Excerpt from
Hornets and Others
by Al Sarrantonio

Too warm for late October.

Staring out through the open door of his house, Peter Kerlan loosened the top two buttons of his flannel shirt, then finished the job, leaving the shirt open to reveal a gray athletic tee-shirt underneath. Across the street the Meyer kids were re-arranging their newly purchased pumpkins on their front stoop — first the bigger of the three on the top step, then the middle step, then the lower. They were jacketless, and the youngest was dressed in shorts. Their lawn was covered, as was Kerlan’s, with brilliantly colored leaves: yellow, orange, a dry brown. The neighborhood trees were mostly shorn, showing the skeleton fingers of their branches; the sky was a sharp deep blue. Everything said Halloween was coming — except for the temperature.

Jeez, it’s almost hot!

Behind him, out through the sliding screen door that led to the back yard, Peter could hear Ginny moving around, making an attempt at early Sunday gardening.

Maybe it’s cold after all.

He opened the front screen door, retrieved the morning newspaper he had come for, and turned back into the house, unfolding the paper as he went.

In the kitchen, he sat down at the breakfast table and studied the front page.

The usual assortment of local mayhem — a robbery, vandalism at the junior high school, a teacher at that same school suspended for drug use.

In the back, Ginny cursed angrily; there was the sound of something being knocked against something else.

“Peter!” she called out.

He pretended not to hear her for a moment, then answered, “I’m eating breakfast!” and began to study the paper much more closely then it deserved.

On the second page, more local mayhem, along with the weather — sunny and unseasonably warm for at least the next three days — as well as a capsule listing of the rest of the news, which he scanned with near boredom.

Something caught his eye, and he gave an involuntary shiver as he turned to the page indicated next to the summary and found the headline:

Hornets Attack Pre-schoolers

Another shiver caught him as he noted the picture embedded in the story — a man clothed in mosquito netting and a pith helmet holding up the remains of a huge papery nest; one side of the structure was caved in and within he could make out the clumped remains of dead insects—

Again he gave an involuntary shiver, but went on to the story:

(Parkerton, Special to the Herald, Oct. 24) Scores of pre-schoolers were treated today for stings after a small group of the children inadvertently stirred up a hornets nest which had been constructed in a hollow log. The nest, which contained hundreds of angry hornets, was disturbed when a kickball rolled into it. When one of the children went to retrieve the ball, the insects, according to witnesses, “attacked and kept attacking.”

Twenty eight children in all were treated for stings, and the Klingerman Pre-School was closed for the rest of the day.

The nest was removed by local bee-keeper Floyd Willims, who said this kind of attack is very common. “The nests are mature this time of year, and can hold up to five hundred drones, along with the Queen. Actually, new drones are maturing all the time, and can do so until well into fall. With the warm weather this year, their season is extended, probably well into November. The first real cold snap will kill them off.”

Willims continued, “Everyone thinks that yellow jackets are bees, but they’re not. They’re hornets, and can get pretty mean when the nest is threatened. At the end of the season, next year’s Queens will leave the nest, and winter in a safe spot, before laying eggs and starting the whole process over again with a new nest.”

As of last night, none of the hornet stings had proved dangerous, and Klingerman Pre- School will reopen tomorrow.

Peter finished the story, looked at the picture again — the bee-keeper holding the dead nest up with a triumphant grin on his face — and gave a third involuntary shiver.

Ugh.

At that moment Ginny appeared at the back sliding door, staring in through the screen. He looked up at her angry face.

“I can’t get that damned shed door open!” she announced. “Can you help me please?”

“After I finish my breakfast—”

Huffing a breath, she turned and stormed off.

“Aren’t you going to eat with me?” he called after her, hoping she wouldn’t turn around.

She stopped and came back. “Not when you talk to me with that tone in your voice.”

“What tone?” he protested, already knowing that today’s version of ‘the fight’ was coming.

She turned and gave him a stare — her huge dark eyes as flat as stones. She was as beautiful as she had ever been, with her close cropped blonde hair and anything but boyish looks. “Are we going to start again?”

“Only if you want to,” he said.

“I never want to. But I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

“How much more of what?”

She stalked off, leaving the door open. After a moment, Peter threw down the paper and followed her, closing the sliding screen door behind him and dismounting the steps of the small deck. She was in front of the garden shed, a narrow, four foot deep, one story-high structure attached to the house to the right of his basement office window.

“Well, I’m here,” he said, not at all surprised that she momentarily ignored him.

Jeez, it is hot! he thought, looking up at a sun that looked summer-bright, and then surveying the back yard. The colored leaves fallen from the tall oaks that bordered the back yard looked incongruous, theatrical. There was an uncarved pumpkin on the deck of the house behind theirs; it looked out of place in the heat.

Peter turned to stare at Ginny’s little garden, to the right of the shed, which displayed late annuals; they were a riot of summer color which normally would have been gone by this time of year, killed by the first frost which had yet to come.

“I’ve been weeding by hand,” she explained, “but I’d like to get some of the tools out and get ready for next spring. I’ve been having trouble with the shed door again.”

He stepped around her, pulled at the structure’s wooden door, which gave an angry creak but didn’t move.

“Heat’s got the wood expanded; I’ll have a look at it when I get a chance.” He gave it a firmer pull, satisfied that it wouldn’t move.

“Isn’t there anything you can do about it now?”

“No.” He knew he sounded nasty, but didn’t care.

She reddened with anger, then brought herself under control. “Peter, I’m going to try again. We’ve been through this fifty times. You’re punishing me, and there isn’t any reason. I know it’s been rocky between us lately. But I don’t want it to be like that! Can’t you just meet me halfway on this?”

“Halfway to hell?”

She was quiet for a moment. “I love you,” she said, “but I just can’t live like this.”

“Like what?” he answered, angry and frustrated.

“No matter what I do you find something wrong with it — all you do is criticize!”

“I…don’t,” he said, knowing as it came out that it wasn’t true.

She took a tentative step forward, reached out a hand still covered in garden loam. She let the hand fall to her side.

“Look, Peter,” she said slowly, eyes downward. “I know things haven’t been going well for you with your writing, believe me I do. But you can’t take it out on me. It’s just not fair.”

Male pride fought with truth. He took a deep breath, looking at her, as beautiful as the day he met her — he was driving her away and didn’t know how to stop.

“I…know I’ve been difficult—” he began.

She laughed. “Difficult? You’ve been a monster. You’ve frozen me out of every corner of your life. We used to talk, Peter; we used to try to work things out together. You’ve gone through these periods before and we’ve always gotten through them together. Now…” She let the last word hang.

He was powerless to tell her how he felt, the incomprehensible frustration and impotence he felt. “It’s like I’m dry inside. Hollow…”

“Peter,” she said, and then she did put a dirt-gloved hand on his arm. “Peter, talk to me.”

He opened his mouth then, wanting it to be like it had been when they first met, when he had poured his heart out to her, telling her about the things he had inside that he wanted to get out, the great things he wanted to write about, his ambition, his longings — she had been the only woman he ever met who would listen to it, really listen to it. He had a sixth sense that if he did the wrong thing now it would mean the end, that he had driven her as far away as he dared, and that if he pushed her a half step farther she would not return.

He said, “Why bother?”

