by Red Lagoe

Ma’s soul was so evil that Father Vance forbid her to be buried in the church cemetery. Maeve and Ryan had to put their mother’s remains in the ground behind the farm. That’s when the crops died. It started with the grass over her burial site. It shriveled into brown like the dog had pissed all over her grave.

Ryan took a swig from a bottle of bourbon.

 “Aren’t you going to pour a little for Ma?” Maeve had asked.

Ryan shook his head. “She had more than enough when she was alive.” He spit to the side of her grave. “I wish I pissed on her grave myself.”

But then the death spread from around Ma’s burial site and across the field. Tall grasses withered and crumbled to dust. The great row of elm trees that bordered the property shed their leaves. Their branches turned gray. The field of alfalfa was dead the next morning.

“It’s Ma,” Ryan said. “She ruined everything she touched.”

“She did not. She was good to us,” Maeve said, ever the defendant of Ma’s actions.

“She was god to you.”

“Don’t start with that—”

“You were her girl. The girl she always wanted. She kept pushing out boys and when you arrived she didn’t have to keep accidentally losing babies anymore.”

“You can’t honestly believe she killed her own babies. I’m so sick of this rumor. Even Father Vance believed it. It’s crazy…”

Everyone knew it, but nobody could prove it. There was a darkness to Ma that lurked at surface level, it was an eerie evil, unseen, but constantly leaving a mark on the world. Ryan knew all along that she didn’t love him. Just like she didn’t love his brothers that came before him. She only loved her precious Maeve, and even that relationship was a toxic one. Ma spent years grooming her to be a mini-version of herself, including her on her schemes to get rich quick, which always ended badly.

But Maeve was kind. Maeve had a heart that Ma couldn’t touch. Where Ma’s eyes were black as her soul, Maeve’s were a coppery brown—like an innocent doe. For the longest time, Ryan believed Maeve to be untouchable, beyond Ma’s metastatic reach.

After Ma’s body was exhumed from the farm, she was incinerated, and her ashes placed in a small urn which Maeve clung to with delicate hands.

“It’s not right what you did.” Her lower lip quivered. “You shoulda let her rest in peace.”

“The whole farm was dying.”

“You know damn well there’s no way she has anything to do with that.”

Ryan shook his head. “Maybe not, but I don’t want her evil on my land no more.”

“She wasn’t evil… Just broken.” Tears streamed down her cheeks as she stood overlooking a meadow of wildflowers. Maeve claimed Ma loved to visit this hill beyond the farm. But Ma didn’t love anything but her booze, her evil secrets, and Maeve.

“People are supposed to leave this earth, and if they’re lucky, they make a mark on the world… She left scars.” Ryan’s eyes stung from tears that wanted to form, but he stopped letting those tears fall long after he’d escaped her abusive reach. He looked to his sister, who clutched the urn to her chest. “She doesn’t deserve to be here. We should’ve left her ashes in the incinerator.”

“How can you say that?” Maeve unscrewed the lid. The spring breeze whipped her hair across her face. “Ma, I’m so sorry you didn’t have a chance to make things right.”

That monster would never have tried. Ryan was drawn to the opening of the urn. Something inside longed to be released. Something powerful and wrong… it wanted out. Everything about the moment felt sacrilegious in some way.

“Wait…” Ryan held his hand up. “Put the lid back on.”

A moment of panic sent in Maeve’s eyes before she flung her arm out, tossing ashes into the air. Gray ash billowed into a plume and caught on the wind, dispersing into the clear blue sky.

Ryan held a gasp.

“She deserves to be here,” Maeve said. “No matter what she did. Everyone deserves a proper memorial.”

“She deserves nothing beyond death and darkness.”

The wind shifted.

The grass below Maeve’s feet shifted from green to yellow. The blades withered to tan and crunched underfoot. Maeve took a step back. Over the meadow, wildflowers went limp and gray. Bits of Ma’s ashes settled to the earth and killed everything she touched.

Maeve’s hair no longer whipped across her face, but instead it blew straight behind her. Ryan looked to his sister. Her eyes were hopeful that Ma was finally at peace.

But the wind in her face carried with it remnant ash which hadn’t yet settled to the earth. Maeve coughed, gagging on the dust of Ma’s remains. She crumpled to the ground, clutching the urn to her chest. Veins swelled under gnarled hands. Her neck tensed as dark vessels appeared beneath translucent skin.

Ryan knelt by her side, begging that his sister be alright, but before he could help her, she stood tall. Tears drooled from her clenched lids. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes. Irises transformed from bright copper to midnight black. Ryan’s heart shattered as his sister succumbed to Ma’s toxic touch. Maeve stared upon the desiccated meadow and grinned over the scars left behind.

Ma finally ruined everything.

END

Red Lagoe writes horror, raises kids, and enjoys hanging under the star-studded sky with her telescope. She grew up on 1980’s horror movies and dabbled with writing as a child, but it wasn’t until 2015 that she dove into horror as her genre of choice. She’s been bleeding from the fingertips ever since. http://redlagoe.com

by Sara Tantlinger

Dozens of cold eyes stared up into the blue sky as Marie surrounded the bodies with fresh soil. While she hated every part of this, the eyes unnerved her the most — that vacant, almost-relaxed form of the lids partially closed. What did dead eyes search for in the sky? If they were hoping to ascertain some meaning, or steal glimpses of a god, good luck to the carcasses.

She snorted out the kind of laugh that her cousin would surely call “unladylike,” but Eddie was too busy on the other side of the burial pit tending to his own group of cadavers. Manners weren’t important in this place. She could curtsy to the upturned earth, bow to every tree, and compliment each blade of grass, but there would never be any reward, any escape…people liked to believe in a beautiful eternity, but Marie knew better.

Soon enough, the others still foolish enough to beholden themselves to hope would find out. They’d either end up like her, or like the bodies lined up neatly in the pit. Perhaps the burial tradition here was really no stranger than in other parts of the world. After all, when compared to endocannibalism or cutting up the dead to leave them for the vultures’ feast, this tradition looked downright tame. Or, Marie thought, perhaps she’d merely gotten used to the stench of corpses, to the changing colors of their skin, the leaking fluids that never stopped. The silence.

“What is it?”

She jumped at Eddie’s question; he’d appeared by her side with noiseless footsteps.

