Archive for the ‘Occult’ Category

Winnie-the-Pooh and the Angle of Dath, by Dave Hughes

Posted: May 20, 2012 by Shaina in Dave Hughes, Occult
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Winnie-the-Pooh and the Angle of Dath, by Dave Hughes

Winnie-the-Pooh and the Angle of Dath, by Dave Hughes

Available at:
Amazon

Description: A. A. Milne’s stories and poems about Winnie-the-Pooh became instant children’s classics. This parody, in the tradition of A. A. Milne, is not for children by any means.

After The House At Pooh Corner, it’s been four years since Christopher Robin went to school, and now Owl’s dead – murdered by an anonymous assassin who calls himself the Angel of Death (or more accurately, the spelling in the title) and promises more killings. That’s not all; the Angle brought a bloodthirsty pack of wolves to help him, and a demon-worshiping crow watches the chaos… and waits.

Rabbit races to find the killer and tries to shun his wretched past that caused his friends-and-relations to abandon him. Tigger tries to fend off the wolves and prove his strength. Kanga wants another child – with Tigger. Roo is an emotional teenage train wreck. Eeyore faces a huge change to his life and mental status. Piglet finds a bit too much solace from Owl’s old liquor cabinet. As for poor old Winnie-the-Pooh, all he wants is Christopher Robin to come back and make things right.

This unauthorized parody is by no means what Milne intended, but the style is the same, the charm is the same, and the structure is the same. The only thing that’s different is that religious fanaticism causes the Hundred-Acre Wood to lose its innocence… forever.

Excerpt

“I’m afraid the Hundred-Acre Wood can’t forgive you,” whispered the figure at Owl’s bedside, “so just hold still and cooperate for me.”

Owl snorted. He raised his head and creaked it over his pillow to face the ceiling rather than the window. His beak dragged a long thread of saliva across his dry feathers. When he leaned back again, an awkward plume of dust from his sheets and his scalp puffed into the masked face of the black-cloaked fellow in the cold moonlight of his newly built tree house.

“Um-” Owl began to speak, but his inside of his beak tasted like dried mud. He smacked his tongue up and down the short shell of a mouth in a rhythmic rattle until the whole inside was wet enough to talk with.

The visitor sat down on the nightstand, but sat up again when he realized it wasn’t a stool. The thing almost broke, which would have sent the piles upon piles of heavy books crashing down. In the brief shuffle he dropped his shotgun, but caught it just before a bump with the floor could make it misfire. Only two shots were inside, and if neither of them went into Owl’s skull, there would be trouble.

“Hallo there, good sir,” said Owl, his eyes still shut. “I do hope you realize this is an absolutely dreadful time to go visiting. Perhaps I must introduce you to the proper methods of visitation in modern etiquette, since you seem to not know a good time to-”

“Owl. This is serious. I need you to hold still.”

“Hold still?”

“Yes. It’s not very complicated, you just sort of keep your wings very stiff and-”

“I know how to hold still, you weird, whispering, um, whatever-it-is-you-are. What, dare I ask, is that whatever-it-is-you-are which you, in fact, are?”

The assassin said nothing.

“You could tell me, you know, when I dutifully ask as a resident of this tree house. It is your duty as a gentleman – that is, if you are a gentleman!” Owl couldn’t hold back a whooping chuckle.

“I can’t tell you who I am.”

“Are you perhaps the ghost of my great uncle Robert? Oh, how delightfully peculiar! Do tell me- did you figure out the meaning of life in your retreat to the Scottish Highlands after all?”

“Not him. I’m just, I can’t tell you. It’s secret information.”

“Why, do you not know? Have you forgotten in some existential artistic-aspiration bric-a-brac? That’s Roo’s department, go to Kanga’s house if you-”

“I can’t tell you, and that’s the end of it.”

Owl turned to his assassin and pointed at him with his left wing, yet he kept his eyes shut. “Well, then, if you can’t tell me who you are, why do you come?”

“I must carry out my duties.”

“I see. Then carry them out elsewhere, because another animal’s residence is not-”

“Please be quiet.”

“Me, be quiet? I’m the one trying to sleep, in my own household! You are so atypically silly for a visitor; you need my instruction more than ever. I mean, first you come at night -which is clearly the time all sophisticated owls go to bed, despite popular ideology against the idea you may have heard- then you insist that I hold still for some reason, then you won’t tell me your identity, and to top it all off, you put this downright freezing metal implement next to my eye, pressing it a bit harder than I would like, and-”

He opened his left eye. There was metal jammed against his head. It was a double-barreled shotgun, held by a masked figure in a black cloak.

“I- well, I never!” he said with a trembling scoff.

As the intruder whipped his hand next to the trigger, Owl rolled out of bed and sprung to his feet. The skin of his feet caught the oak floorboards and his claws dug into the cracks between the splinters.

Owl pointed his wing at the invader like his logic was more potent of ammunition than anything a gun could possess, which of course it wasn’t. “You, whoever you are, burglar, you should know better than to-”

With a sudden flopping and flapping of linen, Owl could see only black. The burglar put a pillowcase over his head. Owl could have lifted one of his legs to pull it off, but there was no time. The intruder could be anywhere with his gun, ready to kill Owl before he even had a chance to finish his personal memoirs about his religious pilgrimage to the London Zoo.

The one thing that was for certain to Owl, even in complete darkness, was the location of his weapon.

The burglar watched as the bird fumbled around with his feet along the bottom of the bed. He could have killed that old self-appointed scholar right there if not for how much his trigger hand quaked at the notion.

One swiping shink of bed-frame iron against the Queen’s steel, and the blinded bird stood on his left foot with a rusted saber pointed towards the ceiling held in the right. The wide side of the blade whipped in his own face as he flung it to his fighting stance, but he had bigger worries.

The assassin decided that if he couldn’t bring himself to do the deed normally then he would just have to try it the old-fashioned way. He grabbed a steak knife from the table next to Owl’s stove.

“I will have you know, you foul-minded brigand,” said Owl, “that I am a six-year veteran of the Royal Avian Armed Forces. To confront me would be an absolute waste of a young man’s life. This masterfully tempered length of steel ended the foul existence of several bird-brained villains on the Eastern Front, and it will end yours as well! I could take the trenches, and I could therefore take any lower-class derelict in my-”

A sharp pain swept across Owl’s chest. He spat out a startled hoot. He could feel warm wetness trickle down his feathers. Blood.

Before Owl could riposte, a shelf full of his old plates and glassware was knocked over and it pinned him to the ground. The Tree House began to buckle from the shock in little thumps underfoot. He crawled out from under the heavy weight on his back, but several more minor swipes of the knife were made into his flesh.

He scrambled with the claws of his free foot onto any higher ground he could find until he ran into the painted blue wall above his bed. He tried to bash through the wall and discovered it was not the window. When he did go out the window, he broke the glass and the window frame in one hard splash and saturated his body with even more unskilled cuts.

Owl left trails of blood in the air as he plummeted to the ground. He could feel the cold wind flush around him and the red fluids sucked from his veins. The pain was intense to the point where could only unfurl his bleeding wings just before he would have hit the cold midnight grass.

He broke his fall with a few strained flaps of his wings and landed gently. He could hear the footsteps of at least three other creatures on the ground.

“Tigger, is that you?” said Owl. “As you can probably tell I can’t see anything with this blasted pillowcase on my—“

“I’m not Tigger, bird.” The voice was low and rasping, unlike that of either the intruder or anyone else of the Hundred-Acre Wood.

“Oh. Well, whomever you are, would you be so kind as to go get help, being that there is a crazed murderer after me?”

“You be quiet, bird. We’ll hold you still. Our friend here shoots you.”

Two more feet planted on the ground, having descended from Owl’s tree house.

Owl realized his sword was still fixed in the grip of his right foot. He whipped it in the direction of the new voice. “Do not come any closer, or I swear I’ll slash you to ribbons!” said Owl.

The weapon was then gripped by the blade end and yanked from his grasp. The shotgun was once again held against his heart.

Owl could feel his pulse nudge the steel up and down.

Owl let out a shriek, then lunged at the killer and kicked him to the ground. His old talons could only penetrate the cloak and not the skin of whoever this was. Owl stomped in the vagabond’s face and tried to fly upwards. The killer snatched Owl’s foot and pulled him down. Owl’s wings flung up and down in a panicked daze as the other thugs chuckled in anticipation.

Owl felt a heavy foot on his chest. He was slammed to the ground with his back on the wet grass. Owl was drenched in his own blood, and it made him cold as the October breeze swept over the fluids and dried them.

“Now, hold still, Owl,” said the assassin.

