by Mark Allan Gunnells

“So you went to high school with the Strangler, Mrs. Gibson?” Bobby asked.

The old woman, looking frail but somehow regal in her wheelchair, smiled. “Back then no one called him that. He was just Martin. Marty, actually.”

“Of course, but were there any signs that he would grow up to be a serial killer?”

“You mean did he torture small animals, stuff like that?”

Bobby shrugged. “Not necessarily anything so overt, but I figure serial killers don’t just wake up one day and think maybe today I’ll try killing someone. There has to be something building up over time.”

Mrs. Gibson took a moment then shrugged herself. “I may be the wrong person to ask. To me, he was the neighbor boy from down the street I’d known my entire life. In grade school, he might have been a little rough-and-tumble, always getting into scrapes and fights, but that was just how all guys were back then. The idea of sensitive boys hadn’t been invented yet.”

“So when the killings started in 1967, you had no reason to suspect your old friend Martin?”

“Heavens no.”

“Were you still in touch with him at that point?”

“I saw him around on occasion. This is a fairly small town, you know. Plus he was a cab driver for the only service in town, so sometimes he’d carry me to the A&P and back on grocery day.”

“Did any of these cab rides happen during the period the women’s bodies were being found?”

“I don’t have exact dates but probably.”

“That must have been an exciting time.”

Mrs. Gibson frowned. “Exciting?”

“I only mean that in a town this small, not a lot happens. Then suddenly it has its own serial killer making national headlines. Kind of put the town on the map in a way.”

“How old are you, young man?”

Bobby sat up straighter. “Fourteen.”

“This is an awfully morbid subject for someone your age to be interested in, isn’t it?”

“I told you, I’m doing a report for school.”

“Of course. Well, to answer your question, it was a frightening time with the curfew the sheriff put into place and neighbors afraid of neighbors, but yes. I’ll admit from an objective standpoint, it was somewhat exciting too. Like being in the middle of a movie.”

“And you and Martin dated in high school, is that correct?” Bobby asked.

Mrs. Gibson jerked as if someone had just clapped their hands next to her ear. “Who told you that?”

Bobby reached into the backpack at his feet and pulled out an old tattered yearbook, the year 1954 embossed in flaking gold paint on the cover. He began opening the book to pages he’d marked with Post-Its, showing the old woman the pictures. “I got a hold of Martin’s yearbook from his junior year. You two are in a lot of photos together, and this one at a football game shows him with his arm around you.”

Her expression went blank, unreadable. “You’re a regular little Sherlock Holmes, aren’t you? Truth is, we did date very briefly before I met Will.”

“Any particular reason you didn’t mention that?”

“Would you like to mention that you once dated someone who ended up strangling five women to death?”

“Touché. Do you think that personal connection is why you never became one of his victims? I mean, if he had you in his cab and all.”

“Dear, he had lots of people in his cab. There would likely be a record of his fares. Marty may have been many things, but stupid wasn’t one of them.”

Bobby nodded, tucked away the yearbook, then changed tactics. “Do you think that personal connection is why he started contacting your husband and telling him where the bodies could be found?”

“I suppose that’s possible,” Mrs. Gibson said softly. “Marty and Will didn’t really know each other well, but Marty was aware I’d married a reporter for the local paper.”

 “I looked up the archive of your husband’s stories. Before the Strangler, he was covering the openings of supermarkets and tractor pulls. When he started receiving letters from a serial killer, detailing the murders and locations of the bodies, it must have freaked him out.”

“That’s putting it mildly. Will was a wonderful man, but he was also a bit sheltered and therefore had small ambitions. He would have been content to spend his entire life in this town covering the openings of supermarkets and tractor pulls.”

“But the Strangler changed all that, huh? Once he became the Strangler’s point of contact, that really shoved him into the spotlight whether he wanted it or not. And of course, once Martin was arrested and convicted, your husband got that lucrative job offer for the paper in New York.”

“Sometimes from great tragedy comes great blessing.”

Bobby consulted some notes. “I understand your husband originally turned down that job.”

Mrs. Gibson laughed, the sound low and dry. “You really are Sherlock Holmes. As I said, my Will had small ambitions. He didn’t want to give up the life we had here, but I eventually made him see what a lucrative opportunity this could be. One he really couldn’t afford to pass up.”

“Indeed. Your husband made quite a name for himself, and amassed quite the net worth.”