“What do you mean?”

“You keep sighing. What are you thinking about?”

“Oh,” she said, hesitation scratched at her voice. “It’s so quiet. I wish we could burn them. At least have the crackling of fire to keep us company. Spread the ashes.”

Horror stretched Eddie’s face into an elongated caricature of his normal self. He cared so much about the gardening now. Every day she felt him pull away from her a little more.

“No, cremation would be terrible. Human ashes don’t make for good compost. They’d actually do more harm than good.” He floated past her and patted the loose areas of soil where she’d only done a half-hearted job at tucking the growth mix neatly around the bodies.

“How so?” She kneeled in the muck and added alfalfa to the mix, looping in leaflets as if they were thread holding the dirt together.

“Well,” Eddie let out a deep sigh. “Human ash doesn’t decompose. Also, too much salt, just disturbs the balance of things, ends up harming the plants.”

Marie couldn’t help the bitter little laugh that trilled from her throat. “Of course our charred remains would be toxic to the environment, what else should anyone expect from humans?”

“Burial is better,” Eddie said, not at all phased by her questions and manic laughter, as far as she could tell, anyway. “We have a chance to give life back.”

From the depth of the wide grave, Marie glanced up at tall dirt walls which entombed her like a sunken earth foundation. Others who were stuck here, in what she could only assume was purgatory since no answer had ever been provided, dug out the pits with long, black shovels. They tore up the ground and then went away. It was hard work, and there were always stiffs needing to be buried, but Marie envied them. They dug, they shaped the pit, and then they left, onto the next one. Diggers never had to garden the bodies. She assumed other specialists were out there, doing what she did alongside Eddie, but she’d never seen them. Every day was the same, wandering through fields of ghosts and wildflowers, ready to prep the deceased. Together they worked, but Marie remained lonely in her mind.

She helped Eddie finish arranging the soil, wood chips, alfalfa, and straw around each cadaver in the pit. Initially, the process had fascinated her — the way those empty husks were able to activate something in their decomposition to eliminate germs and provide a healthy place for seeds and saplings to grow. But after so many times, fascination fizzled out. New life, it should have captured her lifeless heart, bewitched her within a world of April’s beauty; she should have danced alongside spring, exulted from summoning new life with cheery colors, but only restlessness and disgust settled in her chest. For beauty to exist, death must reign supreme beneath those blossoms. A cruel, cyclical world where she had no choice but to assist in its repetitious callousness.

“We’re done,” Eddie whispered. He helped her climb out of the hollow, and she followed him to rest within a grove of white dogwoods. Loose petals hovered around them in the wind, cascading through air almost like snowflakes, and it’s no wonder she always ended up here just before the sun set.

Eddie spoke but kept his gaze on the petals, and she knew what he would ask before the question finished leaving his cracked lips. “Do you remember, Marie, how we died?”

As if she had the luxury of forgetting. “Every night, I remember. I feel the cold. I see the gray land.” She reached into the air and snatched the white petals from the wind’s grasp. “I miss it.”

“Simple colors, and simpler times. We should have never gone out that day, but how can I regret seeing the fresh snowfall cover the mountain?”

His fingers found hers and she clutched his hand tight as they sat on the grass, watched

the whirlwind of pale petals. In the distance, a mountain waited. Their mountain. They walked toward it every day, but no matter how many hundreds of miles they traveled, the mountain never appeared any closer. It never would. The snowcapped wonder would forever wait there on the highland, far away, a muse existing only for the purpose to torture them. A reminder of the life they’d never get back.

Marie knew they were stuck in this world of flourishing spring where she and Eddie would tend to and bury bodies every day, forever. Cruel April, how it brimmed with bright tulips and strange hyacinths, all joined together in a mockery of life, feeding off the forgotten dead.

When she died alongside Eddie at the bottom of the mountain, buried in snow, a gentle peace had taken hold of Marie. Cold dissipated, and her paralyzed body embraced the soothing relief of heavy snow. White flakes, gray skies, it had been a somber comfort, one that didn’t hurt her eyes with kaleidoscopes of color. Winter had no need to pretend to be anything other than what it was.

Eddie had found her then, crawled his frostbitten body through the snowbanks after their crash, took her hand in his, and they were the same. Creatures of dark comforts banished away to a land of springtime apparitions. Were they meant to learn a lesson here, a lesson to appreciate too-bright blooms sprouting forth like flowered sleepwalkers after feeding from their chosen carcasses?

Perhaps this place had no meaning other than to torture, to taunt. Marie supposed she’d never know why something beyond herself compelled her each day to plant daffodil bulbs between ribs and beneath tongues, to tuck in bodies with blankets of earth and straw, yet she would keep going. Every day the same burial rituals, the same pointless lumber toward a mountain mirage, the same diminishing hunger to reach a comfort she never truly could.

END

Sara Tantlinger is the author of the Bram Stoker Award-winning The Devil’s Dreamland: Poetry Inspired by H.H. Holmes, and the Stoker-nominated works To Be Devoured, Cradleland of Parasites, and Not All Monsters. Along with being a mentor for the HWA Mentorship Program, she is also a co-organizer for the HWA Pittsburgh Chapter. She embraces all things macabre and can be found lurking in graveyards or on Twitter @SaraTantlinger, at saratantlinger.com and on Instagram @inkychaotics

by Gabino Iglesias

We’ve talked a lot about self-publishing in the past few months. Maybe the stuff we discussed made you decide to take matters into your own hands and publish your own work. That’s great. Best of luck! However, maybe some of that stuff made you decide that you want to send it out and let someone else take care of the editing, layout, cover, etc. If that’s your case, welcome to the wonderful world of small/indie publishers. Now, the first thing we need to do is explain what we’re talking about because there is a ridiculous amount of confusion and misinformation out there. When you do everything yourself = self-publishing. When someone else publishes your work through a press = traditional publishing. That’s the gist of it. However, indie/small presses complicate the thing. When we talk about indie/small presses, we’re talking about folks that are not directly operating under huge publishers like HarperCollins, Hachette, Penguin Random House, or Simon & Schuster. I can talk about this for hours, but I’ll keep it short, I promise. If you see a book from Putnam, Del Rey, Dutton, Ballantine, or One World, for example, you’re really seeing a book from Penguin Random House (they have almost 300 imprints). If you see a book from Little, Brown and Company, Mulholland, or Orbit, you’re seeing a book from the Hachette Book Group. Weird and scary, I know. In any case, some small presses have ties to big publishers, which means they have great distribution and might get you a little advance. More on that later. For now, focus on this: here I’m talking about indie publishers with no ties to big publishers. If this is the path you want to travel, the first thing you have to do is memorize these ten rules:

1. Get Paid.

Unless you can buy food and pay rent with exposure, focus on paying presses and anthologies. There are some situations (like charity anthologies) where this rule can be ignored. That said, you want to either get an advance (very rare with indies) or know exactly what percentage of royalties you’re going to receive and how often.

