The Dead Never Forget

Dear friends, my story The Dead Never Forget has been published on The Flash Fiction Offensive by a wonderful editor, a great writer and a really cool guy, David Barber.  For gritty crime, check out both the FFO and David's own site.  Let me know what you think!

Cascade

‘...An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.5 struck in the ocean fifty miles off the pacific northwest yesterday.  There have been no reports of casualties or damage, although witnesses said that people ran from their homes in fear on Vancouver Island. 
The quake was originally registered with a magnitude of 7.7 but that figure was later revised down slightly to 6.5, the USGS said in a statement.  The Cascadia Subduction zone is a 680-mile fault that runs from Cape Mendocino in California to Vancouver Island in southern British Columbia.  Early reports are of a major split in the fault resulting in a trench in the ocean floor that may rival the depth of the Mariana Trench in the northwest Pacific....’

I grew up in the middle of a lot of land.  The views everywhere were of grass or crops with a distant haze of mountains to fence it all in.  There was a shallow fast river and a well behind the house, but that was as much as I saw of water.  I didn’t look in the well.  It made me think of an unblinking black eye. 

The roots of the land wanted to wrap themselves around my feet and keep me from ever leaving but I found a way of pulling myself out.  The trouble I got into was minor at first, just a way to have some fun.  It just got serious real quick.  

I can’t say I didn’t mean to do it.  I held the shotgun to his head and sighted down the long barrel.  It made me feel bad, small somehow, like the barrel was a highway stretching out for miles with only his skull at the end.  I lost my perspective and the world shrank into that stretch of metal.  The voices of the others grew distant and I had to do something to drag myself back to seeing things as normal.  The only thing I could control was the trigger.  So I shot him and a shrapnel piece of his skull got stuck in my forehead.  I still have a scar.  The psychologist in the prison told me I rub it when I get stressed out.  I know I’m rubbing it now, but I can’t stop.  

It’s so dark outside.  I try to convince myself that I’m floating, but I know I’m dropping.  No one knows where the bottom is.  

Mustn’t think about that or I won’t be able to stand it.  

So I got away from the infinity of grass and ended up in a 6 x 9 cell waiting for the day the warden and the preacher would come for me.  Except the day the warden came, he had some government stiff with him.  Regulation suit, regulation face and a terrible idea.  It seemed like a good idea at the time, like most bad ideas.  He didn’t even have to convince me.  I just said yes straight away.  It was a way out of the box I was living in.

A way into a different box in the sinking dark.  

I saw fish at the start.  Then, when the dark came, I watched a whale go by.  It took a long time to pass and it didn’t seem to even notice me.  Other things showed up. Things with lights and bones where they weren’t supposed to be. 

They didn’t tell me much, the scientists.  An underwater earthquake made the bottom fall out of a trench.  Their sound surveillance system started to pick up sounds that they hadn’t heard before.  They just wanted to find out what was making the sounds.  Not a big deal.  Someone had to go down to see.  Only no one wanted to go down.  Maybe they thought the hull wouldn’t hold on their little tub.  Maybe they were just plain scared.  I didn’t have anything to lose except maybe a couple of months of life not worth living.  

I didn’t know I’d be so afraid of the long dark under me and the lengthening dark above.  The world was all black but for a lightning flash from a creature that didn’t look like anything. After a while, even those flashing creatures were gone and there was nothing but the empty dark.

My ears started to feel funny and when I put my hands either side of the window to peer into the black velvet, I felt the alloy and titanium walls vibrate.  I could almost feel the weight of the darkness pressing against the walls.

The vibration was in my ears too, not a sound that I could hear, but a sub sound that made my fillings tremble and the hairs on my arms raise.  I tried opening my eyes wide to make out something outside the lights of the sub but there was nothing.  The world ended beyond the lights.    

Kane, you’re almost at the limit of the sub.  Can you see anything?

Broderick on the radio.  He had given me a few talks that amounted to training before they closed me in here.  

Can’t see anything.  There’s nothing out there.

There was a silence and then Broderick’s breathing.  

I’m bringing you back up.  You can’t get to the bottom anyway.

Broderick was okay.  He seemed like an ordinary grunt just following orders.  I wiped sweat off my face and sat back to wait for the world I knew.  Then something hit the sub.  