Mrs. Gibson gazed over at the mantel, on which sat a framed photo of a younger version of herself in a wedding dress, arm-in-arm with a robust man that was no doubt William Gibson. “Will was never truly happy in New York, but he wanted to make me happy so he did the work. When he died of the heart-attack, I stayed up there for a while but eventually decided to retire back here to South Carolina.”

“But as a much wealthier woman,” Bobby pointed out. “You’ve come quite a long way from the dirt-poor little girl living on Third Street in a three room house. All the way to Montgomery Street in one of the biggest homes in town.”

Mrs. Gibson titled her head, giving Bobby a shrewd look. Then her eyes dropped to his cellphone, recording their conversation from atop the coffee table. Bobby followed her gaze then reached over and tapped the screen, turning off the recording app.

“The rest can be off the record.”

“What exactly are you getting at, young man?”

Bobby consulted his notes again. “There are other interesting things I’ve learned in my research of this story. For instance, you mentioned there being a record of Martin’s fares in his cab. You’re right, took some searching out, but it looks like the year he was committing the murders, you were in his cab a lot, like sometimes three or four times a week. That’s a lot of trips to the grocery store. And his last words before being executed, ‘I’ll never regret what I did for love,’ were rather illuminating.”

Mrs. Gibson didn’t respond, but her face set hard as stone and she no longer seemed so frail. In her squinted eyes, Bobby saw a fierceness that was almost frightening.

“I also did a little research into the Strangler’s victims. The authorities always thought he picked them at random since they could find no connections between them and Martin. But a little digging revealed they all had connections to you and your husband in some way. A lot of coincidences there, your old boyfriend starts offing people that are irritants in your life and somehow your husband becomes rich and famous from it. Tell me, did Will ever suspect?”

“You must think yourself so clever,” Mrs. Gibson said with a mirthless smile. “But everything you have is circumstantial, nothing you could build a solid case on.”

“I’m not trying to make a case, except maybe to you. Just want you to know that I know. And obviously there is no school report, though this conversation has been educational.”

The old woman’s smile curled more at the edges, revealing some actual humor. “I see, so that’s what this is. A novice coming to a master to learn the trade.”

“Not exactly.”

“Then young man, what do you want from me?”

Bobby began rummaging in his pack again. “Remember Sierra Davis, the second victim? Single mother, briefly worked at the paper with your husband? Rumors were that she and Will had an affair shortly before she quit.”

“More than rumors,” Mrs. Gibson said, steel in her voice. “And she didn’t quit, her slutty ass got fired.”

“Whatever. She was my grandmother, and my mother never got over losing her so young and the abuse she suffered in the foster care system. My mother killed herself last week.”

For the first time since the interview began, Mrs. Gibson looked discomfited. Her eyes darted around the room, but there was no one here but the two of them. The old woman gasped quietly when Bobby pulled the length of rope from his pack.

by Sadie “Mother Horror” Hartmann

We must preach the gospel of horror fiction day in and day out. The life-saving elements of a genre intentionally aiming for hearts & souls. Part of this message must include the importance of short stories as the primary vehicle in which readers can be won over to the dark side of literature.

There are too many things fighting for people’s attention. For something to be a strong competitor against the overwhelming magnetism of the internet, horror fiction must present a worthy and comparable opponent.

This is why we champion short stories. Readers can quickly sample horror fiction from a wide range of what the genre has to offer.

Case in point, Hailey Piper’s short fiction can be found in several anthologies and now this new collection, UNFORTUNATE ELEMENTS OF MY ANATOMY. These bite-sized tales serve as a veritable banquet of various sub-genres and style Piper is gifted in; curious readers can determine what suits their appetite.

Armed with knowledge, a purchase of Piper’s longer books can be made with confidence–the investment of money and time sure to pay off.

UNFORTUNATE ELEMENTS OF MY ANATOMY is the perfect representation of Hailey Piper’s strongest gift as a writer: Versatility.

Cosmic, gothic, fantasy, magical realism, creature feature, body-horror, supernatural, and humor…this book has it all.

Within the first three stories, Piper proves her prowess. DEMONS OF PARTICULAR TASTE is a clever twist on a familiar horror trope showcasing the author’s ability to flip the script and blindside readers with a good laugh.

THE UMBILICAL CHORD is wicked sharp, precise, unflinching, and dark.

