Killer sneered, accountants and their sense of humor, who else would think number crunching was fun?
After parking in front of the building the emergency flashers were activated and the hood popped up. Pretending to be looking under the hood, the killer scanned the area once again for potential witnesses. So far the coast was clear. Now the cell phone came out, a ploy to make it look good in case the victim was watching. An oath was uttered and a fist crashed down on the roof of the car. The cell phone was angrily tossed in through the driver’s side open window. The killer knocked on the storefront door; the victim cautiously opened it.
“Excuse me but my car’s dead and so is my cell phone. Can I use your phone to call the motor league?”
A quick look up and down the street indicated the stranded motorist was alone, and the victim opened the door wider.
“Sure, c’mon in,” those were the last words Bob the embezzling accountant uttered. (more…)
Author Glenn James
(This serial was inspired by the History, Hauntings, and legends of Worcester Cathedral in England: It was written originally as the inaugural serial of the “42 Genre-Specific Open-Mic-Night,” in Worcestershire. It is affectionately dedicated to the late Leonard Amesbury by his friend, the author.)
“Norseman on the Threshold”
By Glenn James
Part One: “Lupus Rex”
Worcester Cathedral sleeps calmly on the banks of the River Severn, quiet in its golden stone, and basking in the rise and fall of centuries. Little happens nowadays to disturb its contented sleep, as the warlike days when armies laid siege to its demure skirts, and the peaceful river ran red with vanquished causes, are long since past.
In these godless times, it is merely a timeless symbol of the city, striding through the centuries almost absentmindedly, so much a part of the landscape it’s hardly even registered properly by most people looking right at it locally.
But deep inside it’s wall’s and fabric, in between its foundations, crypts, and long forgotten chambers, deeds done with less than a valiant heart fester resentfully still in secret. The dark cloisters at night, when the last tourists and choristers have gone home are not “unpopulated”. They are far from empty in any conventional sense, and their paths are walked in silence by those who would not be seen. (more…)
Guest Author David Rhodes
The sun beat down viciously the day of the funeral, and most assuredly would have caused much discomfort for those in attendance, had it not been for the large green awning the funeral home had provided for Billy’s funeral.
Marty stood next to mostly family members he had never met, or perhaps had met only once or twice, he being the next door neighbor that was always invited over for barbecues by Billy’s father, Sam Schafer.
Now he stood staring at the coffin, saddened that Sam and Beth could not be there – they both had already died quite some time ago. They had called Billy’s death a brain hemorrhage, but Marty knew better. It had been suicide.
He thought back to sixteen years before, to the day Billy had been born. At the time, Marty didn’t think anything had been amiss, even though a nurse had died in the birthing room minutes after Billy had emerged into the world. She had suffered a massive stroke, and simply died on the floor next to the crying newborn. It had been a strange day, indeed… (more…)
Guest Author William Fripp
Charlie Blevins knew the moment he boarded the plane that something was wrong.
It wasn’t anything readily identifiable, nothing like a weird noise or a vibration or even something about the other passengers, it was just a feeling, a premonition, if you will, and the little voice we all hear in the back of our heads that we more often than not ignore was screaming at Charlie to climb back down the little stairway and run. But, of course, he didn’t listen.
The props on the Piper Chieftain were already turning when Charlie boarded. He was the last passenger out of roughly a dozen on the little turboprop headed to Barrow, Alaska and so he got the seat all the way aft on the port side, pushing sideways down the narrow aisle, holding his black calf’s leather briefcase over the heads of the other passengers, fielding icy looks as he shuffled past, late as usual and holding up the whole affair. They had waited for Charlie for about fifteen minutes and everyone, including the pilots, was less than pleased. Screw them, he thought as he finally reached his seat. I paid just as much for my ticket as they did.
His seatmate was an older gentleman, at least in his early sixties, silver haired and sloppily dressed in an ill-fitting Sears and Roebuck business suit, the wrinkles in his shirt and sport coat augmenting the lines etched in his tired and drooping face. He smelled of Aqua-Velva and cigarettes and wheezed like an old hand organ with each labored breath. Charlie wondered if the old man would survive the three hours to Barrow. Or if I will for that matter. As he stowed his briefcase and settled into his seat on the aisle the old man shifted in his seat to accommodate him, breathing his Marlboro breath in Charlie’s face and smiling as they greeted one another, showing a set of yellow dentures which moved in his mouth as spoke. (more…)
Author Bobbi Carducci
Margaret clapped her hands with delight. Every day for a week she had gone to the dining room window in hopes of seeing the first snowflakes of the Christmas season. With only two days left before the big day she had begun to worry that this year would be one of the dry seasons where snow didn’t appear until late January. As far as Margaret was concerned a winter without snow on the ground from October to May had no business calling itself winter at all.
“It’s here Jim, and from the look of it it’s going to be a real white Christmas, “she said, eying the large fluffy flakes that were falling faster as she watched. Already the sidewalk in front of her house was beginning to disappear and the upper limbs of the large pine tree in the front yard across the street were being flocked in white as if a fairy godmother had waved her wand in answer to a wish.
Humming a jaunty rendition of I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Clause she maneuvered her walker past the baby grand piano and around the ragged edge of the hideous Oriental carpet, a wedding gift from her mother-in-law over 60 years ago, to the side table that held her favorite photograph of him. Next to it was one of her taken around the same time. (more…)
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