“I will not hold still!” said Owl. He pointed his wing at the killer, but the thugs grabbed his wings and held them down, spread out on the ground. “As long as there is one breath in my body, I still have some kind of work to do. And I will continue to find a way out of this situation as I—“

Owl’s sword was plunged into his shoulder, nailing him to the floor of the forest. He choked on blood as it backed up in his throat.

“I will— I am— good sir, I will die a gentleman’s death! I am a hero of the Great War, and I swear to you my name will go down in history as—“

The gun was shoved against his throat, under the fabric of the pillowcase.

“Oh God, please, think about what you’re doing, I don’t want to—!”

The shot in the left barrel was fired. With the first big “boom” in the wood’s populated history, the inside of Owl’s head painted the grass next to it crimson.

The group stood and watched as the scattered blood carved rivers in the soil.

Winnie-the-Pooh and the Angle of Dath, by Dave Hughes

Available at:
Amazon

Wet Linda, by Paul Parducci

Posted: April 17, 2012 by Shaina in Occult, Paul Parducci
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Wet Linda, by Paul Parducci

Wet Linda, by Paul Parducci

Wet Linda, by Paul Parducci
Available at:
Amazon

Description: Popular Hollywood Actor/Filmmaker Paul Parducci’s first pulse-pounding Psychologically intense and Twisted Horror Novel will have you looking twice at all things liquid.

A self-hating Eighteen year-old moves into a sterile California suburb and her life becomes a lung-filling nightmare as she comes under the control of something very evil met at the community pool.

A Novel about a Bad Thing from the Water.

Excerpt

Chapter 8: History

Mandy knelt just outside the stall in the Palmetto pool house ladies room. The light was off and the door was locked. She was cold because as always she wore only her wet swimsuit. Her suit was always wet when she knelt because before she was allowed to come in she had to swim four laps front to back, four laps back to front, four laps left to right, and four laps right to left. Four fours…absolutely blessed.  Mandy was not worthy to go inside the stall. She had to prove herself. She was still forming and had not even really been tested. After formation was complete and testing was finished, then and only then, she would be given permission to prove. And when she was proven, she would get the list and begin the good work. She had heard a priest on TV say once “Faith without works is dead.”

The pain of the gritty tile as it dug into her bare knees was purifying and she welcomed it; you needed hard edges and boundaries to form anything.

The first week of school had passed quickly, but now she needed instructions. Would she come today? Sometimes she didn’t. When she didn’t come Mandy just went to the supply closet and refilled her vial of Happy Blue from one of the gallon containers of Pool Shock Algaecide and left. She always genuflected before she left, facing the stall all the way out.

Then the scent came. The wonderful scent of the one who knew… the one who overcame loneliness and lack of power… the scent was pressed—and-close—and full. It always made Mandy dizzy in that wonderful way, like spinning on the sunny front lawn when the ice cream truck was coming…

At first the scent was hard, but she had learned that it was all about perfect life. It had smelled to her only of diseased death at first, stagnant and vile. Now she knew better.

The water lapped at her knee, water from the stall, electric and wonderful.  This had never happened before. Tears came to her eyes and her inner thighs flushed with blood. The water kept coming and started to puddle around her knees until she was an island. Mandy pushed her head to the floor and like a butterfly rested her lips on the surface of the water. It was liquid warm like a sun that made waves instead of rays. She opened her mouth and began to lap up the water. At first she was slow and delicate, but as she felt the brilliant warm goodness flowing down her throat she began to slurp. She stopped only when her front teeth scratched on the damp tile and the puddle was gone. She raised her head and tried to adjust herself back into a proper kneel, meaning bringing her lazy ass off her heals and straightening her back. The room began to spin and when she tried to get to her feet to get outside for some air she fell to the floor and began to dream. Not to dream she knew even as it began… but to see.

It was the Palmetto Pool on a cloudy day. Not a day anyone would pick to go swimming. The gate was posted: POOL CLOSED FOR CLEANING. In smaller letters at the bottom of the sign it read: Warning-Chemicals Being Used Can Be Harmful Or Fatal.

A chubby girl with stringy hair and smatterings of angry acne was being led to the gate by a group of three boys. Mandy saw immediately who two of the boys were. There was Mike Rall and “not Mike” who she had learned to be Kevin Spillman, and another boy she had not seen before. He was built like a linebacker even though he was wearing an aqua-colored Garth Swim team sweatshirt over a pair of black swim trunks with a tiny logo of a shark. The other boys were in this team uniform as well. Although the girl barely resembled the newspaper photo she had seen, Mandy knew it was Linda Frack. She saw the sad hope in her eyes—she was like a puppy.

Then something she didn’t expect—Karen Wilkes walking up as well and then two more girls following—she saw them before at the other pool; Lori and Bethy…

As Mandy watched in this non-dream a hard knot formed in her stomach. Three attractive girls and three attractive guys and… Linda.

Linda wasn’t there for any reason she might have construed in her most outrageous teen fantasy. Linda was there to entertain the others.

The difference was stunning between the six and the one. The immediate analogy for Mandy was of a farm animal at a birthday party. It wasn’t a mean thought, just automatic. An animal from a very nice petting zoo where it is mostly well cared for, at a party filled with spiteful cruel children who are currently putting on their best face for the benefit of calming the creature before the planned mischief.

They were giving Linda more attention then she had ever had in her life. This was obvious. She drank it in, vacuumed it like air after a close call at suffocation.

Linda pointed at the sign. Mandy heard her.

“It says no swimming.” Her voice was flat.

Mike Rall spoke up first and directly like he was reading from a script. “Oh, forget that sign. They finished cleaning the pool a week ago. Isn’t that right, Karen?

“Yes.” She was obviously uncomfortable with…what? But she said it…she lied for Mike. There was a plan here.

Linda shakily sat down on one of the aluminum pool chairs; she sat on the edge like she didn’t deserve to be fully set in the chair. Or maybe she was testing it for stability as if she didn’t quite know if it would hold her.

Mandy felt the damp floor beneath her. It was strange, but it all somehow made perfect sense. She was in two worlds at once. Another gift from her Lady… Her Lady of the Pool…

They were all inside now, standing near the edge—too close. The water was a deep blue-green, the chemical smell sharp and fresh. Linda looked at it with great concern. Kevin and the other one were standing just behind Mike. Beth and Lori were clustered by Karen- the air was full—bad air. Strong Mike was all about moving what was to happen ahead: “Let’s swim…”

He pulled his sweatshirt off and looked very quickly at the others who were ready to go along with him. Mandy knew that the worst looks were always the quickest. The boys took theirs off as well and after a second’s pause, Karen stepped out of her white shorts and unbuttoned her shirt revealing a very taut body in a very small bikini. Beth and Lori hesitated a second more and they too disrobed.

Mandy squirmed and felt her cheek slide on the tile in the other world as she watched Linda blush crimson and sit down gingerly on the edge of a pool chair. They all watched…the vultures watched, the willing vultures and the go-along vultures, the doubts-before vultures and the lets-do-this-thing vultures.

They watched as a chubby plain girl with bad skin and stringy hair pulled off her out-of-style jeans and her yellowing white smock to show off an ugly one-piece with a fraying swim skirt. Linda stood at the edge of the pool. She moved her foot forward stepping toward the steps that led into the shallow end. Then she saw Rall look at Karen—this was the signal. Karen spoke up and looked in turn to Lori and Bethy, “Hold on I’ve got to pee.”

Bethy did not miss her line, “Let’s all go, I hate swimming when I have to pee.”

Karen’s hand delicately encircled Linda’s as she pulled her along with the others toward the restroom. Mandy wondered if she would see them here now, if the two worlds would converge. Mandy watched as the door opened there… but not here… and the light went on there… but not here. Karen went into the stall and peed first, and she left the door ajar. Mandy heard the urine as it hit the surface with a bubbling rush. She watched Linda as she heard it too, and her cheeks turned crimson. Mandy saw immediately that Linda had never been near another person while they were urinating. Karen was clearly visible dabbing her vagina with toilet paper and snapping her suit into place. She stepped out and said, “Linda you better go now…”

Linda went into the stall and Mandy saw her slide the bolt, heard her slip her suit off her shoulders and watched as her large stretched out swimsuit slid down her thick legs to the top of her feet. Mandy waited along with Bethy, Lori and Karen—her urine, when it finally came was a dribbling, splashy trickle. Karen leaned in, “Do you have to go number two?”

The answer from inside the stall came more as a question, “…no…”

“Are you sure? Because it’s better to be cleaned out, I mean…empty before you…swim.”

“I’m…sure.”

The suit slid back up Linda’s calves and the toilet flushed. Linda stepped out of the stall and went to the sink to wash her sausage-shaped fingers.