WE ALL SCREAM penetrates with rich, terrifying imagery and an in-your-face style of classic horror storytelling. No filler, all killer.

One of the most rewarding aspects of this collection is Piper’s selection of witchy tales; a sweet delight for avid horror hounds who don’t get enough of those.

It’s cliché to say, “There’s something for everyone here” but it’s true. Read through this collection and when you find a story that resonates with you and stands out among the others, know that there is more where that came from. Enjoy gothic fairytales, queer representation, elements of romance? Pick up, AN INVITATION TO DARKNESS. Love that story about possession? Try, THE POSSESSION OF NATALIE GLASGOW. Need some more of those slasher, killer vibes? You should buy, BENNY ROSE THE CANNIBAL KING. Lastly, if the cosmic horror caught your attention, THE WORM AND HIS KINGS is your jam. I highly recommend this collection as your guidebook to Hailey Piper’s amazing fiction. Use it to pick your next favorite book.

Joe Sullivan: What was your introduction to horror media? What are the books and movies that inspired you to tell your own stories as a child and then as an adult?

Christi Nogle: The earliest horror movie that made an impression was The Watcher in the Woods. My first horror novels were Lois Duncan’s Summer of Fear and Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. I remember being preoccupied with the images in them, feeling highly disturbed and at the same time fascinated. I think that when someone has a strong reaction like that, it’s because the art resonates with something already inside them. 

My best friend and I devoured Pet Sematary and Misery together not long after. I went on to read and love the rest of Stephen King’s books along with V.C. Andrews series’ and the few other horror novels available in the mall bookstore. I seemed to have exhausted the horror section and wandered in other directions with my reading, so I’ve also been inspired by a range of other genres over the years. Octavia Butler’s Earthseed series and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale first got me interested in science fiction, and Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon and Beloved made me interested in studying literature in college. 

As an adult, a few of the works I’ve found most inspiring are Shirley Jackson’s short stories, her novels The Haunting of Hill House, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle; Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day; and the works of Stephen Graham Jones, especially Mapping the Interior and The Only Good Indians. I am enthralled with the short fiction of Kelly Link, Carmen Maria Machado, George Saunders, Michael Wehunt, Nadia Bulkin, Gwendolyn Kiste, Kristi DeMeester, Camilla Grudova, L.S. Johnson, M. Rickert, Lynda E. Rucker, S.P. Miskowski, and so many others. Jeff and Ann VanderMeer’s gigantic anthology The Weird is one more inspiration. I have a big bookcase full of favorites, so those are only a few samples. 

I also like to keep finding new horror and weird fiction inspirations by reading Ellen Datlow’s anthologies, magazines such as Black Static and Nightmare, and of course anthologies and collections from places like Undertow, Dim Shores, Grimscribe Press, Nightscape Press, Cthonic Matter, Swan River Press, Night Worms subscription service, and so many more. 

What was the first horror story you wrote with the intention of submitting to pro-markets?

The first story I submitted anywhere was “In the Country”  but I didn’t write it with the intention of submitting. My friend Elizabeth Barnes kept after me to send it out. She was persistent enough that I finally cracked open Google and did some research on how to do that (to start with the highest-paying and most prestigious markets). PseudoPod looked like the best market, so I sent it there first. The story was so personal, I was terrified hitting “submit.” Dagny Paul (who ended up narrating the story beautifully) sent a “bump” message a few weeks later saying it had gone to the editors, but I wrote and published a couple more stories before it came out in 2017. 

You’ve had quite a few notable sci-fi and horror publications over the past couple years. Is horror sci-fi a niche that especially interests you, or did your dark fiction just happen to fit certain calls?

I love dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction, dark science fiction, climate fiction, etc. Thinking about the future, even a relatively positive future, seems inherently horrific—it’s going to be unknown and unfamiliar, no matter what—and it’s even more horrific to think about all the ways the future could be worse than today. Future horrors seem more wrenching, more heartbreaking than past or present horrors, since we’re all hoping that the future will (somehow) turn out well.  

I haven’t written science fiction for particular calls. These stories just arrive whenever I sit thinking too much and make myself paranoid about weird things that could happen. 

I’m familiar with one of your horror novel manuscripts. Beulah is a really fantastic story. You’re welcome to talk about its themes and how that story came to be.