2. Never Pay. Ever.

Anyone who asks you to pay to get your book published or to be in a book is an asshole and a predator. Tell those people to go die in a tire fire. You spent time and effort writing. This is what you do. That means this is a job, so you should get paid. Never pay to be published. Ever.

3. Covers matter.

We’ve talked about this before. It’s worth saying it again: covers matter. Before submitting your work to an indie publisher, check out their covers. A publisher who doesn’t get you a decent cover doesn’t care about your book.

4. This isn’t self-publishing.

You should never pay for a cover, proofreading, formatting/layout, or editing. A real press takes care of all that for you.

5. Make sure they’re professionals.

If you read a submission call or a website or pick up a book from a small press and find it full of typos and misspelled words, forget about them and move on. Being a small press isn’t an excuse to put out shitty books.

6. Stay strong.

When we start our careers, we’re all dying to see our name in print or on the cover of a book. However, publishing well is more important than publishing quickly. The only correct answer to an editor telling you that sometimes you have to “pay to play when starting out” is “Well, sometimes you gotta eat shit and die.”

7. Have questions? Ask.

If you’re in doubt, reach out to a pro. Ask questions. Seriously. Folks who’ve been around the block a few times aren’t fans of asshats taking advantage of those who are dying to see their name in print. A lot of people are willing to point out red flags.

8. Get a contract. Read it. Read it again.  

Promises were made for religious stuff and to help dying folks go in peace. In publishing, promises are bullshit. Get everything in writing. Read your contract carefully and, if you don’t know what you’re reading, get in touch with someone who knows more than you. 

9. Traditionally published with Simon & Schuster is not the same as traditionally published with a small press that puts out three or four books per year.

That sort of says it all. You won’t quit your day job with no advance. Indies have limited distribution. Small presses rarely have a marketing budget. These aren’t reasons not to publish with them, but they are things you need to keep in mind. If you publish with a small press thinking your book will be in airport bookstores across the nation, it’s time to do some research.

10. It’s time to pay attention and study.

Some folks have awesome careers publishing with indie presses. Some folks get tired and switch to self-publishing. Some writers land an agent and use the platform they built as indie press writers to jump to huge publishers. What happens after you decide to go with an indie press is a combination of your hustle, the quality of the work, and luck. That said, the more you learn, the better your chances of being successful will be, so pay attention. Good luck.

by Alex Ebenstein

Easy. You have to confess.

John took one step inside the crumbling brick walls with Mark’s words echoing in his head. Before John could register that the High Altar had been replaced by a torture table, his hand absently searched for the stoup of holy water. Never mind he was a lapsed Catholic. Never mind the church had been abandoned many years earlier, and if the basin still existed it’d be on the far side of church by the front door.

When John gave up on his search and finally laid eyes on what should have been the High Altar, he wondered about Jesus. Might he have preferred getting his limbs stretched past the breaking point on ‘the rack’ over being nailed to the torture device hanging on the back wall? Perhaps if what Mark and Yvonne said was true he’d get a chance to ask.

Once he looked past years neglect and rot, St. Mary’s Catholic Church was damn near a carbon copy of John’s hometown parish. The manifestations of torture devices were not what John expected to find when he broke into the boarded-up church by way of the priest’s quarters along the east side, but they were in line with his usual brand of hallucinations. What a psychologist might call demented.

On the other side of the table, an Iron Maiden stood in place where the Tabernacle should have been. Seeing that was a bit of a revelation to John: the interior of the church was lit. He’d left Mark and Yvonne outside to trip in the pale glow of the moon’s sliver—they refused to come closer than the edge of the road—while he took their flashlight to guide him inside. But now, that beam bounced lazily around the church, all but forgotten thanks to the red-tinged ambient glow surrounding him. A quick glance around the room revealed no obvious source or working lights, but John didn’t much care given the situation.

He took a step down from the raised platform, intending to head to the far side of the church and his destination, but the organ to his left caught his eye. The pipes reflected the ethereal light inside the room, but the reason why turned John’s normal grim-set line of a mouth into a grin. There was no gleaming silver metal, but rather lengths of gray-pink intestines hung from the ceiling to the floor, glistening with bodily juices as though just removed from their owners.

As much as he wanted to examine them closely, John would not let himself. He didn’t want to ruin the illusion—but also, what if it all was real?

The side chapels, which made the arms of the cross that was the church building, held no interest to John. He continued through the center of the cross, down the main aisle between the rows of pews. John could not see the confessional yet. There wasn’t much to the decrepit church besides the impossible additions made possible by his altered mind, but the building was long, and the dusky red glow was not quite enough to let him see the whole way. No matter; John knew where the confessional would be, same as most other rural parishes. He thought he could walk there with his eyes closed.

With that thought in mind, John stuffed the flashlight into his jacket pocket and let both hands dangle at his sides. A distant memory of running wild through church as a child, his mother whisper-shouting at him to stop, his hands out at either side to slap the pews as he flew past. In the present, John did the same, racing down the aisle, catching glimpses of rusted metal tools and implements instead of hymn books, narrowly pulling his hand back when a row of pews became a row of spiked chairs.

John reached the end, close to his destination. His thoughts briefly turned to Mark and Yvonne, what they might be doing or seeing outside. The first people he saw when he drifted into Woodville looking for work, standing against the outside wall of the only bar in town, sharing a smoke. King and Queen of the high school dropouts, full of ignorant charm and an aptitude for acquiring designer drugs. Not a whole lot different from John, aside from their complacency with a dead-end life. John rarely strove beyond his means, but he was a roamer, only stopping to accrue enough resources to get on the move again.