The nudge was almost gentle.  The sub spun sideways and my teeth chunked down on my tongue.  

Kane, what the hell was that?  You ok?

I saw the eye pass the window, followed by an enormous plated body.  I sat still, afraid movement would draw it to me.  Broderick’s voice squawked on the radio again and I wished he would shut up in case it could hear him.  

They told me that there couldn’t be anything down here.  They thought there might be a source of natural gas or an underwater volcano bubbling and making the sounds that the hydrophones could pick up.  They never said that there would be something with an eye bigger than me.  Then I heard Broderick’s voice and it made me more afraid than anything else ever had.  

We’ve lost control of the sub, Kane.  You’re sinking.

Then the long deep dark below opened up and took me in. 

I didn’t sleep or pass out, though there were times I thought I would and wished for it.  Instead, a sort of craziness came over me.  I smashed up some of the stuff in the sub and cracked my skull against the wall, once by accident and once on purpose.  I was hoping that would end it, but I couldn’t do it right.  I just got a bad headache and a blurriness in my left eye.  

Now, I’m sitting here, still drifting down, getting further away from the light with no hope of ever getting back.  The sub will crack, or fail me some other way.  No one can come for me.  There are things outside and I reckon they’re curious to see what I taste like.  It seems like the middle of the prairie would be a fine place to be right now.  All I can do is close my eyes and imagine it.  

I wonder if the sensors above will pick up the sound.  I wonder if Broderick will hear me die.  I want someone to know.  Anyone, so that it’s not just me in the dark. 

Dear Friends,

My story The Deepest Hour is now on http://www.wilywriters.com/blog/ as a podcast, read beautifully by Mr. Nathan Crowder.  If you can, please pop along for a visit to a great site and have a listen to my story.

Thank you Angel Leigh McCoy and Wily Writers!

Idle Hands

I'm posting this as #fridayflash, joining a great community of writers.  

Idle Hands

The new graveyard was built to provide a final resting place for the people of the new housing developments that had rashed outwards from the town.  All the new young people would need somewhere to lie when they finished going from their doppelganger houses to work and back again.  The fresh field was nicely mowed and surrounded by a pretty wall.  The children liked to chase each other in there and play football.  For a long time, it was empty.  Then men dug a hole in the middle of it, six feet deep, put something in it and filled it up again.  Once the muffin dough of clay settled, they put a stone up with a name on it.  My name, of course.  

In the beginning, I just lay there.  I had never liked doing nothing.  Someone who knew me put a book in there as a symbol of my life.  Books had meant so much to me.  People not so much, although I always liked an audience.  I supposed I should have regretted that.  The only thing I really regretted was that it was dark and I couldn’t read.  Although I did like to smell the pages of the book buried with me.  Part of the joy of books for me was the scent of the paper, the ink, the binding.  And I missed talking about them.  

So I lay there and listened to the sound of the children racing around the nearly empty graveyard, with just me in the middle with nothing to do.  I got bored.  And I got ideas.  You know what they say.  The devil makes work for idle hands.  I got to thinking about the emptiness all around me and I started picking at the side of the coffin.  It took time, but I was rich in that, if nothing else.  

When I broke through, a shower of dirt fell into the hole.  I panicked for a second, feeling like I was going to suffocate.  Then I laughed at myself for being stupid.  I wonder if the sound of it echoed up to the surface.  

I dug then.  Dug right through the timber and into the ground, working my way sideways at first, worming my way easily through the soft soil.  They had chosen a good place for the graveyard.  The land was good and not too stony.  After a while, I got bored again and went up.  

It was night when the last grassy sod fell and I saw the sky again.  The stars were blinding to my dark accustomed eyes.  I dragged myself out and lay for a while on the dewy grass.  I didn’t trust my legs so I crawled to my gravestone and used it to pull myself up.  I leaned my dirty arms on it while considering my next move.  

I hadn’t lived in the new development for long when my heart gave up the ghost while jogging.  Ridiculous way to go, such a cliché.  I had got lost while avoiding the dead ends of all the little drives and avenues, named for trees and poets.  Was it Beech Avenue or Wordsworth Close where I died?  Hardly matters, but I’d prefer the poet.  