Thank you! I’ve always wanted to write a novel, but short stories come more easily and naturally. A horror novel, in particular, was a scary thing to embark upon because the particular effects of horror seem (as so many have noted) more easily suited to shorter forms. The usual advice about novel writing does not seem to apply. A horror novel does something different from other novels. You want to feel ruined or at least chilled after reading it. 

I think that with Beulah, I was trying to recapture that point I referenced earlier—finding something outside yourself that resonates with what is already internal. It’s about the pain but also the promise of having a calling that’s not consistent with what others would like you to be. In the novel, that idea gets to be more concrete than in life. 

Beulah is the first novel I’ve finished or even attempted, so I’m proud of it and grateful to Codex Writers’ Group members for advice at the early stages; L.S. Johnson, Catherine Schaff-Stump, and Dannie DeLisle for working through chapter revisions in our horror novel critique group; and Samuel M. Moss and Isabelle Shifrin for reading drafts of the completed novel.  

Are you working on other novella/novel length dark fiction stories? Do you have a vision for your writing career going forward?

I am currently subjecting Cath, L.S., and our new member Eileen Markoff to chapters of a science fiction horror novel called All Her Really Good Friends, which was originally intended to be a novella. Novellas are wonderful, so I hope to write one soon. I would like to continue writing fiction for the rest of my life. This feels like a fragile goal because there was a long stretch of time when I wrote little and finished nothing. 

Another career goal is to contribute to the writing community by mentoring and supporting other writers. I’ve received amazing mentorship and fellowship from Codex, HWA, SFWA, Moanaria’s Fright Club, Ladies of Horror Fiction, and various critique groups, so I’d like to stay involved in these communities and give back. 

Another goal, I am not sure how to begin: I would like to help make more readers aware of contemporary horror. I feel it’s under the radar of many who would love it as I do, who would find these stories meaningful if only they found them.

…

Christi Nogle’s fiction has appeared in publications such as Pseudopod, Vastarien, Tales to Terrify, and Three-lobed Burning Eye. Christi teaches English at Boise State University and lives in Boise with her partner Jim and their gorgeous dogs. Follow her at christinogle.com or on Twitter @christinogle 

by Gabino Iglesias

We’re almost done breaking down the multiple paths to publishing! If you’ve read this far, thank you. I’ve been having a blast. Also, the fine folks at Cemetery Gates Media aren’t tired of me yet, so there’s more coming. In any case, today we’re going to discuss the third route: Big Four publishing. If you decided that self-publishing is not for you and think some of the limitations of indie/small presses would be too much for you to overcome, then you probably want to have your book with a large press. Awesome! Now, here are some things to keep in mind:

You’ll probably need an agent.

There are a few big publishers out there who will work with you even if you don’t have an agent. There are also some big publishers that have open reading periods for unagented authors. For example, Tor Nightfire has one coming in June. They’re amazing and you should have them on your radar and send something. In any case, while these two things are great and they give opportunities to those who don’t have a literary agent, your chances of actually selling a manuscript increase exponentially when you do have an agent. I could write an entire piece on agents, but I won’t do that here. Instead, I’ll give you some pointers and things to watch out for or keep in mind. The first one is that you should understand that getting an agent is hard. Sure, some folks pull it off quickly, but most don’t. You want an agent who loves your work and is willing to put in the time to sell it, so them being extremely picky is actually a good thing. Also, remember that you want The Agent for you, not just an agent. Some agents sign a lot of folks trying to make a buck and then end up ghosting writers, so do your research and ask around. Lastly, keep in mind that publishing is a business, and agents are folks who should be willing to help you navigate that business and should be ready and willing to ask all your questions.

There will be an advance, and that changes everything.

One of the main reasons folks want to work with a big publishers is that there will be an advance. The thing to keep in mind is that the advance can be small, medium, or large. This means you can sign with a large publishers and not be able to quit your day job. Also, an advance means you have to sell enough books to earn out that advance before you see a penny from royalties, which is a crucial point many authors forget. Oh, and if your book bombs, you get to keep the advance, sure, but you’re also going to drag that for the rest of your career. Lastly, remember that the advance is not really entirely yours: your agent will get their 15% and the IRS will come knocking if you don’t give them their cut, so when you see an advance number online, remember those two things. Getting money up front changes everything. You now have to earn out. You have to use that money to survive while you sell something else. If it’s enough money to get you by, then you need to focus on marketing the book and writing the next one to keep the whole thing going. I know this is the dream, but you’re closer to a nice deal with a big publisher than you are to a multi-million dollar deal, so act accordingly.