As the water ran, the air seemed to leave the room. Eye signals all around—Bethy left, then Lori. Karen called out, “We’ll see you outside.”

Karen walked out of the Ladies room at the Palmetto Pool as Mike Rall, Kevin Spillman and the large boy who looked like a linebacker walked in.

“Hi Linda,” Mike said. “We’re going to make you a very popular girl.”

Mandy watched from the floor as it all played out before her in real time yet also not there. She saw the fear explode on Linda’s face as she saw the three large boys blocking the door.

“Please go,” she said. Her voice was like a mouse or maybe a bug. Kevin looked like he wanted to leave but he would not leave because Mike wanted to stay and he was in charge. Linebacker would do exactly what was to be done without a second thought. Mandy looking up at him from the other floor thought that he could even be thinking of something else, like dinner. It amazed Mandy but she thought, yes he is probably thinking about what he will have for dinner.

Mike answered Linda. “No, we can’t go because we have something important to do. You see Linda, even though you are a fat, disgusting cow, you still have a use for us and you are going to find that you will like what we use you for. And then you will become our permanent special Use Buddy.”

Linda blinked and then blinked again, this time much slower, as if her eyelids were connected to some vast mountain-encased supercomputer that could process where she now was and give her the plan that would save her. But her eyelids were just eyelids and the linebacker grabbed Linda and held her down so that her forearms were pinned to porcelain sides of the sink.

Mike took out a penknife and cut through her swimsuit and as it fell to the floor he called out, “Karen, you guys still out there?”

Karen answered through the door. “Yes.”

“Well, keep watching. We’re going to have a party with Linda.” Then he leaned in very close to Linda’s left ear and whispered very clearly. “This pool is closed. You are alone with us and the girls are watching outside. If you do this well everything’s going to be cool. If you scream then everything’s going to be fucked up and we’ll kill your ass…” Mike kicked her legs further open and pushed himself into her. Linda yelled out in pain. Mike smacked her in the back of the head and grabbed her hair hard. “I said no screaming you stupid bitch! What part of no screaming did you not understand?  Put something the fuck in her mouth!” Kevin picked up a beach towel and stuffed a significant corner of it in her mouth.

Mike called out: “Karen! Is it still clear out there?”

Karen called back, “What’s going on in there?”

“Never the fuck mind, is it clear?”

“Yes.”

He leaned in again to Linda’s ear, this time he wasn’t whispering. “You are a filthy cow who is barely worthy for us to fuck. But before we fuck you we’re going to make sure you are clean!”

Linda was still except for the machine-like clenching and unclenching of her jaw. She was nearly catatonic with fear. Kevin couldn’t hold it in anymore. “Maybe we should just let her go and go home Mike.”

“Shut the fuck up Kevin you little fucking Mama’s boy. If I knew you were a faggot I wouldn’t have invited you. Now help us take this bitch out to the pool so we can wash her ass out. I’ve never been so grossed out in my whole fucking life! Fuckin’ Bitch! Fuckin’ Karen, I told you to make sure she was all cleaned out!!! Let’s go…”

Linebacker and Kevin grabbed Linda and Mike Rall pulled open the door. As he did, the three girls moved out of the way, jaws hanging, as the gagged focus of attention was dragged naked to the pool.

Halfway to the pool Linda stepped on the dragging edge of the beach towel stuffed in her mouth and a cordon of string that had worked its way around one of her front teeth yanked it out by the root sending a spray of blood onto Linebacker’s arm.

“Fuck!”

Linda opened her bleeding mouth and started to cry. Tears streamed down her cheeks and into her ruby mouth, but not a sound came out. Her terror and sadness was too great to allow her a breath. The bottomless, humiliating sorrow was flowing from a reservoir of such size that nothing could move against its rushing torrent. Her face began to turn a grey blue. Karen noticed.

“She’s not breathing! Let her go!”

The boys didn’t miss a step. They just kept up the walk to the pool all the while Mike gulping with a deep lust and scanning the surrounding area for any witnesses.

Mike responded like a panther. “You fucking women are all the fucking same, she lost a tooth she’ll fucking live—watch how fast she breathes once we toss her in the pool.”

A step later they were at the edge, and then she was in.

The water rushed past her as she plunged to the bottom. Linda opened her eyes and they immediately began to burn. She closed them but it was too late. Whatever was in the water was now tearing at her eyes.

Mike, Kevin, the Linebacker, Karen, Lori and Bethy all stood looking at the pool’s surface. It was quiet and the water was settling from the large, wavy, splashy movement of Linda’s entry into a gentle back-and-forth sluicing at the water’s edges. It was too dark to see through, so they were all waiting for the same thing, Linda to come up for air. She did not come up.

Beneath, enveloped, Linda stopped her soundless cry. The dark water calmed her. In fact it felt like a salve. She liked it here. She knew what was waiting for her outside and she decided to breathe…

Mandy saw this moment like all the others. She was present like a twin, a Siamese twin connected at the soul.

They all saw the bubbles at the same time. They were very small. More like the remnants of bubbles as they hit the surface in half-domed fits and starts.

“Fuck Me!!!” Mike jumped in the water and ducked below the surface, a second later spitting and blinking. He had the dead weight of Linda encircled by his arms. “Fuckin help me, Dickheads!”

Reluctantly, Kevin and Linebacker slipped into the water and helped Michael Rall whose father had lost a leg pulling another soldier to safety in Afghanistan (the apple fell light years from his family tree)-pull Linda Frack out of the water.

“Fuck this,” said Lori Hester as she left. Beth Morgan, also known as Bethy followed close behind Lori, like always.

Lori and Bethy knew to their core that Linda Frack had drowned and was dead, but with each step toward the gate they resolved to never think of this fact or to speak of what happened to anyone…ever. Beth even had a thought fragment of working as a lifeguard or teaching swimming to handicapped kids.

Karen just stood there. She felt as if she was bolted to the concrete, fastened firmly like the support beams of the new patio cover her parents had put in the month before. She could not move and she would not speak. This would pass, whatever this was; it would go away just like stomach flu. She had to show her strength to Mike. She had to show him that she was not just another hysterical woman. When this all ended well, like everything else had ended well in her life so far, she would be Mike’s girlfriend. He would lick her neck and she would wear his team sweatshirt.

Mike’s lust gulps were gone, replaced by pure animal panic as he looked around at the few breaks in the trees that could possibly allow for an angled view of the pool.

“Let’s get her back to the bathroom, now!”

They fell into an automatic pattern, with Linebacker at the shoulders and Mike and Kevin each on a leg, but they couldn’t get good purchase. Linebacker said what they were all thinking. “She weighs a fuckin ton, there’s no way.”

“You’re right, let’s just fuckin’ drag her.” Mike said. He looked directly at Karen, “Go home.”

“No, I’ll stay.”

“Go the fuck home, I’ll call you later.”

Karen watched her feet all the way home, her nose felt very full and she wished she had a tissue.

They got Linda back into the Ladies Room and Mandy continued to watch. Mandy Helger felt like a camcorder, one that recorded on muscle and sinew and bone. She knew that her watching was important and vital. She needed to know it all, every last speck because worthy people are people who know. When you know you can act.

Mike expertly moved Linda’s head back to check her airway. Next, he used his index and middle finger to check for a pulse on her neck. He must have taken CPR thought Mandy.

“Fuck Me! She’s fuckin’ dead.”

Kevin looked like he was going to wet himself as he sputtered. “Let’s just go.”

“Gutless” Mandy thought.

Mike looked like he was considering this as he stared at Linda’s angled head on the tiled floor and ran his fingers softly down her neck and onto her nipple erect breasts.

“She’s getting cool,” he said almost hopefully.

“Dave, help me roll her.” Linebacker had a name and it was Dave.

They rolled her body over and as they did, Linda’s head flopped with a clunk against the short edge of the stall’s metal shell.

Mike put both his hands on the corpse’s ample buttocks and looked right at Kevin.

“No one is going anywhere. We came to fuck the fat bitch and we are going to do it.”

Kevin wanted to leave the nightmare but he did not. He did not want to be known as a pussy so he stayed to accomplish what he knew he had to do to keep a good rep.

Dave was there so of course he would do it, another thing to do so that another thing had been done.

Michael Rall volunteered to go last. His friends didn’t notice his secret rolling swallow as he wondered how cold it would be inside.

Wet Linda, by Paul Parducci
Available at:
Amazon

Commitment, by Athanasios Galanis

Posted: January 22, 2012 by Shaina in Athanasios Galanis, Dark fantasy, Occult
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Commitment, by Athanasios Galanis

Commitment, by Athanasios Galanis

Commitment, by Athanasios Galanis
Available at:
Amazon, Smashwords

Description: Adam watched Mad Gods drag his father to Hell.