Again she reddened with anger, and secretly he was enjoying it.

“I’m going out for the day. We’ll talk about this later.”

“Whatever you say.” He gave her a thin smile.

She turned away angrily, and after a moment he heard the screen door slide shut loudly, the front door slam, and the muted roar of her car as she left.

Why did you do that? he asked himself.

And a moment later he answered: Because I wanted to.

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Excerpt From
Hallows Eve
by Al Sarrantonio

Any train ride through any town, any October.

The soothing clack of the rails almost had him asleep. His newspaper lay crumpled in the empty seat beside him; the lights in the train car had flickered off in the middle of the sports page and he finally gave up, leaning back against the stiff headrest and turning to watch the night outside. They were passing endless cornfields under a mounting harvest Moon; under the strong white light the stalks looked dry as paper, stiff at soldiers at attention.

Something caught his eye ahead in the field of corn, towering above it — an orange and yellow shape that resolved itself into a scarecrow topped by a pumpkin head.

As they drew abreast of the figure a fire ignited behind the triangle eyes, the sickle mouth, and it turned its head to look at him. As the train left it behind, Corrie watched the scarecrow move one of its long arms to point directly at him…

(Later on our protagonist is compelled to get off the train and look for the scarecrow…)

The night was still and cold, the chill of pre-winter with the sharp bite of a hard apple. Dry cornstalks crackled beneath his feet. Far off, amidst the lights of Orangefield, he heard a dog howl mournfully, hungry or afraid.

The moon was rising above the cornfield to his left, making everything whiter, colder…

Why had he come here, this was madness–

He heard something rustle in the stalks to his left, off the path. He stiffened, waiting for a cold wind to brush his face, but the corn stalks were perfectly straight, unbowed.

He heard the rustle again and thought of that dog; he did not like dogs…

“Hello.”

The wet whisper brushed his ear at the exact moment a dry arm was thrown around his shoulder. He felt heat, and saw the glow of the orange face between himself and the cornfield. It had stepped swiftly out of the ranks —

“Let’s walk, shall we?”

Petrified with fear, he turned to look into the pumpkin face inches from his own. He felt heat from a candleless glow within; saw wet seeds adhering to the scraped inside of the head, through the sharply-etched nose, eyes, smiling mouth.

The scarecrow laughed, pulled him closer with boneless fingers. It made a dry, ticking sound as it walked–

“You can call me John, if you like.”

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Excerpt From:
“Maternal Instinct” by Robert Bloch, which was published in Mondo Zombie  edited by John Skipp

It wasn’t at all what Jill expected.

To begin with, there was no sign or inscription-nothing to identify that this was 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

And of course it couldn’t be, technically speaking, because you had to circle around blocks away on a side street, toward what looked like the kind of abandoned warehouse the hero always goes to in a cop picture.

Only Jill wasn’t a hero or a heroine or anything in between. She was just her usual self, but caught in a bind halfway between uncomfortable and unprepared. She sat silently as her driver halted the limo on the driveway before a double door and took out a beeper, some kind of subsonic item. For that matter the driver had been pretty subsonic himself; not one word out of him since he’d picked her up at the hotel. Soul of discretion, right?

But suppose he wasn’t a driver? Sure, he’d flashed his papers and wore a uniform, and the limo had the look and feel of a military vehicle. But papers can be forged, uniforms faked and vehicles stolen.

Maybe she was being taken to an abandoned warehouse after all, and the bad guys were waiting in ambush behind the packing-crates or on the catwalks.

A sudden whirring sound jarred Jill’s thoughts as the double door slid upward and the limo moved through the opening, headlight beams tunneling through darkness. In their periphery Jill couldn’t see either crates or catwalks; the structure was an empty shell concealing the route.

Now the stretch ahead slanted down. Down into the dark, down and dirty. Thank God the limo was air conditioned. Jill wondered how this tunnel was ventilated, if at all. And why no lights? Creepy down here. Welcome to the White House, heh-heh-heh. This is your host, Satan, broadcasting to you from the Evil Office-

Jill tensed, uptight. Why were they stopping?

Another beam of light bobbing toward the limo from ahead, fanning the windshield and hood. She could see him now, another uniformidable figure with a flashlight. And behind him, in shadowy silhouette, a carbon copy carrying an Uzi.

Lots of gesturing. And the driver’s window going down, his hand extending to exhibit some plastic. The gun-barrel dipped toward him, monitoring his movements. When the flash-beam invaded the car to flood her face she already had her plastic ready. She moved very slowly, because a sudden shot would probably damage her contact lenses and everything behind them.

Inspection completed, the driver rolled up windows and the car moved on, rounding a corner into a lighted white walled tunnel angling upward. Another sliding door automatically activated ahead, and they wheeled past into a neon-lit underground parking area. Two clean-cut thirty-ish clones in suits with shoulder-holsters were approaching the limo as it pulled into a vacant slot. One positioned himself at the driver’s door and the other walked up to hers. As he signaled she unlocked it and he nodded, smiling. When she opened the door he helped her out of the car; always the perfect gentleman, but don’t forget that shoulder-holster.

“Welcome to the White House,” he said. But there was no heh-heh-heh, and no pretense of an introduction. “Follow me, please,” was all she got as he led her to an elevator on the far wall.

Her driver started up the limo and made a U-turn in the direction from which they’d come; apparently he hadn’t been invited to spend the night in Lincoln’s bedroom. If there really was a Lincoln’s bedroom upstairs. Hey, so it wasn’t a warehouse, but that didn’t prove it was the White House either. Her heart began to thud: no world-class coronary, but noticeable.

Jill and her escort entered the elevator; its door closed and the car moved upward in silken silence. Then the door opened and her heart really started to pound.

Because she was in the White House. It stretched before her, beyond the opened elevator door. now the suit stepped forward, nodding. “This way,” he said.

The hall ahead seemed immense. Those high ceilings, that’s what did it, dwarfing Jill and her guide as they moved down the carpeted corridor between the fancy-framed portraits and the don’t-you-dare-sit-on-it furniture. Antiques. Antiques, priceless but impractical for use, like the high ceilings built in a time before everybody except the rich and famous became accustomed to living in cramped quarters. Under the bright lights everything here seemed spacious and gracious.

But where were the rich and famous?

The hall was deserted, side doors closed. Thick carpet muffled footsteps along an aisle empty of everything, even echoes. Yoohoo, where is everybody?

Jill tried to remember things she’d been told in childhood. About a time the alphabet had been used solely for language, not to designate an FBI, a CIA and other bureaucratic alphabet-soup. A time when ordinary citizens visited the White House without special invitations to participate in some planned political photo-opportunities. They came because it was their desire to spend Sunday afternoon pressing the flesh of a Harding or Coolidge, but now such innocent events were history.

True, she was here by invitation herself, but not for a photo-opportunity. And there was nothing innocent about this meeting with the President.