Get ready to do some serious waiting.

If you want to work with a big press, you’re gonna have to do some serious waiting. You will wait for agents to reply. You will wait for agents to read your manuscript if they request the whole thing. You will have to wait while they send it out to publishers. Once you land a deal, you will have to wait to edit that thing again and then you will have to wait for the publisher to give you a pub date. That’s why you see book announcements that say the book will be published in a year. That’s normal. Get used to that idea. One of the best things about small publishers is that they can go from polished manuscript to you holding your book in your hands relatively quickly. That’s not the case with big publishers, so get used to waiting before you even start down that path.

The hustle is never over.

Ask any author working with a big press and they will all tell you the same thing: most authors aren’t happy with the support they get from their press and books never sell themselves. Sure, folks like James Patterson and Stephen King don’t seem to need help moving copies, but they exist on a different playing field. If you land a nice contract with a big publisher, they will probably do more for you than a small press would because they have a few dollars to put behind your book, but your book won’t explode unless you hustle the same way self-published and small press authors hustle. That’s a guarantee. Getting a book deal with a big publisher is a dream for many writers, but it’s hard to do and has a few extra elements that aren’t present in self-publishing and the small press world. Know the difference and pick the one you think best matches your goals. Self-publishing is awesome, as we’ve discussed here, but many authors don’t want to do it and prefer to do everything in their power to work with a big publisher. You should never tell someone who self-publishes to stop doing it and try to get an agent. Likewise, you should never tell someone is talking about how hard it is to get an agent that they should just quit their dream and self-publish. Folks have different ways of seeing their careers and they work for different things, so support everyone whether they want to self-publish, go with a small press, or go with a big publisher.

May 1-7 we’ll accept stories for a flash fiction call dealing with ‘True Crime’. Since flash fiction isn’t the best medium for exploring real life events, we’re going to be flexible and ask that your story at least resembles a plausible crime. You’re more than welcome to dramatize a real life murder, or heinous crime, but we ask that you change the names of those involved. If you’re lost as to what we’re looking for, check out a couple episodes of the 1980s/90s series Unsolved Mysteries. The writers managed to create gripping recreations and often ventured into half-fiction to portray what may have occurred.

Sadie Hartmann aka “Mother Horror” will be choosing three winners for May’s call, but still send your submissions to Cemeterygatesmedia@gmail.com.

Joe Sullivan: Your latest bio (and each I’ve seen) begins “Jessica Ann York is a horror writer”. When did you first imagine yourself a horror writer as a statement of fact? 

Jessica Ann York: I’ve always wanted to belong to the horror genre, even before I was public about my dream to be a writer. Everything I’ve ever written, read, or watched just naturally fell into that category in some way. I grew up in the rolling hills of rural Tennessee, and my parents couldn’t keep me away from the creepy crawly things that hide inside the caves and swam in creeks near our house. If you asked my family to describe me, I think some of the first images that would pop into their head would be of 10-year-old me telling ghost stories at sleepovers, reading Stephen King aloud to my cousins at the beach, or watching Nightmare on Elm Street during the Holidays. So when my Creative Writing professors asked me to draft an author bio for the first time in school, I just opened with “I’m a horror writer,” and I’ve stuck with it since.

The path for most writers seems to involve some degree of collegiate training, then a period where we forget about writing while we live life for 5-10 years, until we once again pick up the pen with an eye for publication. Anyone catching up on your bio might think that your path has been just about seamless. From a creative writing program to a series of professional sales, some of which came out of your MFA portfolio! Did you have a plan for your writing after you were done with school?

It makes me happy to hear that my path looks smooth from the outside looking in. The reality is, I completely gave up on publicly sharing my writing with anyone when I was in high school after I had a trusted friend tell me, “Some people just aren’t meant to do things, and that’s you with writing, Jessi.”

Hearing someone I loved so much say that tore me to shreds (especially after I caught them making fun of my fictional characters with another person), and I never showed my writing to anyone again until I was a Junior in college. I was working on a B.S. in Psychology, and I was completely sold on the idea that I’d go into mental health and that would be my ultimate life path. But that B.S. required me to pick a minor, and I couldn’t hold myself back when I saw that there was one specifically for Creative Writing.