Melusine Rothschild, Grande Dame of the Black Nobility wants to raise him. She is part of the World Elite that live by Predatory Ethics and seek to guide him in wielding the power and influence of his dark birthright.

Adam, the teenage Antichrist/AntiXos, wants none of this. He watches his TV shows in one of Danvers Mental Hospital’s nice padded rooms, snugly dressed in his own long sleeved, buckled, canvas jacket. He feels safe here away from a hostile, ravaging outside world.

He’s horribly wrong.

Excerpt

A Newer Darkness

Time: March 23rd, 1974, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Today was always special in the Hess family.  All the transplanted Reichians celebrated it in the same way because it commemorated the Ermachtigungsgesetz of 1933 when the Reichstag gave power to the National Socialists in Deutschland.  They passed the Enabling Act, which went on to dissolve the Reichstag and start the Third Reich.  Everyone wore their best uniforms accessorized with family heirlooms worn in the Fuhrer’s ranks.

Rolf Hess arched his heavy brows down and felt a surge of pride looking through the ordered ranks of the faithful.  Tight, square phalanxes of four men deep, four across stood at attention.  The damp cavern that they gathered in was illuminated by many a bare bulb reflecting off of their polished jack boots.

They stood before a massive portrait of Adolph Hitler who looked on in what Rolf swore was profound approval.  On either side of the portrait and before a massive podium were long banners of a field of red and white stripes with an updated swastika.  The hall grew silent save for Rolf’s boots going closer to the podium at the center of the raised dais.  He was so like his father that most gasped when they met him thinking the former Reichsfuhrer was come again.  He had the thinning hair and heavy brows that met over startling blue eyes when he was confused or angry.  The long aquiline nose seemed harsh, for his lips were thin and near slit of a mouth.

Everyone in the hall, including Rolf was dressed in updated SS black.  He was a man of rippled proportions whose lean, muscled form was rigid in rider’s pants with a thin blood stripe down both sides.  He was clean-shaven, his dirty blonde, crew cut hair in stark contrast to the high collar of his immaculately tailored jacket.  Blood piping trimmed its edges and four pockets.  Cold blue eyes scanned the crowd and clasping his hands behind his back he launched into his sermon.

“Fellow Reichians.  We commemorate the hour of our deliverance with the Ermachtigungsgesetz of 1933 but we also commemorate the acquisition of the holy relics of 1956.  The Fuhrer’s remains were in the hands of the Bolsheviks and jealously guarded.  With His guidance, His old Reichsfuhrer, my father, Rudolf Hess entered the KGB Headquarters and liberated them for their return to us, their rightful keepers.”  This was an update of the usual rehashing of the events of 1933 when the Nazi party had taken over the German Parliament and ended the Weimar Republic.  Many in the audience became excited at the new stories their esteemed leader was sharing with them.

“My father did not stay in Spandau Prison as the world long believed.  He was not without his own allies and within a decade of his imprisonment he came to our holdings here in Argentina.”  He looked on through the crowd and saw nothing but attentive faces.  “He was then responsible for the continuation of our movement and from the ashes of the Third Reich came our present, Final Reich.  We have an exalted name to carry and we will not be found lacking.  The First Reich lasted for a thousand years under the Teutonic Order and their Holy Roman Empire.  The Second Reich burned brightly yet only for a short time with the Prussian Empire.  The Third burned the brightest and would’ve eclipsed them had it succeeded.”  At every mention of their near success Rolf fought back tears of frustration.  They had been so close.

“We honor their achievements every time we congregate with more than one of our number or when we show pride in our race and heritage.  The world does not share our beliefs.  In the Americas, the United Kingdoms, and even in our Deutschland wherever our kind come together we are persecuted like schvartze or juden.”  Coiled rage shook Rolf’s face as he continued.  “Yet we still come together.  We cannot be stopped.  Even The Lords of Hell admired our resolve to go on in the face of this overwhelming opposition.”

Many in the audience turned to one another in confused discomfort but were quieted by steely stares that did not tolerate weakness.  They didn’t understand this infernal reference.  Rolf was familiar with this intolerance of weakness, and it had made him the man he was today.  “These Lords of Hell, Nephilim, came to my father when I was but four and bade him sacrifice to them.  They were Dark Nobility and wanted to recruit Third Reich survivors to their ranks.  He refused to bow down before anyone but the Fuhrer.  This adamant faith in the face of doom beyond mortal death gave them pause.”  Those uncomfortable had mostly settled into their seats and began to be swayed by his sermon. “At their indecision Rudolf Hess, our Prophet, offered up this consideration to them.  If they wanted to capture the hearts of evil men in the modern age, they should give them a newer evil.”

Rolf looked about the crowd and saw a few had gotten up and were heading to the doors; he nodded to a few hidden brown-shirt security men and went on.  “As they had not taken his soul my father continued to entrée them.  Who else in recent history had even approached the brilliant evil of Adolph Hitler?”  Some in the hall were insulted at the idea of their Fuhrer being evil.  Whatever he’d done had been to sub-humans, hardly more than the animals they ate.

“Do you know what they answered? Joseph Stalin.“  A shockwave went through the assembled: the Bolshevik, communist brute.  What an insult.

Still others stood, not liking this turn of their little social club.  Getting together and beating a few natives, juden, or schwartzs was a communal bonding experience; this talk of evil was very discomforting, very gauche.

“They were answered by a cry straight out of Hell’s black ninth ring.”

“Stalin!?!”

“Stalin’s not good enough to throw pebbles at my shit!  He killed out of greed and lust for power.  His successes were nothing more than an over-achieving mobster.  Mine were out of pure hate!  I couldn’t abide living with those filthy vermin.  If the Third Reich had gone for a thousand years, I could have rid this world of every sub-human.”  More brown-shirts had come to the exits blocking them.  Those that tried to leave were protesting their detainment and were met with fascist argument of fist or cudgel across the face and head.  Protest soon stopped.

“What audacity, who else could have struck out from Hell’s own heart like that?  My father dropped to his knees in dread worship of his Fuhrer’s voice.  He remembered its shrill command and was overjoyed to hear it once more.”  He motioned for more brown-shirts to come through the ranks and take over vacated seats.  “The Dark Nobility were justly impressed and summoned him forth like we will today.”

There was further shock going through the crowd, but none got up to leave.  They were all captivated by the sermon and only reacted to its excitement.  Those who did were removed by the brown-shirts who then closed ranks by filling the vacated seats.

“When our Prophet beheld his Fuhrer once more he kissed his feet.  Among the Dark Nobility had been an Arch-Nephilim, Melusine Rothschild, who pronounced my father elevated from damned to favored apostle for his unflinching dedication.  He would go forth and establish His Fuhrer’s worship.”  Rolf continued intent on his missioned sermon.

“His remains are enshrined in a gold cabinet beneath this podium.  He is exulted like no other.  There has never been a man damned by his life’s work who was then elevated to predator, a carnivore from cattle.”

Some of the still seated black-shirts looked contemptuously at those that tried to leave.  Rolf was happy with the night’s progress.  He thought there would’ve been more dissenters but was pleased that they had just enough.  Someone was looking out for them.

“All who have kept their seats through this Revelation are Reichians of the first order.  All true Teutonic Knights.  Everyone of you has been tested, their lineage investigated and found to be of purest Aryan stock.  Those who tried to leave showed their treachery at their refusal to listen to our most revered lessons.  Pity.  They will, however, be fitting sacrifices to the rebirth of our Fuhrer.”  Silence met Rolf’s pronouncement.  He had expected this and had allotted some pause in his sermon hoping for the help that came.  He left some of his plans up to faith and was not disappointed.

A voice that moved a nation to monstrous, collective acts on innocent and guilty rose from beneath the podium.  None who earlier had doubted their senses clung to further skepticism.  They threw it out when his unmistakable voice and charismatic power grabbed their attention and squeezed.

“Who among you would not willingly give your life for our race?  I did, and it has put me at the top of Hell itself!  I stand beside fallen angels and contribute to the Great Plan with Azazel, Ba-al, and Lucifer.”

Unnoticed by the rapt assemblage, three brown-shirts brought one of the dissenting black-shirts bound to his knees at Rolf’s feet.  Two held the man down while the third handed Rolf a ceremonial SS dagger.  Rolf sliced the man’s throat left to right, ear to ear, in an elegant arc ending dagger-point first directed at the crowd.  The action was reflected and frozen forever in the victim’s eyes while the blood flowed like a fountain to soak the platform.