Her heart started thumping again, just thinking about him, just as it always had since the days when she first got this thing about him. They were both juniors then-she in college, he in the U.S. Senate. After that she graduated and got the dream-job in the think-tank and he got re-elected; then there was that Clancy woman, thank God he didn’t marry her, the silly little bitch would have ruined his chances for nomination for sure, she was just like all the others, those publicized, glorified one-night stands. Long ago-yes, way back in college when she’d first framed his picture from the magazine cover, Jill knew the kind of woman the President should marry. Somebody with looks and smarts, that was obvious, but he needed more than that. He needed someone with a real depth of devotion, who could make the White House a home; somebody fit to bear his children. And long ago, when she fitted that magazine cover photo into a frame, she knew who that woman should be. The magazine had picked him as the ideal candidate for President. Right then and there she’d nominated herself as First Lady.

Talk about silly bitches-okay, so he’d been elected, he was not halfway into his second term, and he’d never married. He wasn’t gay, that’s for sure, but there’s been no lasting relationships. Just as there’d been none for Jill, immersed in the deep end of the think-tank all these years because she was waiting for Mr. Right, that White Knight in the White House; someone who’d never set eyes on her in his life, let alone put her picture on the stand next to Lincoln’s bed or Nixon’s shredder.

Knock it off, Jill. It’s not politically correct. You’re thirty-two and he’s forty-seven, and you’re not on your way to make schoolgirl dreams come true. This is nightmare time.

No sense worrying about her biological clock; she had a job to do. Right now the politically correct Secret Service man was reaching out to open the door at the end of the corridor. They passed through an entryway-probably equipped with sensors and metal detectors, although the SS man’s weapon didn’t trigger a buzz because he halted behind her, then backed out, closing the door and leaving her alone to enter the big room beyond the entry.

At first glance it looked only vaguely office-like, furnished in a style she labeled Early Middle Management-no file cabinets or business machines, just a couch and a couple of comfortable chairs grouped around the coffee table in the corner, and a solitary desk before the window at the center of the room. The setting didn’t seem very presidential, and neither did the man behind the desk.

He was plump, balding, and as Jill observed when he rose from his chair, quite short. His eyes, captive behind thick glasses, peered out at her without expression. Jill hoped her own gaze was noncommittal, offering no hint of her surprise and disappointment. Her heart wasn’t pounding now; it was sinking.

And he was coming toward her, holding out a pudgy hand, smiling an avuncular smile, saying, “Pleasure to see you, I’m Hubertus-”

“No names, Doctor.”

He had entered the room from a side door at the left, and at the sound of the familiar voice she looked up and saw the familiar figure, the familiar face. His figure and face, not something lighted and made-up for the cameras as she’d feared when she first saw the man behind the desk who might have undergone such tricks of transformation in order to project a youthful image.

But the President was youthful in his own right-a young forty-seven with no wrinkles except those around his eyes when he smiled.

He was smiling now and taking her hand, his grip firm, warm, electric. Electric enough to set off the ringing of her biological time-clock.

Ought to ask the Doctor about that, Jill thought. Dr. Hubertus. She knew that name. Surgeon-General of the United States. Here with her and the President.

He was gesturing toward the furniture grouping at the coffee table. “Please make yourself comfortable,” he said.

Jill seated herself. “Thank you, Mr. President.”

“No formalities, please.” Smiling, he took the chair across from her as Dr. Hubertus moved to the couch. “We don’t have time for that.” He paused, smile dimming. “Or does it matter now?”

“I’m afraid it does,” Jill said. “It matters very much…” She was conscious of something ticking, but not her biological clock. This was more like a time-bomb. A time-bomb ready to explode.

“Then let’s get started. You brought the data?”

“Yes sir.”

“Forget the sir business.” The President eyed her expectantly. “What have you got for me-is it in microchip?”

“I’m your microchip,” Jill said.

Both men raised their eyebrows, but it was Jill who raised her voice, quickly. “Safer this way. Anything that can be stored can be stolen. Copied, duplicated, faked, you name it. I’ve had eight separate task teams on this project, each with different approaches to the problem. Five of them don’t even know the other exist. And I’m the only one with total input from all eight. All the findings, all the projections, all the hard stats.”

The President was staring at her. “Why you?”

“Why not? I have close to eidetic memory. And more important, nobody remembers me at all. I’m low-profile, even in my own field, which makes me right for the job.”

“What if the wrong people got hold of you?”

“Don’t worry, I’d keep my mouth shut.”

“And if they tried to make you talk?”

“I’d shut my mouth harder,” Jill said. “Bit down on the capsule I planted in a crown. Old fashioned, but very effective.”

The President glanced at Dr. Hubertus, who shrugged. “Suppose we get down to essentials,” he said. “We can cover details later on. Right now I’d like to play questions and answers.”

“Ready,” Jill said.

“Cause?”

“Still unknown. Undetectable micro-organisms from an as-yet untraceable source, possibly long-latent in certain mammalian life forms but presently only observed in humans when recently energized by undetermined-”

“Skip it,” said Dr. Hubertus. “We get all that mumbo jumbo from our own witch doctors. Idiots don’t have a clue, probably never will. They still haven’t even been able to pinpoint the source of the AIDS virus, let alone this one. Besides, its source doesn’t matter now. What matters is that it’s here.”

“Here, there and everywhere,” the President said. “That damned, elusive pimpernel.” His light tone was forced, quickly disappearing as he faced Jill. “What are the current stats? Not the press-release stuff-do you have a handle on real figures?”

“Latest computation places the domestic total in the neighborhood of one-and-a-half percent.” Jill leaned forward. “Which doesn’t sound all that threatening until you realize this translates into almost four million people.”

“Former people.” Dr. Hubertus nodded, eyes grim behind glass. “Dead people. Dead-alive. Who stay alive by eating the living. Who in turn become dead, and they in turn re-animate to eat more of the living who-”

“Food-chain,” said the President. “That much we do know. And you don’t need more than grade-school math to figure what happens once the exponential growth factor really kicks in.”

“It may be worse, worldwide,” Jill said. “Hard to project on a global level because we’re still getting denials and censorship. But our medics team estimates domestic cases doubling in three months, doubling again a month later. In China, India, Indonesia, Latin America, the rate of increase could be much greater. If we don’t come up with a solution-”

The President scowled. “How much longer have we got? I’m talking cover-up. Bottom line.”

“A week.”

“That’s all?”

“It’s cropping up all over, and there’s no way of our controlling the spread. And word-of-mouth transmits faster than mouth-to-mouth. Gossip spreads an epidemic of its own.”

“We’ve done our best,” the President said. “But censorship can’t contain it, even if we could jam every broadcast frequency in the world and ban checkout-counter journalism. Not with terminal patients jumping out of deathbeds and morgues running on empty. Of course cemeteries are the real problems. Empty graves are dead giveaways. So far these-these uprisings-seem to take place in rural areas where old-fashioned interments are still common. But once the cities start to go with their Forest Lawns and the kind of places you find in Long Island-” He sighed. “We’ve had meetings with the funeral-director people. They can’t explain why these things are taking place almost at random. It isn’t all that easy to break out of a modern coffin, maybe sealed and imbedded in concrete, then burrow up through six feet of earth to the surface. Even if the grave’s in sandy soil-”

Jill broke in. “You’ve talked to undertakers. We asked seismologists. Underground temblors are common everywhere. Earth moves, rock formations shift enough to splinter cheap caskets, loosen dry soil, even if the quake never damages anything on the surface. So wherever and whenever there’s enough subterranean movement, the necros may claw their way out.”

The President frowned, “Necros?”