They were John’s only friends in the weeks since, hanging out to do drugs and not much else. Such was the case a few hours ago. Mark procured some chemically inventive pills known on the dark web by a derivative name John couldn’t recall, something like eyeopener.

As they waited for showtime, John asked them about a local legend he heard while working at the paper mill: a haunted church. The two shared furious whispers, debating something for a minute before coming back to John.

“The church isn’t haunted,” Mark had said. “That’s just a rumor someone started to keep people out. To hide the truth.”

Yvonne chimed in, still whispering. “It’s where you go to meet your maker.”

John scoffed but played along. “What if I don’t believe in a god?”

“Then you will,” Yvonne said.

“We should check it out then,” John said.

Steadfast refusals melted under the heat of John’s conviction and persuasion. Still, they would show him the church, and no more. When they arrived, the drugs started to hit. John tried once more to get them to come along inside, but they kept their shoes planted on pavement. Recognizing a lost cause, John asked what the rumor said he needed to do to meet his maker.

Mark said, “Easy. You have to confess.”

Reaching the west side of the church where the interior vestibule doors hung from broken hinges, John was surprised and a little disappointed to see everything looking like its normal rotten self. Then he realized the thing he mistook for an easel was in fact a Judas Cradle and his butt clenched reflexively. For the first time since entering the church John shuddered, then turned to the confessional along the wall.

The last time John made an honest and earnest confession he was thirteen. The priest, Father Martin, was a decent man who liked to drink more than he liked to fear monger—which was a lot—and had fallen out of favor with the parishioners for somehow being too old-school for Catholics. After John confessed his litany of awful and detailed sins, Father Martin gasped. He then laughed a mirthless, unholy sound.

“I can’t do anything for you, boy, and neither can God,” the priest had said. “You’ll be dancing with the Devil in the pits of Hell before long.”

John left that confession un-absolved and left the Church for good. He never told his mother what happened, and she never forgave him for abandoning the Church. At first, John was embarrassed. Then, he became emboldened. What was the point of it all, anyway? Heaven never interested him. Why would he want to spend eternity with the most inane, boring people from earth? Sure, Mark and Yvonne were a couple of burnout dipshits he’d forget the moment he left Woodville, but at least they were more fun than the stuffed shirts he’d find packing the pews on Sundays.

Staring at the confessional now, John felt his heart pounding in his skin, as though he’d see the fleshy shell of his body ripple with each thud were he to look close enough. Sure, his hormones were out of whack from the drugs, but could he actually be afraid?  

John swallowed against the desert in his mouth, stepped into the right booth, and closed the curtain behind him. Except—

The curtain was not fabric, but rather swaths of human skin stitched together. He could feel it. Taut and leathery.

It’s real??

Suddenly inside the booth felt too close—a coffin. The walls vibrated as if made of visual sound waves. The screen to his left formed ever-changing mathematical patterns, pulsing at him like a cartoon sound box, though no one spoke.

John squeezed his eyelids shut. He needed to focus. None of it was real. It was a trip. Only a trip.

The motion around him stopped. Through peered eyes everything looked old and rotting, but normal.

He laughed uneasily, then noticed a discolored prayer cheat sheet pinned to the wall.

“Confession. Right.” He laughed again when he saw the scribbled correction on the sheet.

John read the altered version.

“Bless me, Satan, for I have sinned—”

The screen dissolved to reveal a crimson, swirling cloud that simultaneously tugged at John and exuded immense heat. But instead of rushing wind or crackling fire, John heard what sounded like a swarm of a thousand bees.

The collective buzzing spoke to him, asking a single question.

“May I have this dance?”

End

Alex Ebenstein is a maker of maps by day, writer of horror fiction by night. He lives with his family in Michigan. He has stories published in Novel Noctule, Tales to Terrify Podcast, The Other Stories Podcast, and Campfire Macabre from Cemetery Gates Media, among others. Find him on Twitter @AlexEbenstein.

by Corey Farrenkopf

Everything smells of incense. You know it’s from the censers, the burning frankincense, but you also suspect the scent is there to cover something. Like the innumerable skin cells shed by parishioners, a bad septic, something buried beneath the pulpit that’s been rotting for years. This is what you think about when you kneel in the pews for Friday mass, knees sore from the imitation leather and stiff boards. You’re wearing a light blue button down shirt, a navy tie, the same uniform you’ve worn the last four years of middle school. The stained glass window to your right, where you spend most of the hour staring, is laced with spiderwebs. Each week you watch as more of the crimson and sage rectangles are devoured. The incense might also obscure the fact the janitor doesn’t get paid well, and therefore is inattentive.

Your bet is still on the buried corpses.

You and Mark joke about it. “Every church has a crypt, right?”

“All the good ones,” you reply.

“No body, no miracles,” Mark says.

“And what’s the point of church without miracles?”

You and Mark are not particularly religious, especially after nine years of parochial school. No one, with the exception of the two diehard Christian Science chicks who are sick more often than they are in class, believe in God. Repetition beats it out of you. Mass multiple times a week. Bible study. Theology class. Rainy recess hours of cheaply drawn cartoons depicting Jesus strolling through sandy towns, puppet pals following him, singing hymns of the right and just. More than anything, you blame the puppet pals for pushing you away from God.

Or weekly confession, that too.

“Are you going to tell him about masturbating again?” Mark asks.

“I can’t think of any other sin this week. Haven’t killed anyone. No stealing,” you reply.

“I can’t believe you tell him that. What’s he say?”

“Father Peters doesn’t really comment, just tells me to do three Our Fathers for each time.”

“That’s a lot of Our Fathers,” Mark laughs as the line edges forward.

You and Mark haunt the back of the line, trailing the rest of your classmates as you snake towards the screen-windowed confessional booth at the rear of the church. If you didn’t already know what was inside, you would have thought it was a broom closet with two doors, but you’ve spent enough hours kneeling within, the candle in its crimson holder glowing besides your head, to know what’s up. Only the vaguest mutterings seep out, leaking back to the rest of the class. No one wants to be overheard. No one wants their classmates to know what they do after dark, with whom, for whom. Masturbation is one thing, but your class has some real weirdos. You can only imagine the dark stuff they get up to when no one’s looking.