He was left to flop onto his back while Rolf straddled his body and sliced the thorax from his pelvis to the earlier cut.  Dipping his hands into the open cavity they come out holding the heart, kidney, and liver he placed reverently aside.  He returned to the now unmoving form and with a few deft cuts removed the colon.

The body was then taken out of view leaving a gory trail as mute evidence of what was done.  A bloody altar heaped with similar gore was wheeled out and left just behind him.  Rolf placed the still warm heart and organs on the altar.  He sliced each in two while intoning an incantation.

With these sacrifices we summon forth the newest of the Nephilim, the fiend Adolph Hitler. 

He is summoned to his faithful. 

The blood and souls of these pure Aryans call him forth. 

The blood and souls of the sub-humans, the cows call forth the newest carnivore. 

Our reverence is here to sustain him. 

We long to feel his dread approval for our loyal devotion. 

We call him to this hall upon the very stage from which he commanded the Ermachtigungsgesetz in 1933.

Rolf was then lost in a trance.  He chanted the incantation over and over and didn’t notice the change in the silence around him.  There was only the sound of hundreds of rapt breaths before, but now it was the collective silence of those breaths held.  He came out of his trance when he felt the weight of an approving hand fall on his shoulder.

The Fuhrer had come to stand beside him.  In his life Adolph Hitler wore the grey unadorned officer’s jacket, but in his rebirth there were rider’s pants and jackboots of the Final Reich replacing the older plain black slacks.  The face was as the massive portrait behind him but on closer scrutiny seemed colder, with more venom, barely leashed hatred and intolerance.

He cared only about the Final Reich and its members.

He stood before the altar and breathed in the souls that were held in the organs upon it.  Once finished, he was lost in its rapture until it came back to the souls still here.  He was lost further in the terror and betrayal the dead felt just before their sacrifice.  It was good to be the Fuhrer and to have such faithful souls.

His souls.

Promised and marked for him in Hell.  Every one of these fine young men and women would be his to enjoy in eternity.  There would be even more now that the Redeemer, The One had come.

The Storm.

It would make the Great War and its sequel, the Third Reich War seem like a bloody nose.

The Second Coming but not for the Son of God.

The Second Coming was evil’s chance.

Fair was fair.  This was their turn.

“The pure men and women who for a brief time followed me and made the earth tremble would be proud of their sons and daughters here today.  You are all Teutons strong and pure.  I salute you!”

At that utterance, his right hand rigidly flew up and out in a heil.  It was answered instantly by the entire assembly with a booming…

Siege Heil!

It dwarfed any remembered from Nuremburg.

The salute promised the renewed majesty of the First Reich when the Teutonic Knights ruled under the Holy Roman Empire.  It hearkened back to the time when Rome was more than just the political machinations and intrigues of today’s Catholic Church.  When Rome ruled and meant its Legions and its knights.  The might of Rome now would return in the Legion of Hell and the knight would be reborn with the new Teutons of the Final Reich.

Rolf felt this in his almost bursting, prideful heart.  His father was one of the few Teutonic Knights who survived the Templar’s near annihilation.  He taught him the mysteries and secrets of the mystical men at arms.  They had taken much of their strength from the pure, clean Christianity the filthy Catholics put down in the French Southlands centuries before.

The Catharae had not relied on a worship of a Jew, no matter how extraordinary He may have been.  A talking dog is still a dog.  The Teutons flourished in the First Reich and had gone on to be part of the Templars when their first Messiah had come.  The Fuhrer had almost achieved the return of the Holy Roman Empire and came so close that its end was all more tragic when it failed.

Now as the portrait behind His God rose to reveal the rest of the waiting sacrifices Rolf knew they would have another chance to avenge the injustices committed upon them.

About the cringing black-shirts were many brown-shirts, men and women, hands behind their backs.  Upon sight of Him and the Reichsfuhrer, they clicked their heels and salute with an arrogant snap of their arms.  The Fuhrer and deputy jutted their chins forward in response and forgetting the crowd in the hall walked to the assembled victims.

The first person they came to was moving his head about trying to discern what was going on.  He had been beaten so unmercifully his eyes were covered in blood from bruises and cuts.  On his right upper arm was a concentration camp tattoo.  Rolf saw it and chuckled.  He’d been told there was a Nazi hunter trying to find him and his father but did not know he had penetrated this far.  It was too rich an irony to have come so far and meet a more horrible end than he survived decades before.

Rolf motioned for one of the Reichians to clean the fellow’s eyes.  He wanted him to know who was before him and to let his Fuhrer have his fill of the desperate horror to come.  Once his eyes were whipped clean he squinted and blinked to see an unmistakably familiar face.  He still saw it in nightmares and horrible memory yet he saw it now, with his eyes, not memory or nightmare, and he screamed.

“I’m in Hell!”

“No, Juden, Hell has come to you,” Rolf Hess pleasantly replied and gave his Fuhrer a ceremonial dagger to begin the feast whetted by this delicious appetizer.  Adolph Hitler’s rapturous face thanked the Reichsfuhrer for this succulent preparation.

Commitment, by Athanasios Galanis
Available at:
Amazon, Smashwords

The Punished, by Peter Meredith

Posted: January 21, 2012 by Shaina in Ghosts, Occult, Peter Meredith
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The Punished, by Peter Meredith

The Punished, by Peter Meredith

The Punished, by Peter Meredith
Available at:
Amazon

Description:   12-year-old Curt Regis lives the carefree life of a beggar and a thief. Homeless since the age of six, he uses his guile and street smarts, as well as a glib, smooth lying tongue to reign as king of the street rats. So when he is caught breaking into a school and is sent back into foster care for the ninth time, he is quite confident that not only will it be a short stay, he will also be gone again in a day or two with a new set of clothes on his back and his bag filled with silverware, jewelry and maybe if he is really lucky, a Play station to pawn.

However, his luck has run out. This time he is sent to what many in the corrupt foster-care system consider the perfect home. It is a home from which no one has ever runaway from. A beautiful home where not a word of complaint is ever heard, where in fact, very few words are ever spoken and where the only real sounds that disturb the stagnant air are the screams of the punished.

Excerpt:

Blessedly, Curt was yanked around then and the sight of those awful teeth digging into the soft flesh of Darla’s face was lost to him. Her screams on the other hand were not, they were clear and exact, loud with the agony of slow death.

They pierced his mind and he had trouble thinking past them. He blinked stupidly at the person in front of him. It was Paul, who had turned him around, and his face was a warzone. A battlefield where rational fear and insane panic fought for control of his features, but Curt caught only a flash of this before Paul shoved him into his room and threw him bodily onto his now familiar bed.

Curt struggled up thinking what a tremendously stupid thing to be doing just then. He should be running for his life, but Paul pushed him back down again and covered him over with his blanket.

“No matter what, don’t come out.”

The words were hissed in his ear through his covers and the desperation in Paul’s voice made him stop struggling at least physically. Mentally he felt besieged. The endless screams echoing in the otherwise silent hallways, the vision of the larger than life teeth and the near certainty that the house was alive washed relentlessly over his mind, making him feel as though his brain was being squeezed into nothingness.

He could sense his ability to think clearly diminishing. All that came to him were an annoying series of questions but hardly any answers.

Was he really going to hide from that creature, that thing, beneath his blankets as his five year old self would have? Where were the others? Were they hiding like a bunch of retarded children as well? Shouldn’t they all be hightailing it out of there while the thing ate Darla? Was that thing an actual ghost or perhaps something worse?

His own failing logic could only answer one of those questions and that was the first one. Yes, he would lie under his blankets and keep absolutely still. He realized he had been doing this, hiding from this creature, every night since he arrived, every night but the first that is. All along, he had thought it had been Miss Feanor, who came at night but in reality, it was this thing and she was afraid of it as much as he was.

How hiding under a blanket kept the creature at bay, he didn’t know, or how sound played any part in this, he didn’t know that either. Nor the fastidious cleaning. Nothing made sense.

And nothing would as long as Darla’s shrieks continued.

At first, her misery struck him so keenly that he cried beneath his covers, sobbing in empathetic fear for her. But her screams went on for so long that ultimately, his tears dried up and he could only clamp his hands over his ears and hope that they would end before he went mad.

They did end eventually and then his fear was no longer empathetic, but personal, selfish and he became afraid only for himself.

Crreik.

He should’ve expected this. The creature crept up the stairs quietly and as it did, he began to shake beneath his covers. By the long fifth step, he was nearly in a panic, because his muscles wouldn’t stop shimmying about. In desperation, he curled into a ball and grabbed his knees with all of his remaining strength. This helped, but oddly seemed to forced the shaking into his chest, where it felt as though his heart were about to explode.