Jill shrugged. “It sounds better than ‘ghoul.’”

Dr. Hubertus cleared his throat. “Your people must have made some projections about this thing going public. What happens then?”

“Panic. Hysteria. Right now government control is based on military power, but gunfire won’t kill the dead. And when people lose faith in government they turn to religion, but established beliefs in resurrection won’t offer much comfort. The consensus here is that there’ll be an explosion of crazy cults-Zombies For Jesus, The Church of the Living Dead, that kind of thing, which solves nothing.”

“What does?” said the President.

“Using what we already do know about the situation.”

“Such as?”

“To begin with, studies indicate we may be dealing with two kinds of necros. Type A would be those recently deceased from causes which didn’t involve prolonged mental or physical malfunction. Such cases would still be driven by anthropophagism, and subject to necrosis, but at a much slower rate. We have no verified reports of any answering to this description, but the medics don’t rule out the possibility, if there was no major impairment prior to death or as a result of escaping from interment.

“The big problem is Type B-victims of violence, accidents, crippling disease, or injuries escaping from their graves. They’ll be most vulnerable to necrotic symptoms, and the longer they’ve been buried the faster they’ll decay. Trouble is, it won’t be fast enough. If their numbers increase at the present rate we’ll be dealing with millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, all traumatized by their experiences but a majority simply brain dead, driven only by a mindless hunger to feed on living flesh. You’ve got to take steps to prevent this situation.” Jill paused, then took the plunge. “You’ve got to, or in a few years the earth will be blanketed with bodies-or body parts-of the living dead. The earth and the oceans. Clumps, islands, continents of wriggling corpses-”

Dr. Hubertus gestured his interruption. “Tiffany Thayer forecast it for us sixty years ago. Doctor Arnoldi, published by Julian Messner in 1934.” He nodded. “You think-tank people aren’t the only ones who do their homework. Our own researchers have covered everything in fiction which applies to this reality. Lots of scenarios, but no solutions.”

“That’s why you’re here,” the President said. “Solutions.”

Jill leaned forward once more, “We think we have one.”

“What is it?”

“Cremation,” Jill said.

Dr. Hubertus shook his head. “Won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“It’d take years to build facilities. We’re facing an emergency.”

“Then use emergency facilities,” Jill said. “For starters, there are steel mills closed down all over the country, and industrial plants with blast furnaces. Modify present equipment and you’re in business.”

“That kind of business will stir up some real opposition,” Hubertus told her. “We’d need a lot of secrecy-and security-for such operations. Then there’s environmental pollution. Most of these installations are in large urban areas, and we can’t relocate them.”

“What about military bases? There are hundreds closed and idle.” The President and Dr. Hubertus were listening intently now as Jill continued. “They have everything we need. Airstrips, roads, rail access already in place. Housing and accommodations for personnel. Improvise some temporary crematoriums and build permanent structures as you go along.”

Jill watched the President out of the corner of her eye as she spoke. His profile was ruggedly handsome, granite-jawed. She imagined how it would look carved on Mt. Rushmore. Or, better still, lying on a pillow next to hers.

Dr. Hubertus was clearing his throat. “Sounds like a Nazi death camp.”

“I know, but do we have a choice?”

The President had risen, moving to the wall beside a portrait of Washington. Jill’s thought strayed. Father of his country. Father of my child-

“This-uh-final solution of yours,” the President said. “Did you come up with it yourself?”

“I told you there was input from each of the teams on the project. But I’m the only one with access to all of the data. What I did, you might say, was put the pieces together.”

“And came up with this.” The President flicked his forefinger along the side of the portrait frame. “Just wanted to make sure the picture was straight.”

He glanced at Dr. Hubertus who stood up, moving left to a point beyond the range of Jill’s peripheral vision. “What do you think?” the President said.

“It could work. In which case she’s right about there being no choice.” Dr. Hubertus’ voice sounded from behind her, and Jill started to turn, but the President was nodding, smiling to her, speaking to her.

“Well, then,” he said. “Welcome aboard.”

Jill felt a stinging sensation in her neck, so sharp and so swift that she never had time to bite down on her tooth.

She was dead before she hit the floor.

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Excerpt From:
Roll Them Bones (Novella #12)
by David Niall Wilson

Jason pulled his sleek black Volvo in beside a faded, rust-pocked Chevy truck in front of Macomber’s General Store and killed the engine. He couldn’t suppress a shiver. If it hadn’t been for the peeling paint on the side of the building, and the new feed and grain store across the street, he’d have believed the trip was all a dream and he was twelve again. So little had changed.

Old Bob Macomber was on the porch of the store, rocker creaking slowly as he took in Jason’s car with a dubious stare. Curiosity, like everything else in Random, was slow to blossom. Jason stepped from the car and closed the door slowly, turning to scan Main Street. The Post Office and the Sheriff’s office were one building, a duplex, grey-concrete blocks bonded with cement and too-thick coats of paint. The American flag hung at a forty-five degree angle beside the front awning of each door.

“Hasn’t changed much, has it boy?” Old Bob’s voice broke the silence like a stone through glass, and Jason started, turning back with a sheepish grin.

“Not much at all,” he agreed, stepping toward the porch, and the store. “It’s been a long time, Bob.”

Bob nodded toward an empty rocker a few feet to his side. “Sit a spell, Jason. It ain’t every day one of our wandering sons returns.”

Jason stepped up to the porch and took the offered seat, watching the old man with a slowly spreading grin. “Don’t even offer a beer?”

“You know where the beer is boy,” Bob rumbled, “And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll bring two. It’d damned hot out here. And don’t be thinking ‘cause you’re Glen Stiller’s boy you’ll be running a tab. Ain’t nothing free here.”

Jason laughed. He rocked forward and stood in an easy motion, turning to the store and pushing through the door. The cooler stood along the wall, just to his left, as it had stood when he’d gotten his first Coca Cola about twenty years in the past. The hum of electricity and the sudden sense of deja vu nearly stole his breath.

It was like stepping through a time-warp portal into another place. Hank William’s Sr. yodeled from an ancient, RCA radio on the counter. Flies buzzed around a barrel of apples in the corner, and on the wall above the cooler, James Dean winked at him slyly from a poster advertising a brand of cigarettes that no longer existed.

Jason leaned on the old cooler for a second, the cool porcelain supporting him easily, then he lifted the lid, snagged a couple of long-necked Budweisers and turned toward the door. The cooler closed behind him with a soft “whoomp.”

He handed one to Bob and returned to the empty rocker, unscrewing the top of the bottle with a quick twist of his wrist and tossing the cap in a lazy arc toward the can beside the door. It clipped the rim, then rolled in.

“Lucky,” Bob grunted. “Always was lucky.” He flicked his own cap into the can with practiced ease. “I guess you’re lookin’ for Ronnie?”

Jason stared at the bottle in his hand. Condensation had beaded the deep brown surface and dampened his fingers. He nodded. “I guess I am,” he said softly. “He called me about a month ago.”

Bob rocked, sipping his beer. He didn’t speak for what seemed hours and was probably not a full minute.

“He called some others, too,” Bob said at last. “Lizzy is here, and Frank. Ain’t seen a one of you since you graduated high school, but here you are.”

“They’re here?” Jason said, maybe too quickly.