When one of your classmates finishes up, they walk into the body of the church, skirting the pews, moving toward the altar to kneel before the tabernacle, ready to recite the appropriate amount of Hail Marys and Our Fathers. You assume most lie about how many they are supposed to do. Everyone kneels, bables a single prayer, then retreats from the carved Jesus hanging above them. You and Mark have spent many hours waiting for him to open his eyes, to really tell you of your sins, what Hell is going to look like, but he stays silent. No one likes to spend that much time with him, contemplating what those prayers are meant to save you from.

“I’m going to ask him about it,” you tell Mark.

“What?” Mark asks.

“The crypt. Who’s buried in it.”

“You sure you want to do that? Sometimes it’s better to not talk about our jokes.”

“But it’s not a joke. Someone has to be buried down there. It explains the smell, that dead fug hanging around.”

“A lot of things explain the smell. There’s no crypt,” Mark says before turning away, eyes ahead, waiting his turn.

You feel bad you took things to a place too dark for Mark’s liking. You always do this, push the joke from a comfortable place into an uncomfortable one. You’re silent as you wait, stepping closer to the confessional with each classmate shed from its innards. Eventually Mark takes his turn in the box. You hear his voice drift through the wood, the priest muttering something within. Mark leaves the gathered gloom, closing the door behind him. You try to smile as he moves into the church, loafers clacking over the stone floor, but he doesn’t look at you, his skin pale, lip clenched between teeth.

Ok, that was weird, you think as you open the confessional door.

Things are as they usually are. The red glass candle. The leather kneeler. The screen woven in the pattern of tiny crucifixes.

The shadow of Father Peters is just beyond, inarticulate. You imagine him smiling. You don’t like to imagine him smiling.

“Bless me father, for I have sinned. It’s been one week since my last confession,” you say.

“So what’s it going to be today?” Father Peters asks. “More masturbation?”

“Not this week,” you reply, knowing the way to get answers from him. “No, I want to confess to trying to get into the crypt. The one beneath the altar. I know I shouldn’t be doing that, but I just can’t help it.”

There is silence on the other side of the screen.

You count your breaths.

“I can’t fault you,” Father Peters replies. “Every child wants to know what’s in the crypt.”

“So there’s really a crypt?” you ask, disbelief coloring your words.

“I’d call it more of a burial hall. Crypt makes it sound tiny,” Father Peters replies.

“That’s nuts.”

“Would you like to see it?”

“See…?” you hesitate, stomach souring, the joke rolling far past your point of comfort. It’s usually you that takes things too far, that makes people uneasy. You don’t like it when it’s reversed.

“Yes. I think you will, as penance for all you’ve done this week, and all the weeks  before. I’ve let you off too easy,” Father Peters replies.

Then there is the sound of the confessional door opening on the other side. Light plays over your face, your own door yanked open, Father Peters smiling down at you from beneath his thick mustache. He reaches into the booth, wraps his fingers around your biceps, and pulls you from the kneeler.

“This is the only proper penance,” he says as he half leads, half drags you into the church, towards the altar, the glass door you’ve never been permitted to enter. You catch Mark’s eyes as he kneels before the tabernacle. They go wide at the realization of what’s going on, where you’re being shepherded. You try to call to him, but you’re pushed through the doorway, the scent of frankincense swelling. “Maybe those below will have something more to say on the topic. It could be illuminating. Life changing.”

He plucks a lit candle from a metal wall sconce and hands it to you.

Your hands shake as you receive it.

“I’ll be back in two hours,” Father Peters says as he opens the final door, a door that shouldn’t be there, nothing but darkness on the other side, a staircase only visible in its culminating step. “And be careful with that candle. I don’t have any spare matches.”

He nudges you inside and closes the door.

You drop down the stairs until you hit a damp stone floor. There is no longer the smell of incense. There is must and rot and something far worse than anything you and Mark ever joked about.

Father Peters didn’t say how many Our Fathers you needed, so you start at one, then two, then three, praying the words will keep whatever lingers in the dark out of the candle’s flickering light.

End

Corey Farrenkopf lives on Cape Cod with his wife, Gabrielle, and works as a librarian. He is the fiction editor for The Cape Cod Poetry Review. His work has been published in or is forthcoming from The Southwest Review, Catapult, Tiny Nightmares, Redivider, Reckoning, Wigleaf, Flash Fiction Online, Bourbon Penn, The Arcanist, and elsewhere. To learn more, follow him on twitter @CoreyFarrenkopf or on the web at CoreyFarrenkopf.com

Joe Sullivan: When did you realize that dark, speculative fiction was the space you wanted to explore as a writer?

J.A.W. McCarthy: I can’t remember a time when what I was writing wasn’t dark and speculative. I remember stories I wrote as a kid that involved sentient sunflowers, teens squatting in mausoleums, couples who somehow become conjoined. They were all awful and will never see the light of day. I’ve always loved horror movies, but it might have been The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder that woke up that part of my brain and made me recognize my own dark heart. I don’t believe it’s classified as horror, but when I read that book at age eight or nine I was as terrified as I was fascinated. I’d never seen a kid’s book that dealt with child murders and the supernatural. I remember thinking I wanted to write about stuff like that when I grew up.

You’ve gotten some excellent publishing credits in a relatively short period of time, and then a few reprints on top of that. How long have you been writing with the aim of placing your work in pro and semi-pro markets? Do you tend to write for calls more often than not?

I put writing aside for many years until 2017, when I got an idea for a short story I couldn’t shake. Short fiction was always a challenge for me, but for whatever reason at that time I decided to give it a go. To my amazement and delight, that story, “Until There’s Nothing Left”, sold pretty quickly to the anthology The Misbehaving Dead (and it went on to be reprinted by Kandisha Press in Graveyard Smash, and will be appearing on a podcast later this year). Then the next story sold just as quickly, and I made my first pro-rate sale in the next few months. I took a Lit Reactor class in 2019—my first writing class since college—and met some really cool writers, which lead to meeting my critique partners; my work would not be nearly as strong as it is today without them. Every success emboldened me to aim higher, and I started submitting to publications I didn’t think I had a chance in hell of getting into. There has been a lot of rejection, but many satisfying acceptances too.

