Pro Se Presents: December 2011

By Pro Se Press

Pro Se keeps Puttin' The Monthly Back Into Pulp with PRO SE PRESENTS #5! This Christmas themed issue proves the Holidays can be Pulpy too! Featuring a preview of THE ADVENTURES OF NICHOLAS SAINT by award winning author Tommy Hancock as well as tales by Joshua Reynolds, Nancy A. Hansen, and Mark Halegua, Pro Se Presents #5 delivers a Christmas One-Two Punch like no other mag! Get yours today!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pro Se Press
• Release date: Feb 28, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476032146

Pro Se Press

Based in Batesville, Arkansas, Pro Se Productions has become a leader on the cutting edge of New Pulp Fiction in a very short time.Pulp Fiction, known by many names and identified as being action/adventure, fast paced, hero versus villain, over the top characters and tight, yet extravagant plots, is experiencing a resurgence like never before. And Pro Se Press is a major part of the revival, one of the reasons that New Pulp is growing by leaps and bounds.

Book preview

PRO SE PRESENTS

NEW AUTHORS - NEW VISIONS - NEW PULP FICTION FOR A NEW GENERATION

DECEMBER 2011

Copyright © 2011, Pro Se Productions

Published by Pro Se Press at Smashwords

The stories in this publication are fictional. All of the characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing of the publisher.

Edited by- Lee Houston, Jr., Nancy Hansen, and Frank Schildiner

Editor in Chief, Pro Se Productions-Tommy Hancock

Submissions Editor-Barry Reese

Publisher & Pro Se Productions, LLC-Chief Executive Officer-Fuller Bumpers

Pro Se Productions, LLC

133 1/2 Broad Street

Batesville, AR, 72501

870-834-4022

[e-mail]

www.prosepulp.com

The Adventures of Nicholas Saint copyright © 2011 Tommy Hancock

Of Saints and Angels copyright © 2011 Nancy A. Hansen

The Jagtooth Lane Horror copyright © 2011 Joshua Reynolds

The Night Before Christmas copyright © 2011 Mark S. Halegua

Cover and Interior Art, Book Design, Layout, and additional graphics by Sean E. Ali

E-book design and layout by Russ Anderson

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE ADVENTURES OF NICHOLAS SAINT

by Tommy Hancock

OF SAINTS AND ANGELS

by Nancy A. Hansen

THE JAGTOOTH LANE HORROR

by Joshua Reynolds

THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

by Mark S. Halegua

THE ADVENTURES OF NICHOLAS SAINT

By Tommy Hancock

Harley Tyler clamped his calloused, work hardened hands over his rather delicately shaped ears as he ran, his bare nubs of nails digging into his leathered skin. Even that reinforced by the big band bass drum pounding of his heart, threatening to burst inside his chest, didn’t drown out the music. He dove into the tree lined alley between the Widow Cosgrove’s home and the Flannery Family abode, Mike still not back yet from his late morning milk deliveries. As he clumsily crashed into the hardened dirt path, worn away years ago by children who no longer played anywhere in Caruthersville, he cast his fear riddled blue eyes skyward. The bare dogwoods that the Widow had planted alongside her house back when she wasn’t widowed and the Flannery home didn’t yet exist seemed to glare down at Tyler, shaking their barren limbs at him. Chastising him for even trying to run.

Tyler might have lain there on his back, captivated by his own troubled imagination, until his pursuers caught up to him and rent him from pillar to post had it not been for that blasted music. It crept on the subtle winter breeze that haunted the small Ohio town from November clear into March each year, teasing its way into Harley Tyler’s head. Not anything he would have ever called music before, Tyler considered as he clambered back up to his feet, his right one already dropping into a dead run as his left one struggled to fall in step.

He exploded from between the two houses into the open and frantically looked left to right, trying to get his bearings in the only town he’d ever known. One street over Main, the stately granite County Courthouse loomed to his right, rising three full stories above the antebellum houses before him. Plotting his course as he crossed the street, between The Jenkins place and Molly’s Gingerbread Tea Room, once the regal Malone estate before the Great Crash touched even Caruthersville, Tyler tried to block out the murderous melody in his mind. Will it away. Ignore it. Pray that it was simply the hallucination of a broken hearted old man. But it wasn’t. It was there. Just like it had been ten years before.

The music carried no real tune, just discordant blasts and errant bleats of a horn thrown together haphazardly, one seeming to add power to another in an angry cadence. But Harley Tyler knew the terrible power it held, the ensnaring enchantment it cast. It was the backdrop of his nightmares for the last decade, the way it tangled itself in the wind and wafted across town. How it made adults cringe yet made children smile and giggle. And dance. Children danced to it, their tiny feet shuffling and skipping, their hands in the air, twirling and spinning. They danced to it because they couldn’t help it. Even those strong enough to realize what was happening was wrong, like Harley’s own Jimmy, the ones who reached out with begging hands to their parents to hold on to them, to make them stop, simply could not resist. At least, Harley thought desperately as he moved alongside the wall of the Tea Room, pressing his angular body against the cold brickwork, it wouldn’t take any others. There hadn’t been a child over the age of one year old in Caruthersville for the last ten years.

Glancing around the corner, his eyes searching for his destination, Tyler heard what he sought before he saw it. Faint, almost nonexistent, but there. The ringing of a bell. His eyes caught up, finding the spot, two blocks past the courthouse to the right. Traffic was light, after all it was an early December morning. Too cold to rummage around for morning coffee at the local diner and the stores weren’t even open for Christmas shopping until ten. He could make it, he was sure of it, even with the blasted music rising to a crescendo. As if it somehow knew he was hearing something else.

Then he heard them. Footfalls. Behind him, trailing him like they had since before sunrise. But also to both sides of him now. Divide and conquer. A new strategy. Steps, heavy, deliberate, and in time with one another. Moving, marching as one. All dancing to that infernal music. And all to keep him from his self appointed round.

Tyler lowered his head, ready to bolt like his grandfather’s angus Bull did the day Cousin Ian lost his right eye and his left boot nearly thirty years ago. He leaped forward, his right hand instinctively clinging to his side, holding the only thing that meant anything to him now even closer to his body than his leather belt held it. His feet never touched the ground as more than a dozen hands grappled him from behind. Some clawed him like talons, others tangled in his thinning gray hair, one slapped him viciously across the mouth, ending the yell for help already rising in his throat. He struggled as his pursuers, now his captors tugged and pulled on him, dragging him away from the street. Back toward the Tea Room. And the old unused smoke house left over from the Malone years. Harley Tyler moaned through the feminine fingers locked over his mouth. The throng of men and women holding him hostage never made a sound more than breathing. All he could hear was that hellish, horrible song. Lowering his head in despair, Tyler knew that all hope was lost for Caruthersville. And maybe the rest of the world.

As his eyelids fluttered in defeat, something suddenly shimmered in the corner of his eye. A face. Drawn, empty, expressionless, just like every single young face that first appeared hours ago outside of his farmhouse window, banging on the doors, shattering glass with their unfeeling fists. But this one, this tow headed fair skinned face was not one he’d seen then. He’d not seen it other than in fading photographs in ten years. Ten years of regret, remorse, and soul killing loneliness.

Ben? Tyler garbled through the flesh and bone gag over his lips. Turning his head as much as he could, he saw the young man again. Hollow cheeks, sunken milky green eyes, a blank, vacuous stare. But there was more. A hodge podge line of freckles running over the bridge of his nose, the tell that he’d been his mother’s boy. A slight hook shaped scar just above his upper lip where the setting hen clipped him when he was eight and curious enough to stick his head in the coop. And the ears, almost feminine shell like commas on the side of his nearly oblong head. The same ears Harley saw every time he passed a mirror.

Harley shook his head back and forth violently, pushing against the woman’s hand over his mouth. Working his jaw up and down, he bit whatever finger he could get in his mouth. The taste of blood filled his mouth as his teeth broke skin. No yelling, no shrieking, just finally the release of the hand from over his face, as if it was simply the right reaction to a negative action, not someone about to bite her finger off.

Ben! Harley shouted, tears rimming his aged eyes. Ben, it’s me! Your Father! As the desperate plea fell from his lips, Harley Tyler knew it would go unanswered. Whatever had taken his son and all the other children over five away from Caruthersville ten years ago Christmas had also snatched from Ben and the others every ounce of personality and will power they’d ever had. They were little more than fleshy puppets now, somehow Tyler sensed that. Marionette soldiers being yanked around by someone. And tied around their arms, legs, their very minds like a string nothing could break was that incessant melody.