Bob looked around slowly, then laughed, tipping the beer bottle up and draining it. “You see ’em?”

Jason smiled despite himself. “Nope,” he answered, swallowing his own beer in a single gulp. He rose, taking both bottles and returning to the store.

As he slipped through the door once more, Bob called after him. “Lizzy is here. She’s staying over at Mae’s. I reckon there’s a couple more rooms. Frank is due in tomorrow, or so Edna says.”

Jason grinned again. Edna would know. Edna knew everything that happened in Random, or nearby. The only contact with the outside world was the phone lines, and the phone lines went through Edna.

“They ever put in that automatic switchboard?” Jason called, as he grabbed two more beers from the cooler.”

He slipped back out onto the porch, noting that the sun had dropped a little closer to the skyline. It was a deep orange sunset, seeping over the tops of the trees and staining the black asphalt of the road as it stretched away across endless miles of open farmland.

“Nope,” Bob answered with a chuckle. “Edna couldn’t figure how to tap into it, so she put them off another year.”

“What is that, about fifteen years she’s ‘put them off,’?” Jason chuckled again. This time his bottle-cap sailed into the can cleanly.

“Something like that,” Bob answered, and for the first time, the old man grinned. “It’s good to see you boy. Don’t you think for a minute I’ve forgotten you owe me for ten comics, either.”

This time Jason’s laughter was clear and loud. “Let’s see,” he replied, “at twelve cents apiece…”

The silence that followed was deep and comfortable, and Jason sipped the beer, rocking gently and letting the voices of a thousand crickets calm him.

Mae’s was just down the street, and Jason let his gaze fall on the faded, white-washed front of the old building. In it’s day, the place had been a saloon, a flop house, even a temporary school. Now it served as motor lodge, hotel, boarding house and general rent-all. Whoever needed a room, for however long, was welcome. Jason felt welcome, and he hadn’t even left the store. It was good to be home, odd as it felt, out of place as he was in his Ralph Lauren Chaps and his Italian leather shoes.

The trees were painted with all the colors of autumn, and the air was brisk, but not yet cold. The high school would be getting ready for homecoming soon, and the scarecrows and fake spider’s webs already lined the street. Jason glanced over at old Bob and grinned.

“What’s the going price on toilet paper and paraffin?” he asked.

“You better believe it’s gone up,” Bob laughed. “Won’t be too many kids can find the price of a good paraffin stick this time of year.”

Jason grinned and drained the beer, standing quickly.

“I’d better get on over to Mae’s,” he said. “Don’t want to miss dinner. I’d hate to have to come back and wake you up.”

“Don’t sleep so much these days,” Bob said softly, more softly than Jason had anticipated. “Seen a lot of sun ups, and sun downs, boy. Reckon these days I prefer to be awake for both. You get on over to Mae’s, but you need a beer, or a sandwich, or a pair of ears to yak at, you come on back. Reckon I’ll be right here.”

Jason nodded, then took the space between them in a few quick strides, extending his hand.

“It’s been way too long, Bob,” he said. “I’ll be back to take you up on that beer before I head out. You can count on that. Likely be here for a couple of those sunrises, as well.”

“You do that, boy,” Bob smiled, showing that at least two of his teeth had not weathered the test of time. “You bring that Frank with you. I’d like to see how old Jim Moss’ boy turned out. Seems everyone leaves Random before they get old enough to have any sense, and those that stay. . .”

Tom’s words trailed off, and Jason didn’t question him. He turned with a quick wave and headed up the block toward Mae’s, leaving his car parked where it was. No sense starting it up to drive 100 yards, and for some reason he didn’t want to crawl back into the stuffy interior of the car just then.

The loud jingle of a bell startled him as gravel shot out of a too-quickly turned tire as a boy, maybe ten, sped past on an old Schwinn bicycle.

“Jeez, Mr.,” the boy called back, leaping the bike onto the sidewalk and whipping around the first corner with practiced ease. “Watch where you’re goin’.”

Jason laughed, trotting the last few feet to Mae’s. He hesitated as soft laughter floated out through the screen door. The voice was familiar, achingly so, and moments later he heard Mae’s throaty chuckle joining in. No mistaking that voice.

Jason knocked, then pulled the screen door open and stepped inside. Back in New York this would have been rude, but as each moment passed, he felt the sense of home more strongly. Etiquette in Random was a wholly different animal, subject to an older set of rules.

Those gathered around the dining room table fell silent as Jason entered. Lizzy looked up, then down to the floor with a shy blush that made Jason smile. He knew it was her. He hadn’t seen Lizzy in over twelve years, but he knew that smile, and that blush.

“Hey Lizzy,” he said softly, then turned to the head of the table. “Mae,” he nodded.

“Hope you got a room with a soft pillow and a real air conditioner.”

Mae laughed, standing slowly. She flowed from her chair, flowered dress spinning out around her in a whirl of color. To say Mae was a large woman would be like saying the Ocean was a big pond. The floor groaned with her weight, and her rumbling laughter rattled the china in the cabinet along the wall. Long, braided red hair fell over her shoulders and tumbled across her breasts. Her eyes flashed green across the room and Jason tumbled back through time.

“You’ll be lucky, and happy, to get a bed with clean sheets and a room with a ceiling fan,” Mae asserted, hands dropping to her ample hips. “And if you don’t sit that skinny butt down in about two seconds and start eating, you can say ‘excuse me, Mae, for missing dinner,’ and high-tail it back to that store for Doritos.”

They all burst out laughing at that, and Jason regained enough control of his limbs to seat himself next to Lizzy, letting his gaze trail over her soft features. She still wasn’t meeting his gaze, but she was smiling. Jason glanced instinctively down to her finger. No ring. That would be a tale for later, he guessed.

Without hesitation, Jason grabbed a plate and spooned a generous helping of mashed potatoes into the center. There was gravy for the potatoes, meatloaf, corn and a casserole of mushrooms and spinach coated in thick cheese that had Jason’s mouth watering just from smelling it. Some things never changed. No one could eat a meal at Mae’s table and really wonder how she’d reached such prodigious girth. The real question was how those who surrounded her avoided it.

“You want to pass me that milk?” Jason asked, nudging Lizzy gently.

As she moved to grab the carton, he added. “You look great, Lizzy.”

“You leave that girl alone,” Mae called from the end of the table. Her eyes were twinkling, but it was clear that she wanted Jason to know she was looking out for Lizzy.

“Um…” Jason laughed, “I can’t reach the milk, Mae.”

Lizzy slid the carton within reach and Jason poured the glass full with a smile.

“You know what I meant, son,” Mae chuckled. “You just mind your manners, and we’ll all get along fine. She’s been through enough.”

“Mae!” Lizzy cut in quickly, the pretty blush returning.

Mae didn’t answer, but she let it drop. Jason watched Lizzy for just a second, then smiled and turned back to his food.

“Frank will be here tomorrow,” Lizzy said softly.

Jason nodded, not looking up.

“Ronnie will probably be here later tonight. He’ll want to talk to you, Jason.”

“I know,” Jason replied between mouthfuls. “I guess he’ll want to talk to us all, eventually. Isn’t that why we’re here?”