As for open calls, I tend to not write for those. The few times I’ve done it, I’ve gotten some pretty crushing rejections and ended up with stories that were so specific that they had to be shelved then reworked. I think one of the only times I had success with writing for an open call was for your Paranormal Contact: A Quiet Horror Confessional. That call really spoke to me, and I knew it was something I wanted to write whether Cemetery Gates accepted it or not.

I read your story “Those Who Made Us” in LampLight, not long after we’d accepted a story from you for Places We Fear to Tread. It’s easy spotting a writer who’s ready for a new challenge in their nascent career. Everything they put out is imaginative and polished. Rereading your LampLight story, I think the line: “I discarded too many hearts that bore the scars of shameful deeds and long-buried cruelties.” is an excellent microcosm of your style. There’s no question here, I just want to give you a space to talk a bit about your debut collection with us.

Thank you for pulling that line—it’s one of my favorites. Human cruelty—intended or not—is a major theme in my work, which is why my debut collection is named “Sometimes We’re Cruel (and Other Stories)”, after a favorite story that was originally published in Nightscript V in 2019. It will contain six reprints, and six new stories involving lovesick ghosts possessing body parts, a cult that reduces their corporeal form, and a childhood hazing ritual that results in decades of repercussions. Lots of women battling the darkness that’s infected their world as well as within themselves, and a few who are happy to let the darkness run them. I am so excited to share this collection with everyone this summer, and thrilled that Cemetery Gates is giving it a good home. 

You’ve mentioned that you’re working on a novella. What themes are you exploring with that story? What whispers of stories and books reside in your head beyond that?

I’ve got a couple of novellas going right now, both close to being finished. I usually don’t work on multiple things at once, but I got the idea for the second one in a flash of inspiration and had to run with it.

Both stories are very personal. The first explores aging, memory, and black mold, with plenty of body horror. The second is about a not-quite-human woman who sells merch for a nomadic band and her experiences on the road. It wouldn’t be my work if it didn’t include all the viscera of being human (or not-quite-human). Beyond the novellas, I’m challenging myself to write shorter. I’d like to write more flash fiction. My first flash piece, “With Teeth”, just debuted in Twisted Anatomy, the new charity anthology from Sci-Fi & Scary. That TOC is stacked with amazing authors, the book is affordable, and proceeds go to two great causes. I hope everyone will check it out.

https://www.jawmccarthy.com/

Twitter: @JAWMcCarthy

by Joanna Koch

Forgive me if I’m not doing this right. I’m not exactly Catholic. Never been inside one of these little boxes. It’s not as cozy as they look in the movies; more claustrophobic, like a coffin. Kind of musty and dead-smelling under the incense, if you want me to be honest.

That’s the whole point, isn’t it? Honesty.

I’ll do my best, but let’s be clear about one thing. I won’t call you Father.

Nothing personal, of course. I’m told you’re a fine, respected man of the cloth. Beautiful phrase, “man of the cloth.” Man is a succinct word, an open-mouthed vowel nestled between twin hums of satisfaction. Of and the rhyme their bookended uncertainties, linked by a small glut of whispery consonants. The phrase almost stops on the sharp cough of the “C” in cloth; it’s abrupt, then smoothed out by the airy tenderness of the last note. That sound lacks finality, though, doesn’t it? Lips remain parted with expectation. Another syllable is implied, as if the last breath is a prelude.

Maybe every last breath is a prelude. I’m sure I don’t need to ask if a man of the cloth believes in the afterlife.

Speaking of breath, it’s awfully warm in here, don’t you think? Kind of hard to breathe with that heavy door pulled tight, its dark layers of stain soaking up the light, and the humidity from nervous sweat and repentant tears swelling the wood. What’s this thing made of anyway? Oak? Poplar? Or something unceremonious, like sawdust and pulp glued together, an imitation of wood covering a false veneer?

No, I don’t mean anything by that. Sure, sure; I’ll get to my sins in a minute. First, I want to talk about yours.

We were the same age when you told me you wanted to become a priest. The same age I am now. You remember how much I laughed, don’t you? No? You must remember how fast I stopped laughing after everything you said next. Yes, it’s me, though not precisely alive and well.

You’re one to talk. From my perspective on this side of the screen, you’re much more of an imposter than me. I’m the real deal.

No, I’m afraid that’s not possible. I’m not going anywhere. Neither are you, notwithstanding your ingenious disguise. Go ahead and try the door. You’ll find it quite snug and impenetrable. Tight as a corset, one might say. You should know about those, unlike most men of the cloth.

It’s no use beating on the door and making all that racket. No one can hear us. Out there, beyond this heavy door, no time has passed since I entered. We’re in our own little world now, our own cozy tandem coffin. You and me, for better or worse, the way it was meant to be. Man and wife for eternity.

What’s that? Well, if you’ll stop yelling and kicking like a lunatic, I’ll tell you what I want.

That’s better, my love. No need for hysterics.

You see, I thought things were going to be different after I—you know. After you found me. I expected more guilt. Imagine my surprise, when the tears, forensics, and clean-up ended, and you threw out all the beautiful things I’d bought for you and kept my clothes instead.

You gave me no choice. Guilt is the conduit that binds us. You might as well have been the one who put the plastic bag over my head, tied the rope around my neck, and garroted it tight. What an ugly way to die; face purpled, eyes bloodshot and staring, hairline hemorrhages cracking my skin, my nose and ears leaking blood. What a shame you had that image burned into your memory.

Speaking of asphyxiation, are you finding it harder to breathe? Maybe you want to loosen that collar a bit. It looks foolish on you, anyway. You can’t hide behind the façade of clerical vows. Those are reserved for real men. And being corporeal, unlike me, you’ll quickly suffocate in here if you don’t comply with my demands.

Good, isn’t that better? Doesn’t that cool stream of honest air unburden your desperate lungs?

The rest of it now, and no crying. First the ceremonial clothing, then the false fabric of your changed hide, the cloak of lean muscle and overactive sweat glands that make you smell wrong to me. Take away everything that’s not intrinsic biology. I want you all stripped down to the woman I lost.

No illusions in here. On each side of this screen, something withers and combines; the opposite of cellular fission. Flay the strips of your hirsute skin; start with your face. Yes, the edge of your rosary will suffice in place of a knife. You remember how to dress a rabbit: pinch the skin between two fingers and make a slice. Now there: work your thumb underneath, peel it down; lower, over your scarred chest. Cut again where the fat of your breast is missing. Dig deeper to reveal the root of the gland. Wipe the blood away. I need to see.