Suddenly he remembered the note he had left in his pocket and his horror-stricken mind recalled every incriminating detail of it. He was sure just having it on his person was likely cause for a punishment and after what he had seen and heard, he knew he’d do anything to keep that from

happening to himself. Grabbing the note, he stuffed it quickly into his mouth and only barely began to chew when the creature entered his room.

Saliva flooded around the note, but he refused to swallow just in case it would make noise. The creature moved about his bed, slowly as always, so that soon Curt was drooling like a baby. He didn’t care. Somehow, enough light came through his window that the thing was able to cast a feeble shadow through his blankets. It turned him cold knowing the creature was only inches from him.

But then it moved away.

As the thing went about the house on its usual rounds, he slowly swallowed his forbidden note and the pool of saliva. Curt lay there sweating freely, petrified by fear, and he stayed this way long after the last sly sound of the thing had disappeared. Eventually, his brain became disconnected and he didn’t think, or question or remember, but instead slipped into a waking trance. And judging by how dry the pool of blood would later feel, he laid there for hours.

2

What brought him around was a sharp jab of fingers through the blanket, directly into his cheek. His mind switched back on and his brain started thinking exactly where he had left off and he sucked his breath in sharply with fright. A second later, the fingers jabbed him again, harder. He waited hoping to be left alone, but then suddenly his covers were ripped off of him and he saw Matt standing there. The boy wore unreadable expression. It was certainly not a happy one, nor was it the usual sneering superiority.

With a quick hand gesture, he motioned for Curt to follow him. They went down stairs and immediately he could see the body of Darla. It lay contorted and crushed looking, sprawled in a hellishly unnatural position by the front door, surrounded by an undisturbed pool of dried blood.

Before he saw the body, Curt had wished in his heart that Darla would be alive and hoped that she would only have the terrible bruises and sharp pains as he did on his first morning, but she was very much dead. Very, very dead. He had seen dead bodies before, four of them, nothing could compare to this.

The creature’s large teeth had shredded her clothing and had bitten through her skin in hundreds of places and even where the skin hadn’t been ripped open, he could see that the bones beneath had been broken. In many spots, splinters of bone erupted up out of her flesh and these appeared sharp and bloody. It looked as though she had fallen into a trash compactor on the back of a garbage truck or into some piece of heavy machinery. He grew light headed and felt sick at the sight.

He wasn’t the only one. Miss Feanor had a green complexion under an expression of worry and Matt, who had followed him down, couldn’t stop staring at the body and swallowed loudly repeatedly as he did. Only Paul, the only other person there, didn’t seem like he was going to vomit. He had other problems. His twitch had returned with a vengeance and no part of his face wasn’t effected. He was as difficult to look upon as the body. But they weren’t there to look.

Miss Feanor laid out a heavy blanket and directed Curt and Matt to put the body of Darla Heines onto it. Curt was terribly afraid to touch it, but Paul, who was practically blind from his twitch was clearly useless and so the youngest boy there went to the women’s feet. Along with Matt, he made to pick her up, but her legs bent inward, that is to say the wrong way and feeling the strength in his arms disappear at the sight, he had to drop her.

“Oh God,” he mumbled and knew there was no stopping the vomit shooting up his throat.

Turning toward the staircase, he heaved and retched loudly, but since breakfast had been hours before, only a nasty watery spew came up. The others waited for him in the dead silence, looking greener if that were possible. Finally, shaking and sweating as if he were in a fever, he bent to his horrid

task and with a face twisted and ugly, he helped Matt move the body onto the blanket. They moved her to the garage then, and that was much easier since they could hold the blanket instead of her. Darla was small, like a child herself. And lighter than he expected. Her body went into the trunk of Miss Feanor’s car, which was very tiny, but since she was so horribly bendable, she fit with ease.

Matt shut the trunk with a dull thump and just then, Curt’s knees gave out and he fell heavily to the cement floor of the garage. He couldn’t get up. There was no strength left in his mind or body and his head swam making the room spin and his stomach waver. Matt didn’t help him, yet he didn’t hurt him either, he simply turned his face, dead white and shining with sweat, to the door and left.

With a slack jaw and vacant eyes, Curt watched him walk through the mudroom and then the older boy was gone and he was all alone. The horror of the day had left him dazed and apathetic. He gazed around and saw the garage just as it looked the other two times he had been there. Save for a car, it sat empty. No tools, no bikes, no boxes, no nothing. Nothing but the cold. The cement beneath him was like ice, yet his body was numb and had been since he had watched Darla’s knees bend backwards, and therefore he only felt the cold cement vaguely.

Now he turned his lifeless gaze back to the door and looked into the mudroom and only then did he see what sat catty-corner to the garage door. It was the door that lead into the black pit of the basement, that lead to the creature, the thing. He felt the cold then. It raced up through the hard floor shooting up the sweat of his back.

He was trapped.

If the creature came then he would have nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. In the space of time it took for his heart to boom once mightily in his chest, he was up off the floor and flying out of the garage and he didn’t check his speed until he was all the way down the long hall, standing with the others breathing noisily and staring back at the mudroom door. The creature didn’t come up from where it lurked in the basement.

A few minutes later, Miss Feanor left, presumably to dispose of the body of Darla the Caseworker; however, before she did, she ordered them to clean up the blood and of course his vomit.

Compared to handling the mangled body this was simple; nothing in his life would be difficult after that. They were done quickly, Matt going on his hands and knees to inspect. When they were finished, and despite not having had dinner, Matt ordered all of them, the girls included to start on their chores. This was fine with Curt because he needed something to do, something physical, something to keep him occupied so he wouldn’t think about how easily they rolled Darla’s broken body up to get her into the trunk, and besides, he didn’t imagine he would be able to eat anytime soon.

The Punished, by Peter Meredith
Available at:
Amazon

Dead of Winter, by Brian Moreland

Posted: September 14, 2011 by Shaina in Brian Moreland, Occult, Western, Zombies
Tags: , , , ,
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Dead of Winter, by Bryan Moreland

Dead of Winter, by Bryan Moreland

Dead of Winter, by Brian Moreland
Available at Amazon 

 Description:

A predator stalks the frozen woods.

At a fort deep in the Ontario wilderness in 1870, a ghastly predator is attacking colonists and spreading a gruesome plague—his victims turn into ravenous cannibals with an unending hunger for human flesh. Inspector Tom Hatcher has faced a madman before, when he tracked down Montreal’s infamous Cannery Cannibal. But can even he stop the slaughter this time?

In Montreal exorcist Father Xavier visits an asylum where the Cannery Cannibal is imprisoned. But the killer who murdered thirteen women is more than just a madman who craves human meat. He is possessed by a shape-shifting demon. Inspector Hatcher and Father Xavier must unravel a mystery that has spanned centuries and confront a predator that has turned the frozen woods into a killing ground where evil has come to feed.

Excerpt:

Part One

Predators and Prey

December 15, 1870

Manitou Outpost

Ontario, Canada

It was the endless snowstorms that ushered in their doom. Each day and night the white tempests whirled around the fort, harrowing the log houses with winter lashings. At the center of the compound, the three-story lodge house creaked and moaned. Father Jacques Baptiste chanted in Latin and threw holy water on the barricaded front door. Above the threshold, a crucifix hung upside down. No matter how much the Jesuit priest prayed, the Devil would not release its grip on this godforsaken fort.

Something scraped against the wood outside. Father Jacques peered through the slats of a boarded window. Tree branches clawed violently at the stockade walls. The front gate stood open, exposing them to the savage wilderness. It also provided the only path of escape. If by chance they made it out the gate, which way would they go?

The priest considered their options. Beyond the fort’s perimeter, the dark waters of Makade Lake knocked plates of ice against the shore. Crossing the frozen lake would be a dead man’s walk. Last week, two of the trappers fell through the ice. The only way out was through the woods.

Father Jacques shuddered at the thought of leaving the fort. The trappers had fortified the outpost to keep the evil out. They hadn’t counted on the savagery attacking them from within. He prayed for the souls of the men, women, and children lost in the past few weeks. Last autumn, the French-speaking colony had been twenty strong. Now, in midwinter, they were down to four survivors and not a crumb of food to split among them. How much longer before the beasts within completely took them over?

“Forgive us, oh Lord, for our fall from grace.” Father Jacques sipped the holy water. It burned his throat and stomach like whiskey. “Cast out these evils that prey upon us.”

Behind him, the sound of boots approached from the darkness. The priest spun with his lantern, lighting up the gaunt face of a bearded man. Master Pierre Lamothe, the fort’s chief factor, wore a deerskin parka with a bushy fur hood. His eyes were bloodshot. He wheezed.

The priest took a step back. “Are you still with us, Pierre?”