Lizzy looked away again, and Jason sighed. “It will be okay, Liz,” he said softly, laying his fork aside for a moment and placing his hand gently on her shoulder. “We’re not kids anymore, you know? Even Ronnie must have grown up. He did actually write the letter.”

Liz nodded, and Jason saw the hint of a smile crease the corner of her lips, but she didn’t really laugh. He watched her for a moment longer, then turned back to finish his food in silence.

He wasn’t really looking forward to seeing Ronnie either. Ronnie Lambert hadn’t been anyone’s close friend when they were younger. They’d hung with him because the alternative was to have him beat the crap out of them every time he saw them for not hanging with him. Besides, Random Illinois didn’t boast a huge population of kids at any given moment; their options had been limited.

Now here they were, Jason, Lizzy, and pretty soon Frank, all gathered together like a bunch of school kids because Ronnie Lambert had called them. Red-neck Ronnie still had that control, that tone in his voice, even when the words were written and not spoken. Jason felt suddenly foolish, and pushed back from the table and his empty plate with a sigh.

“Was a time you liked my meatloaf,” Mae observed, cocking one eyebrow.

“You know it isn’t the food, Mae,” Jason said thoughtfully. “It’s been a long time, is all,” he added lamely. “Guess after driving fifteen hundred miles I’m finally asking myself what I expected to find here.”

Lizzy turned, suddenly reaching out and laying her hand across his.

“I’m glad you came,” she said softly. “Very glad, Jason. I was worried you wouldn’t.”

It was Jason’s turn to blush.

“Hell,” he said softly. “What fun would it be spending Halloween in the city, alone? It was about time I got back here anyway.”

Mae watched the two for a moment in silence, then cut in.

“Kids are like really good books, you know?”

They all turned to her, and Mae nodded, continuing. “You read the dang thing once, and it’s wonderful. Every bit of it sticks with you. Then it’s out of sight, out of mind. You get to living and learning and forget about it, but flashes of what you read stick with you all your life, until one day, there it is. You have some time, and you pick that book back up, and damned if you didn’t miss a lot the first time. I can read an old book over and over, Jason. It’s good to have you home.”

Jason smiled. Mae could always put a thing into words. Among the kids, it had been Frank who had that gift, tall, bespectacled Frank. Of them all, it was Frank they would recognize most easily. His face was splashed regularly over the New York Times book review pages and the novel racks at every bookstore, airport, grocery and news stand in the country. Skinny little Frank with his piles of spiral-bound notebooks and his wild ideas.

Very suddenly Jason missed Frank. He had the urge, quickly stifled, to lean over and hug Lizzy. Whatever happened over the next few days, he knew he was going to make certain it wasn’t the last time he saw them. All his life he’d been running, running from the little dead-end town, running from relationships and responsibilities. He’d run to college, run out with a degree and found a good job.

In those days, the job had been the bottom line. Everything would be fine as soon as he had a job that paid him approximately twice what his small-town parents had made and let him have shiny cars and shinier women. That had been the formula for happiness. Life, add money. Live and learn.

The door opened again, and before Jason could pass on his new sentiments, there were quick, heavy steps and a hand smacked down on his shoulder.

“Hey, Jason,” Ronnie’s voice boomed too loud in the once-comfortable silence. “Good to have you home.”

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Excerpt from:
Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished
by Rocky Wood with David Rawsthorne & Norma Blackburn

Wimsey is a story fragment from the Lord Peter Wimsey novel King worked on in late 1977. The piece is a double-spaced, typewritten manuscript, containing the first chapter, of fourteen pages, and only the first page of a second chapter. Although it has never been published copies of this fragment circulate in the King community.

The attempted novel was the result of both the King family’s abortive move to England and a discussion between King and his editor of the time, Bill Thompson. The discussion revolved around the writing of a novel using the detective character, Lord Peter Wimsey, created by Dorothy L Sayers. More of Wimsey and Sayers later.

The King family moved to England in the Fall of 1977. King was reported in the Fleet News as saying he wanted to write a book “…with an English setting.” The house they settled on was Mourlands, at 87 Aldershot Road, Fleet in Hampshire. Beahm reported that the Kings had advertised for a home, reading: ‘Wanted, a draughty Victorian house in the country with dark attic and creaking floorboards, preferable haunted.’ King’s US paperback publisher, NAL, issued a press release stating King had moved to England to write “…a novel even more bloodcurdling than the previous ones …” Although this does not sound at all like a genteel British detective novel, we can perhaps forgive the publisher’s enthusiasm for its best-selling writer.

Once in England King did not find the inspiration required for an English novel, perhaps explaining the fragmentary nature of Wimsey, but he did begin one of his most famous novels, Cujo during the three months the family remained in the country. One story based in England did result from the trip, however. In mid-October 1977 the King family had dinner with Peter Straub and his wife in the London suburb of Crouch End. This resulted in King’s Lovecraftian story, Crouch End, originally published in the 1980 collection New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos and in a heavily revised version in 1993’s Nightmare and Dreamscapes.

Of course, the best result of the England trip may have been the beginning of King’s long and fruitful relationship with fellow author Straub, which has so far resulted in both The Talisman and Black House, with a reasonable likelihood that a third Jack Sawyer novel will be written.

Apparently King sent the fragment of Wimsey to Bill Thompson for review but Thompson’s reaction is unknown. We can only presume it was either not positive or King himself had lost interest in the concept. In retrospect this is likely to have been a good thing. Despite King’s typecasting as a horror novelist, which resulted from Night Shift, The Stand, The Dead Zone and Cujo being the books to follow Carrie, Salem’s Lot and The Shining, it is likely King’s career has been all the more fruitful as a so-called horror novelist than as a so-called detective or mystery writer, along the lines of Sayers or Agatha Christie (although King’s take on Death on the Nile might be interesting, to say the least).

In what we can read of this aborted novel Lord Peter Wimsey and his servant Bunter are on their way, through ‘beastly rain’ to a party at Sir Patrick Wayne’s estate in the country. Wimsey had last met Sir Patrick in 1934. Wimsey and Bunter discuss the foul weather and the death of Salcomb Hardy, which has put Wimsey in a funk. During the trip the two men’s dry sense of humour becomes apparent.

After they cross ‘…an alarmingly rickety plank bridge which spanned a swollen stream…’, Wimsey calls for a toilet stop and, alerted by the contrast to its more solid nature the previous time he had crossed it, looks at the bridge, only to find that the supports had been cut almost through. Somehow this dangerous discovery seems to have enlivened Wimsey, who calls with ‘…more excitement in his voice than Bunter had heard in a long time … he could not remember how long.’ However, Bunter thinks this flash will pass, ‘… gleams of what Wimsey had been and could not even yet deny utterly. It would pass, and he would become the Wimsey that was in this dull aftermath of the war that had made their war seem like child’s play  a dreary ghost-Wimsey, distracted and vague, a Wimsey who did too much solitary drinking, a Wimsey whose wit had soured.’

Returning to the car Wimsey states that if the heavy weather continues the bridge will collapse. When they return to the road Wimsey even wonders if ‘Sir Pat’ was not himself responsible for trying to isolate his home from the world, considering in particular his ‘…invitation, renewed so tiresomely over the last month and a half, until we quite ran out of excuses. It began to take on a … a flavour, did it not?’ Wimsey and Bunter begin to consider that Sir Patrick might have a problem ‘…requiring certain detective talents…’ Then, ‘Wimsey said quietly, “I don’t detect. I shall never detect again.” Bunter did not reply. “If I hadn’t been off detecting for the British Secret Service, I … what rot.”’ Apparently Wimsey blamed himself for his wife’s death in the Blitz.