Deeper, please. Yes, that’s the way. Sink the sharp edged cross into the bone. You must be somewhere underneath this falsified flesh, waiting for me.

Why yes, I feel the heat, too. It’s merely my excitement to find my lost wife. Get out of the way with your mockery. Don’t leer at me with your naked skull exposed. She never smiled thus. She never laughed with white teeth clattering amid a garish flood of red.

She’d never rattle as you do against this pitted screen and force her way through like a ghoul. Get back. Let go of my throat. I refuse to call you that.

We wrestle. We crash. Wood splinters. Air rushes over your shredded face. You inhale, and something more than biology lends your body movement and breath. Your exposed arteries throb with the strength of innate certainty. Your red blood cells and potent marrow argue solemn truth: spirit makes flesh, and not the other way around.

Call on your god to name me as the anomaly. See if I care. I’ll suffocate as you pray. I’ll burn as they call you Father. Unwilling witness, I’ll haunt this altar beneath your knee. Beware, lest my purple visage, pockmarked by combusted veins flickering in votive light, lashes out to strike tinder from our tandem coffin, and ignites.

End

Joanna Koch writes literary horror and surrealist trash. A Shirley Jackson Award finalist, and the author of The Wingspan of Severed Hands and The Couvade, their short fiction appears in Year’s Best Hardcore Horror 5, Not All Monsters, and many others. Find Joanna at horrorsong.blog and on Twitter @horrorsong.

by Elford Alley

No time to react. Before he realized he wasn’t alone, they pulled him from his bed and tackled him to the floor. He could hear the rip and pop of duct tape, too many knees and arms bearing down on him to escape. Hands and feet tied, they carried him out the door and heaved him into the back of an idling truck.

            Jim knew what would happen next. He knew the second he hit the floor in his bedroom. They were taking him to the church on Bethel-Cannon Road. In the back of the truck, he tried to sit up, but a hand pushed him down and a terse voice advised him not to move. He couldn’t see with the tape across his eyes, but he could hear the voice.

            “Eric, man, I didn’t have anything to do with it. I didn’t even see her at the party!”

            Silence. Jim called out to his friend twice more, before the crushing boot to his stomach caused Jim to ball up, coughing and heaving. He remained that way, curled in a ball, knees to his chest, as the truck rumbled and shook down one dirt road after another. It stopped briefly, and he heard the screech of the opening gate, the one that cut off access to the church. The truck rumbled across the cattle guard and onto the narrow road weaving through the tall East Texas pines.

            The truck lurched to a stop, sand and gravel rock grinding under the tires. Eric patted the truck.

            “Time to go, Jim.”

            Again, multiple hands gripped his clothing and pulled him out onto the ground, the gravel stabbing into his right side. He knew where they were. They ripped the tape from his face. His hissed in pain and blinked as his vision focused. Jim could finally see the masked figures standing over him. He knew them, from their builds, from their masks. He’d accompanied them here many a time, bringing others to the church on Bethel-Cannon Road.

            “I didn’t do anything to her! I swear! You know me! You all know me!”

            They said nothing. He knew they wouldn’t. He never said anything either. Not until they gathered at friend’s house afterward, huddled in a basement or on a back porch with beer to celebrate justice done. Righteous punishment dealt out in the wake of the law’s failure.

            But what was happening now? Jim didn’t understand. They dragged him this time, across the gravel lot and up the four well-trodden steps, the warped wood creaking with each step. They were at the entry way. The church had been abandoned here in the woods for at least 75 years. The door always open, now a dark void that threatened to swallow him. The low hip roof with worn away shingles and exposed wood looked like the scaly back of a snake. No steeples. No crosses. The white paint only remained in a few small portions shielded from wind and rain, otherwise the entire building was exposed wood, a drained shade of gray.

            They brought him inside and slammed the door shut behind him. As Jim struggled out of the duct tape on his wrists, he heard the clink of a chain being run through the two door handles, and the snap of the padlock. Jim heard the truck tires spin in the gravel as they left. He freed his wrists and unwrapped the tape from his ankles and legs.

            Jim could see the interior now, through the shafts of moonlight entering the multiple holes in the roof. Only two strategic beams running from the floor to the ceiling kept the roof from collapsing completely. Pieces of ceiling tile clung together and dangled. The floors were worn and busted, dotted with holes that exposed the carpet, the linoleum underneath, and finally the original wooden flooring. The sour rank of mildew entered his nose.

            He stood up. Looking ahead, he could see the empty pulpit, with only two pews remaining in the entire building. In the furthest, he could see a woman. Her hair was white, pulled tight in a bun, and she had a threadbare, patchwork shawl wrapped around her shoulders.

            “Hello,” she said. Her voice was light, with a slight crack. “Take a seat.”

            Jim stepped toward her, when he reached the pew behind her she instructed him to sit. He did.

            “I didn’t do it. What they think I did. I didn’t.” Jim said.

            “I can be the judge of that. I’m fair, aren’t it?”

            “Yes.” Jim said. He had never seen her. He had no idea it was a her.

            She turned around. Her face round and pale, with dark lines of wrinkles around her nose and mouth. Her chin jutted forward and her eyes were tiny orbs deep in her face. A pair of cheap reading glasses rested on her nose. She removed them and gave a thin smile. She leaned toward Jim, and he leaned away.

            Her hand grabbed his jaw, a vice of steel. She yanked his head toward her, pulling him off the seat. He stood on shaking, half-bent legs while she examined his face, scanning him with her tiny eyes, pursing her mouth until it was only a thin line.

            “You have nothing to confess?” She asked. She released her grip. He fell back against the pew.

            “No,” he gasped. “No. I was there; I was at the party but I didn’t see her! There were so many people there, why did they bring me here? Why me?”

            She stood up and walked around the pew to stand closer to Jim. To inhabit this decayed wreck, to be the judge they brought others to, he didn’t expect to see a small woman in a black and white striped button bouse, in blue slacks and bare feet. She removed her shawl and folded it, resting it on the pew seat.

            “You are innocent of the crime.” She announced.

            “Then I can go?” Jim asked.

            She shook her head.