I thought that minor would just be a fun way to let some of my pent-up ideas out, but then my Intro to Creative Writing professor pulled me to the side and told me upfront that I needed to switch majors to English. Soon after, a ton of my other English professors also started telling me the same thing. By my Senior year, I was still majoring in Psych, but the head of the English department told me I’d get full-funding if I applied to their Creative Writing Master’s Program. I took the offer, and I haven’t looked back since.

I’m really proud to say that I can independently support myself with income from both my day-job as a commercial blogger and the side income from my short stories. I never, ever thought I’d have the skills to do that, and I’m so thankful those professors pushed me to believe that I could.

My plan right now is to ride this wave for as long as possible and see where it takes me. The writing community is amazing, and my heart belongs to them.

Writing horror and dark fiction could be considered the art of conceptualizing anxieties. A typical horror narrative throws an individual into an experience with the unknown, dissecting how that individual reacts in the face of nothingness(the monster, the specter of imminent death, etc.) Your narratives tend to draw the reader in through your main character’s anxieties, but then you seem to explore the concept of anxiety itself — and I can’t help but think of the yarn and hex dolls filling the frozen lake from your story “The Lake of Poppets”. Who do you think explores anxiety well in their fiction?

If I had to pick one contemporary writer whose exploration of anxiety inspires me, it’d be Samantha Hunt. Her short fiction collection THE DARK DARK was on my thesis reading list, and I still go back to it whenever I need inspiration. A lot of her stories follow middle-aged women who struggle with feelings of restlessness and unease, despite having what most people would consider perfect lives. “A Love Story” in particular is about a woman who can’t stop obsessing over all the different ways her children could be molested or murdered, to the point that she starts romanticizing her irrational thoughts and they become comforting to her. It’s very quiet, domestic horror, and I love how you can tell the ideas come directly from her personal experiences and the places she’s lived. Her ability to turn life into fiction is something I try to mirror in my own work, because I think that nugget of truth transforms the fears you’re writing about into something other people can easily imagine themselves experiencing.

Are you working on long stories(novellas/novels)? What do you imagine will be your first book, and what additional themes do you hope to explore with it?

Currently I’m on track to (fingers crossed) complete my first novel by the end of the year. It’s a YA dark fantasy that follows a young fish-man who has lost connection to his past lives and is trying to make friends he can trust inside a cursed forest where humans are skinned for their bones.

It’s incredibly different from my published short fiction in that it pulls away from the Southern setting and female protagonists I usually write—but the same themes of dealing with anxiety and the intense feeling of not fitting into your own skin are still there.

The nameless protagonist’s main conflict is that he is constantly being told that he is inside a body that is naturally meant to enjoy solitude and preying on humans, but he finds himself quickly realizing that’s not the truth at all, and that these other fish-men are more than likely just repeating what they’ve been told countless times during their past lives.

I’m writing it with my two little brothers in mind, and I hope it can become a story that invites adolescents to trust their inner voice when they’re surrounded by insidious stereotypes that would push them to do otherwise.

———————————————–

Jessica Ann York is a horror writer whose work has been featured at PseudoPod, Vastarien, and Cemetery Gates Media. She serves as an Associate Editor at Pseudopod and as the Webmaster of the Atlanta Chapter of the Horror Writers Association. Her fiction centers around women who take comfort in using the macabre as a window to understanding anxiety. Through writing and research, she’s come to love the things that used to scare her (like the baby tarantulas and rats she’s raising). You can get updates on her and her strange pets at Twitter @JessicaAnnYork1.

by Shane Douglas Keene

Down there dark beneath the rich chocolate cake soil, all his lovers rest, safely protected by garden and cherry tree, no seeing eyes to concern themselves. What lies below will stay forever, no recourse but to sleep the sleep of the still and beautiful dead. Naked and natural beneath the dirt, nude as cut and peeled pomegranates, once blood-full, now bones, bodies without people in them, they live in him; slumbering history away beneath the sentinel cherry.

Making a lazy spiral around and outward, his beautiful garden lines both sides of a simple brick path. It is the ancient man’s pride, the centerpiece of a life lived well. He tends to it every morning, weeding, trimming, loving the feel of arthritic fingers soaking in cool, damp earth. He sits on the bench in the shade each spring afternoon, watches pristine white cherry blossoms trickle like Zen paratroopers to the ground. As peaceful as love is violent. On this day in particular, he enjoys the beauty of it, sun shining brightly on flowers dark and glorious in the light.