Now their thoughts turn to Miss Katherine Climpson, another of Wimsey’s employees. Wimsey tentatively asks how ‘she’ was and Bunter does ‘… not affect to know of whom Lord Peter spoke’. We discover that Climpson is mortally ill with cancer in a hospital near Wimsey’s Picadilly flat and that he had ‘…gone to visit her himself in the first nine weeks of her stay, but at last he had been able to face it no more. He cursed himself for a coward, reviled himself, called himself a slacker and a yellow-livered slug … but he did not go.’ The slow decline of Climpson was, ‘Too much. Harriet was dead; his brother was dead; even Salcomb Hardy was dead; Miss Climpson was dying and Sir Patrick Wayne, a rich old bore who had been knighted for making himself richer at the expense of thousands of lives, was alive and apparently doing fine. “Is tomorrow Halloween, Bunter?” “I believe it is, my lord.” “It should be,” Wimsey said, and helped himself to a cigarette. “It bloody well should be.”’

As Sir Patrick’s house approaches the brakes fail and their Bentley crashes (Bunter, still in character, laconically comments, “We appear to have lost all braking power, my lord”). Chapter One ends at this point.

In the aftermath of the crash and the beginning of Chapter Two Wimsey wakes and calls for Bunter. At this point what we have of the story ends.

Although Wimsey is relatively short there are a number of interesting facts to report.

Sir Patrick Wayne’s estate is seven miles from Little Shapley, England. If the bridge collapsed, there was only one other road, barely a cart track, out of the estate. Wimsey and Bunter were driving to the estate on 30 October 1945 (“is tomorrow Halloween?”), less than six months after the end of the Second World War in Europe.

The only details of note that King provides us with about Wimsey himself are that he was formerly a detective with the British Secret Service, that his wife Harriet Vane Wimsey had died during the German blitz and the reader’s presumption that the elder Duke of Denver was Wimsey’s brother.

Wimsey’s nephew, the current Duke of Denver (‘Jerry’) had visited Sir Patrick Wayne’s daughter until she had become engaged to another man. Jerry had served in the RAF during the Battle of Britain and was one of the relatively few survivors of that action.

Katherine Climpson seems set to be an important character in the novel. She ran Wimsey’s typing bureau, was unmarried, and was dying of cancer in a hospital on Great Ormond Street, London. Salcomb Hardy, who had recently died of a stroke, was a crime reporter and heavy drinker. Wimsey read his obituary in The Times.

King adopted a style for Wimsey that is indeed very English in tone, including a rather dry tone of exchange between Bunter and the title character. It is clear that King was quite capable of delivering in this style, as one might expect from a premier novelist. In one passage, as Bunter pulls the car over for a comfort stop, he reminds his employer, “If you would not take it amiss, my lord, your heavy overcoat is one the hook directly behind you. I’m afraid of the effects of the rain might be on that worsted.” In another Wimsey says, “Let’s go back to the car, Bunter, before we take a chill,” in the best of British aristocratic tones of the 1940s.

Wimsey is mentioned as a literary character in both Bag of Bones and Apt Pupil. Adding this to the fact that King attempted a Wimsey novel leads us to speculate that King is probably a fan of the Wimsey series. King listed Wimsey’s creator, Dorothy L Sayers, as one of the authors he most admired during an interview for The Waldenbook Report in late 1997.

Sayers’ character, Lord Peter Wimsey was immensely popular in the 1920s and 1930s and the books are still read avidly today. The BBC made two successful television series based on the character, starring Ian Carmichael and Peter Haddon in the lead roles, and there were also 1935 and 1940 movies based on two of the novels.

The fourteen novels and additional short stories were all published in the 1920s through the early 1940s and feature Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey, the younger brother of the Duke of Denver and a World War I veteran. His manservant is Bunter. An avid rare book collector, Wimsey develops a penchant for investigating crime, often assisting Detective Inspector Charles Parker, his brother in law. Sayers’ imaginary life of Lord Peter ends in 1942, with Wimsey married to Harriet Vane and the father of three sons. From the Author’s Note in Thrones, Dominations we know that he served in Military Intelligence in World War II.

It seems that King has been faithful to the Wimsey mythology, as we would expect. He has Wimsey married to Harriet, although he extends the mythos by having her die in the Blitz. He also has Wimsey serving in the British Secret Service during the War, linking the note of his serving in Military Intelligence. Readers will conclude from the text that he is the uncle of the current Duke of Denver, which is the way Sayers had it.

Sayers herself was acquainted with a number of the literary circles of her time, being a friend of T S Eliot and C S Lewis. She was a figure of some controversy, having had a child out of wedlock in 1924 and being accused of anti-Semitism in her writing. Apart from the Wimsey and Vane stories (Harriet Vane was also an amateur detective), which set her up financially and which she then retired from writing, she also wrote religious essays and plays in an orthodox Anglican manner; and translated some of Dante’s writings. Interestingly enough, she also translated the Song of Roland from the Old French. That work is an anonymous Old French epic, dating to the 11th Century and is regarded as the first of the great French heroic poems known as chansons de geste. Born in 1893, Sayers died in 1957.

King has continued to show an interest in crime and detective stories and has presented his Constant Readers with a limited but quality selection, including The Fifth Quarter, Man with a Belly, The Wedding Gig, The Doctor’s Case and Umney’s Last Case. The Colorado Kid, King’s novel, published in October 2005 was specifically written for the publisher, Hard Case Crime, which has revived ‘the storytelling and visual style of the great pulp paperbacks of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s’.

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Cemetery Dance Publications is proud to announce the fifth entry in this award-nominated and best-selling anthology series!  Shivers V contains over twenty short stories from today’s most popular authors, including Stewart O’Nan, Graham Masterton, Mick Garris, Chet Williamson, Simon Clark, R. Patrick Gates, Ronald Kelly, John Skipp & Cody Goodfellow, Al Sarrantonio, Rick Hautala, Kealan Patrick Burke, Robin Furth, Nick Mamatas, Scott Nicholson, Del James, and many others.  Featuring original dark fiction with a handful of rare reprints, Shivers V is available only as a beautiful perfect-bound trade paperback from Cemetery Dance Publications.

Today we’re pleased to present Brian Freeman’s story “One More Day” for free here in the Free Reads section:

“One More Day”

by Brian Freeman

Michael wasn’t sure exactly how long he had been chained naked to the floor of the Big Man’s Punishment Room, but he did know the Big Man would be coming back soon.  Then the bleeding and the screaming and the torture would start again.  Michael wasn’t sure he could survive another night.

The coldness of the Punishment Room had long ago seeped through his skin and taken hold of his bones.  The smooth concrete floor and the metal drain near his feet were stained with dried blood.  On the wall across from him was the wide mirror that relentlessly showed his reflection.  He couldn’t help but stare into it, watching himself deteriorate.

The hallucinations were growing stronger and more vivid with each passing day.  His body was exhausted and his eyes burned from the horror of the things he had seen and done… but still, he prayed to live for one more day.