The sick man nodded. “Just dizzy, Father. I’m so damned hungry.”

Father Jacques knew the pains of hunger. Each passing day it pulled his flesh tighter against his ribcage. “We’ll find something to eat soon, I promise. Here, take another sip.” He offered the bottle of holy water.

Pierre took a swig and winced. Seconds later he stumbled back, rubbing his eyes.

“The burning will pass.” Father Jacques grabbed his wrist. “Remember our plan?”

“Yes… check on the horses.”

“We must hurry. Now may be our only chance.” They removed the barricade from the door. A long staircase led down from the second floor to the snow-covered ground. “Bless me, Father.” Pierre raised his shotgun and stepped out into the blizzard. He all but disappeared in the white squall. The only parts visible were his hood and the outline of his shoulders. Father Jacques nervously watched the fort grounds. At the surrounding cabins, wind howled through shattered windows and broken doors. When Pierre reappeared at the stables, the priest released his breath.

Please let the horses still be alive.

The chief factor pulled a horse out. The poor animal was so thin its hide sunk into its ribs. As Pierre threw a saddle on its back, he raised two fingers, signaling that a second horse was still inside the stable.

Father Jacques closed the door and clasped his hands. “Thank you, oh Lord.”

Someone tugged at his cassock. He looked down to see a small, French-Indian girl. Pierre’s daughter Zoé had tousled black hair and large brown eyes that had kept their innocence despite the horrors they’d witnessed these past few weeks. The girl held a tattered Indian doll to her chest. “I’m afraid, Père.”

Father Jacques touched her head and gave the most comforting smile he could conjure. “Don’t worry, Zoé, the angels will protect us. Here, you need to bundle up.” He fastened her fur parka, pulled the hood over her head.

“I want Mama to go with us.”

“I’m sorry, Zoé, but she’s too sick. She would die out there. You, your papa, and I are going to ride out to the nearest fort. Then we’ll send help back for your mother.”

The girl frowned. “Noël says you’re lying!”

Father Jacques glanced down at the Indian doll. One green eye stared back. The other eye was a ragged hole. Since Zoé had stopped eating two weeks ago, she suffered from dementia. She spent most of her days whispering to her doll. Father Jacques wanted to rip its head off. He squeezed his fist. “Noël is just afraid like the rest of us. Now, pray for forgiveness for speaking to me in that manner.”

“Sorry, Père.” Zoé crossed herself and bowed.

“Now, drink.” He gave the girl the last of the holy water. She drank it and winced as if it were castor oil.

Outside, the horses whinnied. A shotgun fired.

Father Jacques dashed to the window. He searched the fort grounds. A saddled horse ran in circles. Where was Pierre?

Behind the wall of whirling snow, more shots were fired. Then came a scream. Pierre stumbled out of the mist. Blood spouted from the stump of his shoulder. He was missing an arm.

Peering out the boarded window, Father Jacques screamed at the sight of blood gushing from Pierre’s shoulder. As the wounded man stumbled up the front steps to the lodge house, the white mist rolled in from behind and swallowed Pierre. His scream was cut short.

“Papa!” Zoé ran toward the barricaded door. “Let Papa in!”

“No, move away from the door.” Father Jacques grabbed her hand and backed away.

Outside, the storm wailed. Snow blew in through the cracks of the boarded windows. Footfalls charged up the staircase like thundering hooves. Something rammed against the front door. The hinges buckled.

Zoé shrieked.

“Back to the cellar!” The priest pulled the girl through the dark corridors of the lodge house. Behind them, the front door crashed open. Terror stabbed Father Jacques’ chest with icy pinpricks at the shattering of windows and splintering of wood. Growls echoed throughout the lodge.

They’re inside!

Zoé released a high-pitched shriek.

“Stay quiet, girl.” The priest led her down the cellar stairs. The swinging lantern slashed the darkness with a pendulum blade of light. Scratches and streaks of crystallized blood glistened on the steps and walls like a gallery of agonies marking the descent to hell.

They ran into the dark cellar. Father Jacques brought down an iron bar across the door and shoved crates against it. He took the child’s face in his hands. “Hide, quick.”

The girl crawled inside a nook stuffed with fur pelts. She hugged her doll to her chest. Father Jacques pulled a deerskin blanket down over the nook so Zoé was fully hidden. “Don’t come out no matter what you hear.”

A raspy voice whispered, “Father…”

The priest aimed his lantern at a row of beds. The storage cellar had been converted into a makeshift hospital. In three beds lay twisted corpses. In the closest bed, an Ojibwa woman was lying beneath the quilts. Wenonah Lamothe, Pierre’s native wife. She was too delirious to know that her husband was dead. Her skeletal head rolled back and forth on the pillow. Teeth chattering, she coughed clouds of frosty air. Her long, black hair now had streaks of white. Her skin, normally reddish brown, had turned fish-belly pale, with white scabs and ghastly blue veins. She looked to the priest, her bloodshot eyes pleading him. “Help me, Father.”

“I’m sorry, Wenonah.” God had failed her. Failed them all.

The Jesuit picked up a silver cross with a daggered tip. “I cast out all spirits of Satan.”

The woman tied to the bedposts growled like a wolfhound.

Father Jacques stood at the foot of Wenonah’s bed. Her thrashing body smacked the headboard against the wall. She laughed and moaned, blue tongue licking her lips. She kicked off her quilts, thrusting her hips upward, spreading her bony legs for him. Remaining steadfast in his prayers, the priest raised the holy dagger over the Ojibwa woman’s chest.

Wenonah glared with fiery eyes.

Zoé yelled, “Mama!”

“Stay hidden, child.” Father Jacques stumbled back as a wave of emotions coursed through him. Anger. Fury. Rage.

Hunger.

His stomach ached for something meaty. Raw and bloody. He sniffed the air, his keen sense homing in on the nook where the girl was hidden. Beyond the scent of animal furs, Father Jacques inhaled the salty aroma of blood pumping through a heart.

Eat the girl! growled a voice inside the Jesuit’s head. Eat the lamb’s sweet meat.

“No. No. No.” He slammed the cross-dagger into a post. “I am a disciple of God. He gives me strength! Lead me not into temptation, oh Lord.” The wave of hunger passed. He chanted faster.

Shrieks echoed from beyond the cellar door. Feet stomped down the stairs. The doorknob rattled. Nails scraped the door, clawing to get in.

Father Jacques backed away, praying the barricade would hold. Even if it did, without food and water they couldn’t last another day in the cellar. We have to escape.

He went to the back wall, climbed up a stack of crates. With a crowbar, he tore planks off a tiny window. Snow blew inward, stinging his face. The mist had cleared. He could see the stables and the open front gate. The square portal was too small for Father Jacques, but not the girl. Tears welled in the priest’s eyes as he realized his last hope had come down to the fate of a nine-year-old girl. “Come, child, now!”

She climbed out from her hiding place, hugging the doll to her chest.

The priest kneeled, taking Zoé’s hands. “There’s still a horse in the stables. I need you to ride out to Fort Pendleton.” He pulled a small diary from his coat pocket. “Give this to Brother Andre.” He stuffed the journal into a trapper’s fur-skinned pack along with her doll.

“No, I’m not leaving…” She started to cry.

“You must, Zoé! We won’t survive down here another day.” He pulled the pack onto her back, fastening the straps around her waist.

“But what about you, Père?”

“You’ll have to go on your own.”

From the bed Wenonah rasped, “Zoé, wait…” Her wrist stretched one of the ropes. “Come here, my child.”

“Mama.”

“No, Zoé!” Father Jacques grabbed the girl just short of her mother’s gnarled fingernails. “Don’t touch her.” He carried Zoé to the back wall. She sobbed and jerked in his arms, reaching for her mother.

He stood her on a crate and shook her. “Listen, child! We need you to be strong. Go now, or you’ll never see your mother again.”

“But I’m afraid to go out there.”

“Remember the story about the lost children who came upon an angel?”

She nodded, sniffling.

“There are angels in the woods, and they will protect you, but they are leaving now, so you must hurry.”

The beasts wailed inside the cellar’s stairwell. An axe blade chopped through the door, cracking it.

The girl screamed and ran up the crates.

Father Jacques helped her out the window. She dropped down to the snowy ground.

“Hurry, Zoé!” He watched her run across the snowfield.

The axe blade smashed through the door. Dozens of white fingers tore at the hole. The priest held up a cross. “God is my savior!”

Another growl issued, this one from inside the cellar. He circled, searching the shadows until he spotted broken ropes at Wenonah’s bed. She now moved in the darkness just beyond the lantern glow. Her bones made popping sounds. The last stage of the change.