The garden is the culmination of a career spanning 52 years, a compilation of all his special projects completed. From the tree that finished the garden, began his retirement, to Haemanthus coccineum, his blood flowers, the frosting with the cherry tree at their center. And finishing off the outward spiral is a dance of black dahlias, lonely in daylight. In the night, they become a dark ocean, twining, interlaced with writhing vines alive with the stars of night-blooming hedgehogs, queens of night. It’s a mesmerizing transformation that he wishes he could stay up for every night. 

But his treasures, his joys, are deeper, and they wander back through time, traversing from the now to the then. They are a decaying chronicle rambling through his storied career. His thoughts turn to them frequently of late and he anticipates communing with them, his projects—his kills, the way he peeled skin from them, strip by strip, from faces and genitals and, finally, all, screams and blood painting night red—for the remainder of his life, and he is not mistaken, but for Time, which is not the fixed wheel expected.

His stop is coming up soon.

In the night, as the old man sleeps the sleep of the nearly dead, his beloved legacy begins to transform, bearing wicked fruit in the shape of his transgressions. Confessions telling their truths in secret darkness. They bear the fruit of an old man’s demise. Outside his midnight window, the darkness writhes, shuffles. The world of his little garden is pulled apart, shredded. Dahlias, hedgehogs, and bloodflowers flying apart, scattered by some unseen hand. But most significant of all, the tree, the changes wrought hideous, unspeakable. It was a dream becoming a horror, becoming Judgment.

***

Morning.

Cataract eyes pop open, shutters on the dirty windows of a haunted house. This day is full of uncertain dread. His arrhythmic heart surges and races like an engine revving. Klaxons scream in his head.

The world seems too quiet to his tired brain.

No hollow echo of a faucet’s drip, no creak of a settling floorboard.

Something is desperately wrong.

It takes the length of a second’s ticking to tell him true:

the world is silent.

No buzzing bee or traffic noise, no birdsong.

Fast as his old bones will let him, he jumps out of bed and hits the floor. Sans housecoat or slippers, he heads immediately toward the back door, toward his beloved sanctuary. His heart feels like it’s pounding in his throat, throttling him with terror. Slamming through the screen into the springtime sunshine morning yard, he halts abruptly. Jaw hanging open, eyes gray saucers in a time ravaged face, he issues something halfway between a moan and a sob. His Garden of Eden is Hell on Earth.

Desecrated, his flowers destroyed, torn, stomped on, smashed—unrecoverable. They look like organic confetti strewn, sprawling across lawn and even on the roof of his tiny, tidy little home.

A shrill keening slips past tightened white-line lips, and he stumbles forward until he stands on the sacred ground of the garden.

His shrine is undone, the body of his life’s labor defiled.

And the precious cherry tree?

It still stands.

Or rather, something yet stands in its place.

An abomination, an impossible one. The trunk consists of interlocked human bones intertwined with what appear to be pulsing arteries. Letting his eyes roam upward, he spots ragged, desiccated clumps of flesh clinging to the putrid nightmare construct.

But for the “branches” he might retain his sanity just a moment longer. The horrible realization hits. They’re elongated human spinal columns, hung here and there with dangling nerve bundles, loose wiring from a broken conduit.

Undulating slow and smooth, like Leviathan’s tentacles.

His gaze lands on huge bulbous orbs growing from the ends of the branches. No, not orbs. Human heads.

Those grotesque columns, still in soft motion, bend toward him and he sees the faces.

The faces of Love.

His creations, lovers, all gathered, lending undeath to the living tree. They are malformed beyond recognition, without skin, lips distorted into angry sneers, eyes the color of rage. Teeth in rows of triangular razors, gnashing, hungry for the taste of his suffering. The bundles of dangling nerves encircle him, squeezing relentlessly. The heads bend down, slowly, so slowly, toward him. They speak his name all in unison, a crescendo of cacophonic sound in a song that will last forever.

END

Shane Douglas Keene is a poet, writer, and musician living in Portland, Oregon. He is one third of the Ink Heist podcast and co-founder of inkheist.com. He wrote the companion poetry for Josh Malerman’s serial novel project, Carpenter’s Farm in 2020, has short fiction in Cemetery Gates’ Paranormal Contact and has multiple works forthcoming. He lives with his wife and two small dogs who are convinced they are royalty.

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.