I walked to the gate in the pretty wall and couldn’t go through it.  Something was blocking me.  So I went down again, under the soil.  Still couldn’t make it past the boundary of the graveyard.  Topside again, I stood wondering what to do.  I had no intention of being left with no one to talk to.  So, in the end, I just waited until someone came along.  A woman, late middle age, carrying a shopping bag.  Leaning on the wall, I was able to extend a hand enough to brush her sleeve.  She seemed to feel it and glanced at me or through me, before hurrying on.  I saw the change in her face first though.  Her lips and cheeks turned grey.  It wasn’t long before another hole was being dug, six feet deep.  And that wasn’t the last.  You know what they say about idle hands. 

Great news! One of my stories was chosen as the runner-up in the Masters of Horror/Wily Writers Short Story Contest. The story is not up yet, but I'll post when it is. http://www.wilywriters.com/blo​g/ Also check out Editor Angel Leigh McCoy's website http://www.angelmccoy.com/

F.G. Cottam

Isn't it a great joy to discover a new writer?  The pleasure of the connection when the music of the story telling resonates in the bones, is one of the most wonderful things about reading.

I stumbled across a novel called The Waiting Room by F.G. Cottam last week.  It is a chiller in a gothic style that pays homage to Chesterton, Wells and Conan Doyle.  My favourite war poet Wilfred Owen is in here, and Francis gives us a little taste of Yeat's The Second Coming for good measure.  The book's atmosphere is one of creeping dread and gave me my first nightmare in years brought on by something other than cheese before bed or an overheated room.  I love a spooky story that doesn't rely on gore and blood letting for its chills.  I am not a fan of splatterpunk.  Unnerving tales that make the hair rise on the back of one's neck are much more interesting to me. 

I've moved on to Cottam's The House of Lost Souls and the chills work right from the start.  He mentions the Green Man, Hieronymous Bosch and The Old Grey Whistle Test in chapter three.  I love this man!  As well as the one that I'm reading now, I've ordered three more of his from my favourite genre bookshop Alien8,  Dark Echo, The Magdalena Curse and Brodmaw Bay.  I recommend his work highly.  Fans of a chill, seek him out!

Story is king.  Reading it and writing it.  That's so important to me.  I have my mother to thank for that and everything else, as always.  Thank you Francis Cottam for the nightmare that lingered.  I'll put that chill into a story.

Black is the Colour

His brand of magic was quiet and close up.  He didn’t want to impress with flash and fire.  He liked to tell a story, keeping his voice low so that his audience had to still themselves to hear.  He told stories of the world at its birth and the pain of growing while his clever hands told stories of their own.  Sometimes when the magic was done, there was a moment of silence as the people came out of the spell he had woven and realised what they had seen.  Those were the best moments for him; seeing them light up like children, with delight.  Magic was about finding the miracle in the mundane.  He used string and candles, cards and handkerchiefs to seize a dulled imagination and make it fly.  For a long time, it was his only joy. 

He knew he was a plain man.  He was 5 foot 8, with thinning hair and boring clothes.  When he tried to change his clothes or comb his hair differently, he felt, and looked, he was sure, foolish.  He knew what he was.  He also knew who he was.  He was a magician.  That was more than enough. 

He gained moderate success and travelled alone.  His little show made people laugh and clap their hands.  When each trip was finished, he thumbed through his pocket diary, torn and grubby from his travels, to find the next place.  Santa Monica appeared on the 1^st of June.  After, he remembered it standing out as though embossed.  At the time, he went there, expecting nothing but the simple pleasures of a new place and a new audience. 

When he called for a volunteer, Lorena came up.  The lights played in her black hair and he was so entranced by her that he almost made a mistake.  He pulled his attention back and was rewarded by her delight. 

He didn’t know how to be with women, but Lorena didn’t care.  He saw her coming towards him backstage and tried to think of something to say.  She just took his hand and everything else went away, just like when he was telling his stories. 

They made love in the sand.  The magic of it made his act seem like a feather in a storm.  He felt like a true magician then and thereafter when they were together.  He loved her voice and her slender body, often naked under simple dresses.  She laughed when his clever hands made magic of her.  He listened to the rhythm of her speech and to her stories about her mountain home in West Virginia.  He learned the Scots-Irish song Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair and sang it to her while he was practicing his magic. 