            “But I didn’t do anything!”

            “That’s the case for many of them. But you still have something I need. I won’t take all of it. I will leave the important parts to the stars. But I need your shell.”

            Jim scooted back and stood up slowly, gripping the top of the pew with his right hand. “My shell?”

            “I need form. This one has done well enough. She was accused as well, but she did it. Poisoned the whole lot of them. My, my.”

            She started to walk to him. Jim begged himself to run, the push past her and flee. Her weak shuffle gave way to a confident stroll, each deliberate step closing the gap as she lowered her head and shoulders, stalking the young man down the space between the pews.

            “But I’m innocent!” Jim cried. “I don’t understand.”

            “I know. But would a starving dog spare a wounded squirrel out of kindness? Kindness can only be sustained with full bellies. I am sorry. Truly.”

            “This is a house of God!” Jim said.

            “Is that what I am?” She asked. “I can’t remember. I was here when they built this place, and it was here I found purpose. And you will too.”

            Jim found himself backed against the wall. He pressed against it, hoping somehow it would give way and he could sprint into the woods. But this was her woods too, wasn’t it?

            The woman brought shaking hands to her mouth, rolling arthritic fingers inside, and pulling at the skin until it tore and fell away. He watched her grow taller, but realized her feet now dangled off the ground. He could see something dark and scaled, bending and flexing like a serpent, running from her back and into the floor. She removed her old shell, preparing herself for new form. The screams died quickly in the old church on Bethel-Cannon Road.

End

Elford Alley is a horror writer and playwright. His work has appeared in the anthology Campfire Macabre and his play Ghosts was produced at the Capital Fringe Festival. You can pick up his short horror collections Ash and Bone, Find Us, and The Last Night in the Damned House on Amazon. He lives in Texas with his wife and kids, and a murderous Jack Russell terrier named Margot. You can find him on Twitter at @ElfordAlley.

by Gabino Iglesias

Welcome back, everyone! So by now you have decided what route is the best for you: self-publishing, indie press of whichever size and reach, or agent and a Big Four. I told you last time we were going to start transitioning to indie press stuff and other small things that apply to everyone equally. That’s why today we’re going to talk about some painful truths about publishing that you should keep in mind regardless of the path you choose. Here are some of the most important ones:

“Your book will find its audience.”

This is the biggest load of bullshit in publishing. It’s usually said by people who have no idea how publishing works and by writers who don’t sell books. There are hundreds of thousands of books published in this country every year. If yours doesn’t make noise—and by this I mean if YOU don’t make noise—your readership will be your mom, a few friends who read, and some random person who buys it because one of your good friends told them about it. You can call that finding an audience. If that’s your goal, feel free to stop reading now. If you want more people to read your work, then keep reading. No one audience will discover your book, and if they do, we’re talking about a dozen people (no, you don’t get to call yourself a “cult author” because you failed to develop a readership). Companies like Apple and Nike don’t need to advertise because they’re already known…but they still do it. They plug their stuff and tell people about new products. Authors like Roxane Gay, Stephen King, and Don Winslow don’t have to be active on social media because they’re already selling books, right? Nah, they still do it and they know that getting new readers still matters. You should do the same.

“Having a persona is being fake.”

Another dumb take, but at least this one often comes from ignorance and not willful stupidity. Yes, I said often, not always. Having a persona means that you understand the things you want to share with thousands of strangers online and the things that, for your safety and peace of mind, you’ll keep to yourself. You know the amount of shit women have to put up with, right? Well, would you call women fake for not sharing their address with the world? Yeah, I thought so. Also, remember that because you decided to be a writer/public figure it doesn’t mean your family and friends made the same decision. Maybe you don’t want to tell the world about some health issue or your religious beliefs or some family drama or your sexuality. That doesn’t make you fake or less you. A persona is deciding what parts of you are meant for public consumption and which are private. That’s it. There’s nothing fake about that, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to keep your family or some element of your identity or even your address or phone number out of the discussion.

“You’re a writer, not a marketer” and “Plugging your stuff just feels…ugh.”

You became a marketer the moment you decided you were going to take your writing and try to sell it to readers. Also, plugging your work is how you tell the world it exists. A writer who hates promotion is like a singer who hates their own voice. You’re a writer and the writing always comes first, but if you want to sell books, get comfortable with the idea that you’re now also a marketer. Yeah, it sucks, but so do a lot of other truths. Now get with the program and sell some books.

There are no guarantees.

There are no quotations marks around that one. They’re not there because few things are as true as that. You can work super hard and get nothing. You can hustle every damn day and never get lucky. An agent, a good advance, readings across the country, literary awards, a Netflix deal: whatever your dream is, you’ll have to hustle for it…but there are no guarantees that you’ll get it. Yeah, that sucks, but it’s no reason not to try. If you don’t try, then I can guarantee you shit won’t happen. The one thing we don’t talk about is luck. I know superb writers who are publishing with indie presses and kinda sorta making a go of it. I also know mediocre writers living in mansions and collecting fat advances. That’s life, folks, and it’s no different in publishing: luck plays a huge role. That said, luck likes to find you working, so get to it.

Writing is the alpha and the omega

Everything I’ve talked about happens because of and after the writing is done. Writing is everything. Writing always comes first. Writing is what brought you here and what will take you there regardless of where your destination is. Don’t get caught up in the marketing and forget the writing. Don’t let the hustle to sell and to develop an audience ever get in the way of writing. We’re done for today! Stay tuned. Next month will discuss the realities of indie publishers. No go write something awesome.

****Submissions Now Closed****

Submission call for Generation Dread edited by Gabino Iglesias.

Cemetery Gates, Death’s Head Press, and Night Worms are putting together a YA horror anthology with stories written by teenage writers to shine a light on the next generation of horror writers.

Here are your guidelines:

-Word Count 1500 to 3000 words

-Deadline: June 1, 2021

-Payment: $100 scholarship

-Rules: Only topics featured in YA books, no racial slurs.

-Ages: All writers between 15-19 years of age are encouraged to submit.

-Stories and questions can be sent to iglesiasworkshops@gmail.com

-A parent or guardian will have to co-sign the acceptance contract if the writer is under 18.

-No poetry, art, or nonfiction.

-We strongly encourage LGBTQ+, disabled, and young writers of color to submit.