That was how you made it through this sort of thing–or so he had decided early on as the days and the nights blurred together.  There were no windows in the Punishment Room, of course, just that damned mirror, but Michael believed the Big Man didn’t come to see him until after dark.  It was just a hunch, though.  The time between visits was horrible and the nights were full of their own terrors, but now the nightmares weren’t nearly as bad as what happened when Michael was awake. In fact, the nightmares were almost comforting in their own bizarre way.  At least in his dreams, he was in control.  He didn’t have to do the terrible things the Big Man demanded… or face the consequences for non-compliance.

Assuming Michael managed to escape this hellhole with his sanity and his life–and those odds were looking worse and worse with each passing visit of the Big Man–he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to go on living with the knowledge of what he had done to survive… but then again, that was a dilemma he wouldn’t mind being forced to deal with, given the finality of the alternative. He took the pain and the punishment one day at a time, hoping each day would be the last time he ever came face to face with the Big Man.  And when the Big Man entered the Punishment Room like clockwork and made his unspoken demands, Michael would do what he had to do to keep on living for another day, his eyes never leaving his own reflection in the mirror.

Every night the Big Man gave him the same two options, and Michael hated the cold eyes staring back at him in the mirror as he made his choice.  He never stopped staring at himself, judging himself for what he had done, contemplating how he had ended up here in the first place.

Michael knew he might eventually escape from this endless Hell–there was always a slim chance, he was certain of that–but there was no escaping his own tired, bloodshot eyes.  Some days he gazed at his reflection for so long he felt like he was watching someone else, a spooky feeling under the best of conditions.  The growing darkness in his eyes scared him, but what else could he do all day long?

So he sat and he waited and he watched the mirror.  He barely recognized the man in the reflection, the man sitting upright against a bloodstained cinderblock wall.  The prisoner’s hands were chained to heavy anchors in the floor, but he had enough range of movement to do what the Big Man demanded… if he didn’t want to suffer more than necessary.  If he didn’t want to choose his other option.

Day after day after day passed.  The nightmares grew worse, the Big Man’s terrible choices became more maddening, and soon Michael saw movement in the mirror when he was all alone.  Darkness shifting and jumping in the corners.  His own eyes, big and red and tired, peering back at him, searching for some escape from the terror.  The eyes in the mirror moved while his own eyes remained still.

And as always, after another string of endless hours spent staring at himself, watching those strange eyes he didn’t recognize, Michael heard the footsteps echoing down the stairs.  Then the door hidden in the corner of the room opened.

Michael’s heart began to race and he closed his eyes.  He didn’t want to know what the next punishment would be–and he definitely didn’t want to see who the Big Man might have brought with him today.

Yet keeping his eyes closed meant nothing when he heard the small voice whisper: “Mikey?”

His eyes flew open and he stared in horror at his little sister.  He had practically raised Alicia.  He had changed her diapers and taken her to the doctor when she was sick; he had enrolled her in elementary school and helped with her homework; he had explained the real reason why the boys on the playground were picking on her; he had encouraged her to make friends and learn as much as she could and to take chances and think for herself.  Alicia meant the world to him and he would have done anything for her, to protect her.  He would never hurt her… and she would never hurt him.

Alicia wore her best Sunday dress and she had obviously been crying.  She knew why she was here.

Towering above her was the Big Man dressed all in black with the mask protecting his face.  He led Michael’s little sister by the hand–his gloved hand was huge, engulfing her small fingers–but his grip wasn’t tight and Alicia didn’t struggle the way Michael had when he first awoke in this terrible place.  Her eyes were big, yet she showed no fear.  She understood what had to be done.

In her left hand, Alicia held a pair of pliers.

“Oh Alicia, no,” Michael whispered.  He tried to believe that she was a hallucination–maybe he had finally lost his mind for good, maybe this was just another nightmare–but he had known the truth the instant he heard her voice.

The Big Man let go of Alicia’s hand and she crossed the room and sat down on the floor in front of her big brother.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He began to cry.  So did she.

The Big Man watched the events unfold with his usual detached silence.  This was his room–he controlled what happened and when, yet he said nothing.

“I am, too,” Michael replied, staring at the grimy metal drain in the concrete floor.  He couldn’t even look his little sister in the eyes as he considered his options one more time.  He could finally take his own life and end the pain for good–which would also allow his little sister to go free without suffering through the horror of what was to come–or he could do what the Big Man silently asked him to do.

These were the same two options Michael was presented every evening–just with a different person waiting in front of him, holding a different tool or weapon–and as Michael grew more tired, as the eyes in the mirror became darker and darker, the two options seemed more and more similar.

Michael looked at Alicia, and she nodded and tried to hand him the pliers.

She was closer to him than anyone in the world, but deep down Michael knew he wanted to live for another day.

Another hellish, terrible day.

Another day of hoping to escape.

Another day of praying to live to regret what he had done.

Just one more day.

So he looked up and he watched in the mirror as the stranger he didn’t recognize took the pliers and did what needed to be done.

#

Later, after the Big Man had disposed of yet another body, the pool of Alicia’s blood continued to drip down the metal drain while Michael stared at the stranger’s eyes in the mirror.  He didn’t blink for the longest time, but his mouth moved silently.

After a few minutes of this unspoken conversation with his reflection, Michael pulled his left hand close to his mouth, the security chains growing taut between him and the heavy anchor in the floor.  He began to chew on his wrist.

The blood came soon after.

#

“Oh my God!  I can’t stand to watch this anymore.”

Like always, the gray haired lady had been given the best seat in the house: she sat in a stiff, plastic chair directly on the other side of the large two-way mirror facing the prisoner.  The viewing room was cold and sterile, and the witnesses for the State murmured at the latest development occurring before their eyes.  Michael Cooper, prisoner 82726782B, really was chewing at his wrist.

“That’s acceptable, Mrs. Lawson,” the Government Official said from his chair in the control booth.  “You know Mr. Cooper’s punishment ends as soon as you tell us he’s been rehabilitated and your family is satisfied that society has been repaid for his crimes.  Is this what you’re saying?”

The little old woman rubbed her face with her brittle fingers and contemplated what had happened since the prisoner ran out of appeals, what had been done on the other side of the mirror, the horrors she had witnessed.

She whispered: “I just never imagined it would be so… gruesome.  The way he keeps staring at me….”

“You can set him free whenever you’d like.  That is how the system works, after all.”

The old woman sat behind the mirror, watching the boy who had killed her granddaughter.  She watched him and her heart dropped into her stomach and she heard her granddaughter’s sweet laughter at a Thanksgiving dinner long lost to the past.

The old woman flinched as the boy chewed at his bloody arm, and she asked herself again and again how much more she could really stand to see, to hear, before she’d go mad.  How much more punishment did this boy deserve until everything had been made right?  And how much more could she take?

Then she heard her granddaughter’s laughter again, and she remembered that cold day many years before when she found the little body huddled on the bedroom floor, stripped and broken.

There had been so much blood.

Her little granddaughter never had a chance.

The old woman remembered all of this for the millionth time and then she said: “I think I can stand the sight for another day.  Just one more day.”

And then she watched the prisoner consume his own flesh while the witnesses for the State whispered their words of reassurance.

— end —