The priest stepped toward the row of beds. He barely made out the woman’s spindly shape hunched over, feeding off the flesh of a dead man. The crunching and tearing sickened Father Jacques and at the same time beckoned him to join Wenonah in the feast.

No, stay righteous! The Jesuit coughed. He stumbled to his altar and opened his holy book. The words blurred. His vision spiraled. Inside his stomach, the hunger grew, cold and burning, clinging his flesh to bone, filling him with a hollow emptiness, then turning—Yes!—spreading through him with a sweet rapture known only to saints and angels. “I am a shepherd of death…”

The cellar door crashed open.

Father Jacques raised his arms and smiled as he turned to face the ravenous horde.

 Dead of Winter, by Brian Moreland
Available at Amazon 

Fleshbags, by Gerald Dean Rice

Posted: September 1, 2011 by Shaina in Gerald Rice, Occult, Zombies
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Fleshbags, by Gerald Dean Rice

Fleshbags, by Gerald Dean Rice

Fleshbags, by Gerald Dean Rice
Available at:
Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble

Description: Even before the explosion in the industrial area on the south side of the city they started showing up. There was something wrong with them. Anybody could see it. They leaked from every orifice and their stomachs were translucent bags showing rotting internal organs. But the ones the police had shot and killed were worse. Aggressive, fast, cannibalistic. The people still trapped in the south side of the city will fight, run, hide, and many will die. Can a young father get to his daughter? Can a husband and wife save a neighbor? Can a nurse make it home? Can an ex-con get out of the city? Can a cop keep control?

Includes the short story “The Dead Child”.

Excerpt:

Sentinel needed to get out of this town. He’d gotten roped in by his sister to come see their mother and like a dummy he’d let them guilt him into staying. Moms had been dying—dead now—and one look from her and he knew he was stuck. She’d lasted seven months, but once he was free it wasn’t easy to escape.

He’d had to give up his job in California and was barely able to make ends meet with the piece of job he’d gotten at Walt’s Electronics. Sent had quickly grown to hate Walt almost as much as his mother.

He flushed the toilet and went to flush his hands, examining his face in the mirror. His eyes were two lumps of charcoal in a dark bronze face. The slash through his eyebrow was the only distinguishing mark in an otherwise forgettable face. A couple new grays in his goatee, but he could feel the bags under his eyes shrinking by the second. He’d gotten another job in California and as soon as his ride was ready he’d hit the road.

This time he wouldn’t be back. Even if all of them were dying.

Sent preferred not to think of the years of abuse he’d suffered at the hands of his mother (and his part-time, heroine-addict father when he decided to hang around) and chose not to now. He supposed as a direct result of his own childhood was why he hadn’t elected to have children of his own in his twenty-eight years. California was the cure for what ailed him.

He grabbed a couple paper towels and wiped and patted until his hands were mostly dry. He stepped out of the restroom and went up front. The old guy behind the computer was gone. Hopefully, he was checking with the mechanics to see how much longer it would take. Sent took a seat in the waiting area in front of one of the computer terminals. Maybe he’d check his email again or something to kill some time.

When Internet Explorer came up blank for the third time he stood and started roaming around. The door leading to where the mechanics were was to his left and he walked over to take a peek through the little window.

“What the—”

He stared at several bodies all across the shop floor. One of them had been pinned beneath a car still on the hydraulic lift and it looked like the woman just a few feet away from the door had been hollowed out with a giant ice cream scoop. The old man was face down against a big toolbox on the wall.

Sent whipped out his cell and dialed 9-1-1. The phone gave a weird beeping sound and disconnected. He looked at it and in place of signal bars was the red circle with a diagonal slash. He was outtie. Somebody cruised through with a machete or something and he wasn’t waiting around to shake his hand.

Before he could get to the front door he heard a loud bump coming from that direction. Sent froze. Could whoever it was be back to mop up? The only two ways out that he’d seen were the front door and the bay doors to the shop. He turned around and quickly headed back.

The door creaked open and he stepped through. It smelled awful in here. Like medicine and… and… he didn’t know what. Sent gently closed the door, looking all around for would-be attackers. There was a row of buttons by the bay doors that must have raised and closed them. He tiptoed over, but thought twice before pushing any of them.

What if they were waiting outside?

He needed something to defend himself.

There was a giant wrench propped up on the wall next to the body of the woman who’d been eviscerated. She had a huge gash along the side of her head, but instead of blood there was only clear stuff going down her neck, matting down her hair on the side. Sent stalked over and grabbed it with both hands.

And she grabbed his wrist.

Sent leapt back with a high-pitched girlscream, the wrench plunking to the floor. She opened her eyes and looked at him, putting her hands beneath herself to stand. He realized now would have been the perfect time to have that wrench.

She came toward him and he backed up.

“Listen, lady, let me call 9-1-1 for you. You need to just sit down, okay?”

She didn’t. In fact, she held out her arms, reaching for him. Sent saw a table of tools out of the corner of his eye and reached over and grabbed something. The pouch-like thing in his hand read ‘air wedge’. He threw it at her and it flopped harmlessly against her head.

The woman bared her grayish teeth and water-thin drool poured out. Sentinel almost tripped over a bar of some kind. He got his feet under him and scooped up the bar.

“Look, ma’am. Ma’am! I don’t wanna do this. Please don’t make me do this!” But she didn’t stop. He took a swing at her arm and she almost ripped the bar out of his hands. “Ma’am, I’m for real this time. Don’t make me do it!”

He realized she was about to call his bluff. Sent half-heartedly swung and clanged the bar off the side of her head. She canted to the side, but turned to him and started coming on again. She was wearing a button up sweater. Probably somebody’s mom. This wasn’t right.

“Ma’am,” Sent said, figuratively and literally backed up against a wall. He squared up like he was waiting on a pitch and when she was in the right spot turned his hips into the swing, the tip of the bar clanging off her jaw. Her head almost spun completely around and she hit the floor.

Sent stood over her a moment, waiting for her to move again, praying she didn’t. When he realized she was down for good he let the bar slip from his hands, clanging onto the floor. He made fists to keep his hands from shaking, but realized it was his whole body quivering.

It had been in her eyes. Despite her standing up and coming at him, despite the teeth, despite the big ass hole where her guts should have been he could tell she hadn’t wanted to do what she was doing. She’d been afraid, confused, lost. The word ‘horrified’ came to mind and just as he realized he’d never seen that particular look on anyone’s face before, he was certain that was exactly what the host of emotions in her eyes melded into. And Sentinel had had to put her down.

If he could avoid it, he wouldn’t do it again. Maybe she was a lone crazy. He looked at the bar next to her body. Better to not need it. Sent picked it up once his hands had steadied. And spotted someone standing ten feet away out of the corner of his eye.

He jumped and brought the bar up in front of him, looking at a man in navy overalls. His nametag read ‘Brad’. That same clear fluid ran down his chin like he had a mouth full of it, but it streamed from his nose and the corners of his eyes. He was tall and sinewy, but looked like he had a beer gut.

He was just standing there with a look on his face like he just woke up. Sent didn’t want to do it. But he couldn’t risk trying to get outside and another one waiting for him. He hefted the bar and caught movement from the corner of his eye.

The old man from behind the counter was getting up. Another guy in blue overalls was standing next to him. His nametag read ‘Chad’. The clear fluid poured from his mouth, nose, ears and eyes. Chad was heavy, but he looked like he was eight months pregnant.

Brad was still just looking at him. The old man (who had a little pooch he hadn’t had before) looked confused as well. But Chad had that look in his eyes. The same as the woman on the floor had. He started forward.

Sentinel backed away. Maybe he could beat the three of them with this wrench, maybe he couldn’t. The fact something had happened in here and then weirdo potbelly people (and one belly-less woman) who oozed out of every hole were suddenly walking around meant there was a lot more going on than he cared to find out about.

He ran for the bay doors.

Chad followed him around a hydraulic lift and Brad followed. Sent leapt over the rising body of another man in blue coveralls and hit a button between the doors. They started to lift, but he could tell if it wasn’t going to be fast enough. Sentinel kicked the man down who was trying to stand, grabbed a rolling toolbox, and shoved it into Chad. There was a thick popping sound and a second later it was like a faucet turned on in his pants. Chad looked stunned and Sentinel rammed him with the toolbox again, knocking him over.

He thought about doing the same to Brad, but the door was high enough to slip under. He kicked the one on the floor down again and dived for the rising door. Two naked middle-aged people were at the front door. They turned his way and raised their arms in unison. Their stomachs were gone, but the woman had a loop of black entrail still twined up to something inside her and dragging on the ground between her legs.

Sentinel ran the other way.

Fleshbags, by Gerald Dean Rice
Available at:
Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble