Red Hair Rising

By Craig Davis

A collection of Christian Gothic Writing by Craig Davis, a new approach to the mystical and grotesque. Stories include "12:22 to Chicago," winner of the 2013 Visions and Dreams fiction prize, the tale of a man with a secret he can neither escape nor release, and also "Jericho Jones," winner of The April Reader fiction prize, a fable of art and humanity. Also includes the novelette, "London After Midnight," the slow slide of a man into the clutches of evil. These and other stories salt this collection with deep themes and spiritual truths, peppered with the fantastic. For fans of Flannery O'Connor, Cormack McCarthy and C.S. Lewis.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Craig Davis
• Release date: Oct 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9780982956779

Craig Davis

After earning bachelor's and graduate degrees at the University of Missouri, Craig Davis toiled for 20 years at newspapers, and has spent a lifetime in biblical scholarship. He wrote his first story while in Kindergarten, about King Kong. An amateur musician, he was once wrestled to the ground by a set of bagpipes.

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Red Hair Rising

Christian Gothic Tales

By Craig Davis

Published by St.Celibart Press at Smashwords

23 Castlerock Cv. Jackson TN 38305

Copyright © 2016 Harry Craig Davis

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

ISBN: 978-0-9829567-7-9

Davis, Craig, Red Hair Rising

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www.StCelibart.com

Contents

The Living Thing

12:22 to Chicago

Sea and Scorpion

Spinning Wheel

Annelies

Jericho Jones

Theo and the Aliens

Red Hair Rising

Porn Stars In Love

1 Cor. 13:5

Strength Is In Their Weakness

Pinned in Peniel

Balaam

London After Midnight

From A to B

Dream Shadows

Introduction

Over the years I have written a lot of things. As a newspaper columnist, I wrote about whatever I could think of that would fit within thirteen inches. As a homespun Bible scholar, I’ve written studies and essays of various length and depth. In the realm of fiction I’ve written parable, fantasy, adventure and corporate foible. Hiding just underneath the surface in all these pieces lurks my Christian roots. Then my attention turned to the literature of my heritage, the twisted path of the American South, that region Flannery O’Connor famously described as Christ-haunted. I didn’t know O’Connor had said that until after I read O’Connor and appreciated the underlying truths woven deftly within her stories. The parallel paths of my coming of age, Christianity and the South, had come to Robert Johnson’s crossroads, and the wonders of Southern Gothic opened themselves to my eyes.

However, that genre seems to belong not just to a particular region, but also to a particular time, that tortured era between the repeal of Reconstruction civil rights and the modern movement to reinstate them. The South still produces its notable writers, but the vagueries and grotesques of the gothic style have fallen out of favor and perhaps even usefulness. The New South (praise be to God) has no more use for them, or perhaps has joined the rest of the culture in failing to recognize them. But writing between the lines will never lose its allure, literature will survive formula-driven genre fiction, and we must press on. So I have coined a new term that can serve the same purpose that O’Connor pursued, without the dictates of time and place, to view the changing and unchanging world with a plumb line true and faithful.

To that end, these stories embrace the paradigm of the unseen middle. They explore mystical understandings of the human condition. They investigate the movements of that Ghost that not only continues to haunt the South, but all of mankind over all creation as well. Please join in, and enjoy these excursions into Christian Gothic fiction.

The Living Thing

The night before, a Sunday, as he crawled into slumber, Samuel MacGregor had already felt different in some way. Exhilarated, he’d sorted through his new outlook, a competing paradigm, and over again until at last sleep captured him. Dreams had tumbled recklessly through his unconsciousness. Then before arising in the morning he had felt a slight pressure upon his breathing, an annoyance making his rest difficult. He thought perhaps his situation – stretched out on the kitchen table, head and arms dangling over the edges – might be cause of his discomfort. Or perhaps it was the clammy chill of his soaked hair. But not until he saw his image in the mirror did the boxy swelling upon his chest present itself, with its two wires emerging through his skin.

He recalled ecstatic words projected over a tinny sound system, temptations barked out in commands and invitations. Spare music, straining to keep undisciplined voices together, punctuated the enthralling show. The walls about him had billowed like a nightmare – bizarre, phantom movements mesmerizing him, preparing him for any whim of the snake charmer. Sucked in by the spiel, he walked gladly into the jaws that awaited, the manhandling persuasion of the chorus. As they laid him upon his back, the roof towered overhead, braced upon a single pillar, roughly wooden but carved with ancient runes and hung with rings. A shaman or wizard, or sexton, seemed to pull him through the moist warmth of the womb – him staring with wild, elemental eyes – and into a new awareness. The rapturous whirlwind swept him up in its arms and delivered him somehow to his breakfast table.

Now he confronted a box the size of a deck of cards bulging within his body. The sudden fright of his discovery set his heart racing, and it pounded away within him unabated, its rhythm throbbing through a vein in his neck. An exploratory push with a finger did not budge the lump. The two wires came out over the top of the shape, arcing toward each other but not touching; Samuel reached a finger near one wire and felt a sudden shock like electricity, like an old-fashioned joy buzzer. He winced at the tenderness of the bright pink skin surrounding their exit wound – if there had been any evidence of a wound. What have they done to me? he asked the reflection of his pale eyes. He ran a hand through his well-trained hair, parted down the middle, and wondered how such an operation could occur without his even noticing. He wondered what kind of devilish imagination might work such mischief upon him. And how could he explain this change with his family, and at his job? His office still required business dress – shirt and tie – but the new growth would clearly show through one of his trim white shirts. Samuel had gained a reputation for outlandish ideas in his short history at the company, and he could not allow his appearance to attract more scrutiny. Leaning into the mirror, he studied his breast, the rectangular nodule centered neatly upon his breastbone, fanning chest hair around the curve of its edges. He saw no stitches nor even cuts, no evidence of forced entry. How did this happen to me? he despaired, and struggled to piece together bits of memory simmering from the night before.

The clock in the living room chimed the quarter hour, and he panicked at the passing minutes. His small morning window of time dwindled; Mr. Snider expected him to arrive promptly. Tracking down whoever had implanted this unnatural thing inside him, and figuring out how to treat it, would have to wait until after work. As he ran an electric razor over the weekend beard of his sturdy jaw, he mentally ran through a list of options. Of course, he could call in sick, but what about tomorrow? The swelling might go down, but the wires probably not. No, the problem surely would remain – might as well deal with it now. Mr. Snider would not like him to miss a day, anyway, and perhaps this little inconvenience would prove to his bosses how well Samuel could handle adversity. He stared at the mass a moment before falling back into desperation. Wearing a sport coat would do nothing to hide the box. He could try to get by wearing a sweater, but that would not be technically in line with the dress code. Wrapping his torso in bandages would only invite questions. Samuel sighed and shrugged at the only choice he could see. Though it was the dead of the Southern summer, he strapped on his shirt and tie, then draped himself with a bulky sweater.

Sneaking into the building through a back door, he avoided the usual morning interaction among coworkers. He hunched his back and thrust his shoulders forward, hiding as best he could the outgrowth over his heart, and slipped into his cubicle. The tall partitions neatly separated the room into a maze of isolated caves, cutting each person off from the rest of the room; he slinked to his little sanctuary and slumped at his desk, propping his elbows and resting his head in both hands. Lights blinked out of sync on his phone. Occasionally, when someone walked past his entryway, Samuel would angle his back toward the person, speaking only clipped greetings over his shoulder. Try as he might, he could not wrestle his attentions to his work. Instead, his mind drifted constantly toward the night before, and the horrible discovery of the morning, and how he might return to what he was before. His brain ached, he massaged his forehead, straining at the recollection, the muddled dream of his new genesis. The waving sea of bodies that seemed so welcoming then, so inviting into a different world, flooded back to him, and just beyond his memory’s reach lingered the epiphany that lured him to gladly join in. I must think, he gritted his teeth, but he couldn’t – his new essential was not a formula he could compute on the calculator sitting before him, he couldn’t break it down to reassemble by his own design. Weird sing-songing rolled over in his mind, pidgin languages repeating, Tame lie fanned lit beckon secret eddle ord toothy. Tame lie fanned lit be you all right? MacGregor?

Samuel’s awareness snapped back to him to see Don Snider hovering at the door to his cubicle. Are you feeling all right today, MacGregor?

Now he was stuck: He could not keep his back to the boss. Samuel crossed his arms over his chest and wheeled his chair around to face Mr. Snider. Yes, Don, I’m okay. No problem.

I don’t know, MacGregor, he frowned from above, You seem distracted, maybe even a little feverish. You got chills?

Samuel suddenly realized how much he was perspiring under his heavy sweater. He wiped at the beaded moisture upon his forehead with the back of his hand in a careless manner, but his voice trembled. Oh, no, I’m fine. No problems here.

Well, all right then. Look, we’ve got a meeting coming up next week on the Jamison account. I need you to work up those figures, just a preliminary look. Don’t sweat it too much, ’cause we’ll have accounting come up with the final report anyway, but I want an early look. Can you get that done today?

I’ll try, Don.

Well – I want those numbers this afternoon. All right?

Yeah, okay.

You take care of yourself, MacGregor, Mr. Snider looked at him as if he were really seeing him. You don’t seem like your old self today.

No. Er – yeah, sure.

Samuel struggled to focus on the assignment. Deep within him he grumbled against the added duty, a vain pursuit worthless even in the mind of the man who demanded it – and immediately at that. The pressure upon his chest, from within and without, intensified as he called the necessary files up on his computer screen. If I can just get through this, he thought, I’ll go. I’ll get out of here. Don as much as said I could go. Then I can attend to this thing, this important thing. This other matter. An aching crackle grew from underneath his steamy shirt, and he imagined himself casting off a shell, like a hermit crab, ready to seek a more fitting home. The numbers blurred as he tried to make sense of the rows and columns, rendering the arrangement meaningless, morphing it into a dreamlike crossroads stretching to the hazy horizon. The voices called to him again, they grew into thundering rolls, like a bowling ball rumbling to its violent mission, and he fell into the same disoriented feeling he sometimes got from watching late-night TV, flickering black-and-white scenes from ancient horror movies, tableaus of unconvincing monsters caught in their own nightmares. He shook his head clear and forced his eyes back to the screen. Somehow he willed himself through the figures and printed out his thin report. Fairly sprinting, he blew by the hutch for inter-office memos, inserted the papers into Mr. Snider’s slot on the fly, and fled the building. His lungs gasped for what breath he could manage.

Safe in his car, he cranked up the air conditioning and gratefully peeled off his sweater to bathe in the cool caress. Still, his chest heaved as he gulped for air, and he felt like belts had been pulled tight around his ribcage. His soaked shirt stretched taut, and he could easily see through the fabric that the box appeared bigger, so much bigger that it threatened to pop the buttons from their holes. How could it be growing, Samuel thought in a panic, what size is it now, a box of macaroni and cheese? Perhaps a deluxe-size crayon box, the kind he’d always coveted as a child? He didn’t know which, he couldn’t tell; maybe it was some other size. Regardless, now it was increasing within him, becoming a larger part of him. He set his will firmly to find the people who had done this to him, and make them take it back.

Samuel had gone to the gathering with an acquaintance – someone from his building wanting company for the day’s end – who had done the driving. He hadn’t really paid attention to their route in the lazy evening, and remembered the ride home not at all. Like drawing lines between dots to form a picture, he tried to trace stray landmarks dimly recalled to a thing he recognized. There, the bank, and then a restaurant he frequented, he thought he recollected, or was that from some other day? Power lines overhead dipped and rose, pretending to point the way, until he did not know which direction to turn. Then a sign caught his eye, a glorified trailer with an electric arrow and disheveled letters, hastily re-arranged, on two lines, SSON ON FEEL LITTLE EGYPT, and he was sure of the broad field spreading out beyond the street. But the tent no longer stood there.

Parking his car and switching on the hazards, he exited to inspect the vacant lot, hard-packed dirt with a covering of silken dust, pocked with scraggly weeds. One of the Ls on the sign was a clumsily broken E. Nervous anticipation fluttered within his chest, and he knew it was beneath the box, perhaps even guarded by it. Though nobody else gathered with him there, he felt a glad belonging, as if he had arrived at a mysterious communion. His feelings turned from demanding satisfaction to a sort of floating peace, a security within his time and place. It is right that there is nothing left, no people, no structure, he thought, that this lies before me destitute, like a spent battlefield. He felt as though he could stand there endlessly, perched to the side of that narrow lane, but as the sun drew down to darkness he conceded he must resume his life as he knew it.

As he walked in the door, his apartment seemed cozy and inviting, something he’d never particularly noticed before. There was his ratty chair, kneaded to fit his body, and there hung the cheap bit of art from the knick-knack store. He practically hummed as he prepared for bed, and he meditated upon the operations of fate and what things he had no power to alter. The night passed with no more than the usual brew of dreams, taking him into realms surreal beyond his imagination – even his subconscious tried to persuade him, his new reality was reasonable, it was real beyond whatever he knew before. He had no choice but to sleep on his back, and his snoring more than once awoke him with a start. Finally propping himself with pillows into more of a sitting position, he stretched his legs and toes within the soft warmth of the sheets. His thoughts rambled, from the security of his father’s sedan in his childhood, to moments of rollicking camaraderie in college. Samuel smiled and sighed in his dozing, feeling an illogical complacency about his situation and what lay ahead. In the hushed darkness he ticked off the hours until the clock in the next room chimed five. At that point he gave up, lurching out of bed and into the bathroom.

In an instant, a flood of anguished alarm reclaimed him as he spied the progress of the implant, now the size of Moby Dick. The wires still erupted from their wounds, which looked yet angrier and more seeping. What a fool I am! his panicked thoughts raced. I was so close to finding those people last night! Now I’ll never track them down! What can I do? I’m turning into a circus freak! The thing’s weight too had increased, and he grimaced as he tried to straighten his back. Again the frightening prospect of his reception at work shot through his mind. After the previous day’s encounter with Mr. Snider, and his early exit, Samuel couldn’t risk staying home. He had to go in and make a good showing. He hopelessly attempted to stretch a shirt around the growing mass, realizing a sweater was now his only choice; to get around not wearing a tie, he chose an old turtleneck. Still the shape of the box showed through, so he looped a pair of heavy scarves behind his neck, and tied them loosely over his chest. This failed-model look made him even more self-conscious. A confident pose before the mirror produced only a contorted expression – like a death’s head – as he struggled vainly to stand straight, yet somewhere deep behind his hard-set jaw a quiet perseverance lay in wait, and he puzzled at his own gaze.

Mr. Snider was a tall man, and he peered over the wall of Samuel’s cubicle like Kilroy. Samuel had entered the building through a back door again, but this morning made no attempt at sneaking into his office space; his colleagues’ worried gaze followed his trudging passage to the desk. Now his boss flexed like a cougar on a mountain ledge – Mr. Snider had a slight facial tick, pulling at his nostrils by stretching his upper lip. Samuel was aware of his presence without turning to acknowledge it. Slowly Mr. Snider appeared around the edge of Samuel’s doorway.

How are you today, MacGregor?

Fine, Don, Samuel murmured, not looking up. I feel like a new man.

Good. That Jamison report yesterday was a little short on numbers. I need the figures for the last five fiscal years. Just a cursory overview, you know. Can you handle that?

Yes, I’ll get on it.

Don’t let me down, MacGregor.

No, Don, I won’t.

Now, look, this other thing, MacGregor, Mr. Snider paused to find just the right words. Your behavior has been mighty odd this week. You’re not up to snuff on the dress code. The code is very clear on appropriate office attire. Where’s your tie today?

I have two scarves on.

Yes, I see that. You must be miserable in that sweater. Don’t you know it’s August? You look like you just came out of the pool.

The sweat trickling down tickled Samuel’s face, and trying to wipe it clear casually, he could tell his hair was saturated. He stared at the moisture on his fingers.

This is not acceptable attire, MacGregor. Scarves do not take the place of ties. I don’t want to have to write a memo about this. You don’t want a memo in your permanent file.

No, Don.

All right then. Get that report ready for me, then go home and change into something appropriate on your lunch break.

Yes, I’ll do that.

When Samuel did get home, he found the structure set over his heart had grown to almost the size of a shoebox. He desperately stretched his sweater pulling it off, and fell dizzy and exhausted to his bed, as though he’d just finished a wrestling match. As the blood returned to his head, and he lay there panting, a strange warmth seeped into his chest, and he smiled at the ceiling, imagining himself lying there for years like Michelangelo, stiff and aching. The idea of suffering for beauty filled him with a tranquility against his straining for explanation. Whatever he knew about what had happened to him, however he could rationalize it, would not change its reality and how it had taken over his life. His wonderings again returned to the people from the other night – did they have boxes within them, beneath their robes that flowed to the ground? – he couldn’t remember. Surely he would have noticed, but then, nobody had noticed his. Was this really his secret, or did it belong to many?

The clock marked its insistent passage of time, and Samuel realized he was supposed to return to work. He lifted himself to his feet, his momentum very nearly throwing him forward to the floor; only by catching onto the dresser did he save himself. It felt like cast iron; even from his overhead perspective, the mass shocked him, the size of a basic tackle box now, increasing at an alarming rate. The weight hung upon him like responsibility, and he hoisted himself supporting the swelling with both hands as though he were pregnant. In the mirror he had to laugh, in a resigned way, shaking his head at the absurd calamity visited upon him – there was not a single