When she wanted to go home to visit her folks, he tried to stop her.  She thought at first that he was jealous and possessive.  Before she left, he made her see that he had a bad feeling.  She forgave him for it and kissed him, but went all the same, with promises to always love him. 

She called him from the airport when she arrived, just before she boarded the small plane that would take her into the mountains.  The Appalachian woods swallowed the plane so deep that no one could find it.  He waited all through the searching, waited in her home town, met her family and waited.  When the world confessed that it couldn’t find her, he stopped waiting. 

He knew nothing about the woods.  Lorena’s mother showed him poison ivy so that he could avoid it.  Her brother gave him a gun and taught him how to use it so that he could feed himself when his supplies ran out.  They equipped him and said goodbye.  Their eyes were like hers and he knew he would never see them again. 

In the beginning, the black flies bothered him but the deeper he got into the woods, the less he cared.  All he could see was Lorena’s shining hair and the brightness of her face when she looked at him.  The first night he camped out, something heavy lumbered through the woods near his tent, cracking branches and pausing to lap water from a stream.  He held still until it passed and then he slipped into exhausted sleep, dreaming of her. 

He walked and the days blended into each other.  He seldom looked up at the canopy of trees but watched his boots tread after each other.  When his food got low, he tried to watch for a deer to shoot, but couldn’t face even the thought of firing upon one.  He ate less and walked on. 

He knew he would find her.  It was no surprise to him when he raised his eyes to study the track the plane had made through the trees.  It had shed pieces of itself as it crashed.  He followed the broken trail until he came to the wreckage.  The plane had skimmed the earth and come to its devastating rest under the heavy canopy.  He walked around it and saw Lorena lying on the ground, her black hair spread about her head like a pool.  She had either been thrown clear or managed to get herself out.  He got on his knees beside her and looked at her perfect face.  It was close to sunset and the black flies were swarming around him, trying to fill his nostrils and the corners of his eyes, but they didn’t touch her.  Nothing touched her.  She was perfect, her skin smooth, her body unharmed.  He took her hand and the flies left him.  She looked so unhurt that he felt for a pulse. Nothing.  He looked around in some useless instinct, seeking help before he realised that he was the only one.  No one else would ever come. 

He leaned over and kissed her lips and then stood to shed his pack.  He spread his arms to the sky and let the feeling of magic fill his heart the way it had when he had made love to her.  He gathered it around him and breathed it in. It smelled like the forest; moist life quivering under the canopy out of sight of human eyes.  He pulled it in to him and with everything he had ever learned about magic, thrust it out again, thinking only of her.  In the half-light under the trees, he saw it spark out of him and fly towards her.  Her body jerked and he felt like she was helping, sucking the light and the life into her.  He started to tire and the light began to dim.  When he fell on his knees, she sat up and looked at him, her eyes full of glittering gold and green lights, like the forest in dappled sunshine. 

He held out his hands to her, crying and struggling for breath.  She was sucking all the oxygen out of the little grove.  The leaves around the broken perimeter began to turn brown as she pulled the vitality from them.  She stood and whirled and he touched her leg as she came close to him.  His fingers scorched at the touch and he jerked back.  She leaned over him and he saw that she was something more than the woman he loved.  Lorena was there, but there was something in her, made of the woods and the dark and his own magic.  He was afraid of her and when she smiled at him, the green forest light that shot from her like static made him scream.  She laughed and he scrambled up and ran. 

He could hear her coming after him, a woods beast intent only on drawing in what life it could.  He threw a look over his shoulder and saw her, clawed and furred and eager for him. 

He ran, remembering the simple magic of quiet movements and delighted faces.  He drew the last of his magic to him, concentrated it and then sent it out again.  It tore free with a sudden pain, ripped from its hidden roots.  The ground dropped from beneath him and he turned as he fell.  He saw the magic wrap around her and transform her.  She spread wings and soared over the cliff edge, crying out in the thrill of flight.  The sky was hers.  He fell toward the white water below and watched her joy, her freedom, and knew it was enough. 

I love my love and well she knows,
I love the ground, whereon she goes,
I wish the day, it soon would come,
When she & I could be as one.

Black is the colour of my true love's hair,
Her lips are like some roses fair,
She's the sweetest smile, And the gentlest hands,
I love the ground, Whereon she stands.

Traditional love song.