Bards and Sages Quarterly (April 2019)

By Andrew Knighton, Chris Dean and Dawn Bonanno

For over ten years, The Bards and Sages Quarterly has provided fans of speculative fiction with a unique mix of tales from both new and established authors. With each issue, we strive to introduce readers to exciting and entertaining voices in the horror, science fiction, and fantasy genres. In this issue, stories by Jenny Swisher, Daniel Stride, Carrie Vaccaro Nelkin, Dana Beehr, Dawn Hebein, Andrew Knighton, Chris Dean, August von Orth, Jeff Metzler, William Fischer, Daniel Galef, Steve DuBois, Dylan M. Kiely, and P.G. Streeter.

In Passages, a head injury propels a young man into a bizarre world that intersects life and death. 

In The Other Road, a woman with psychic powers meets a man from her past to whom she once provided guidance.

In Gone fishing, an attempt to build a hydroelectric project in Turkey is complicated by local concerns over escaping demons.

These stories and more in this issue.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bards and Sages Publishing
• Release date: Apr 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386291916

Andrew Knighton

Andrew Knighton is a freelance writer and an author of science fiction, fantasy, and steampunk stories. He lives in Yorkshire with his cat, his computer, and a big pile of books.

Book preview

Passage

by Carrie Vaccaro Nelkin

THE PARK HAS BEEN VERY active this week with the pop pop pop of handguns, usually in the distance, the reports snapping into the night air. It’s been a long time since I’ve flinched. The sounds have become linked to home, like the smell of coffee or the peculiar hiss of the baseboard heaters every morning in winter.

My dog Arlen used to stare in the direction of the shots. Arlen’s a mutt, a short-hair terrier something-or-other with a black coat, grey muzzle, and stand-up ears that flop at the tips. I got him three years ago, after Jenny left. He usually doesn’t react to the shots anymore, but when they erupt this evening just outside the apartment—six, seven, eight in quick succession—his legs lock, and he pitches several short barks before backing up and scrambling behind the sofa. Another volley outside, not the flare of far-away target practice but a rending of air into havoc.

Arlen reappears, weaving around my legs. I trip over him and slam the side of my head on the large ceramic planter by the nearest window just as a bullet cracks through the glass. A starburst opens behind my eyes, but it’s only when I hear Eric screaming Richie! that I think I’ve been hit.

I OPEN MY EYES TO THE rough brush of something across my cheek. Arlen’s tongue drags over my nose and he whimpers with excitement when he sees me coming too. As I struggle to sit up, he rises on his hind legs and covers me with kisses, tough little paws digging into my chest and then my thigh as he slumps to a seated position with his tail still thumping. He yawns happily, gets up again, and sticks his nose into my sweater.

I’m outdoors, near a body of water, on a stretch of coast that’s less sand than gritty dirt. Surely, I’m dreaming. I must be in my misshapen cocoon of a bed, covers wrapped up to my chin. Or I’m in the hospital hooked up to tubes, a bullet lodged near a vital organ. Nothing hurts, and Arlen is solid and real in my arms, but I don’t know if that means I’m actually conscious. I pat the pockets of my jeans: no cell phone or wallet. It’s impossible, but here I am, and I get up because what else is there to do.

The lake is not large; I can see its circumference through the slight haze, outlining a rough turquoise oval with russet patches in the depths. Across from us is a hill, dry and bedraggled, that continues indefinitely on either side, as though we’re at a ridge or fold in the earth. Arlen whines at my feet, then changes to the low, grating rasp that makes him sound like something out of an exorcism. He looks at me expectantly, and I scoop him up and hold him close. He quiets down.

I can give you passage.

I whirl at the voice behind me, stumbling in my haste to back away when I see the speaker. One eye in the creased face is wide and milky, the skin around it pulled by a drying secretion. The place where the other eye should be is puckered, collapsed, as if the bones of brow and cheek have moved closer together, intensifying the asymmetry of having a single eye. Arlen stares too, vibrating with a barely audible growl, huddling against me even as he signals his warning.

I can give you passage, the woman says again. The wild black hair and disfigured features could belong to either sex; the broad body is shapeless under many dark rags. But the voice is female, and old. Answer me! Are you deaf and dumb?

Compelled by the nearness of her body and a warmth I can almost smell, I’m fixed to the ground, like someone only seconds from the train bearing down on him. "What do you mean by passage?" I say.

She seems surprised, her expression unchanged but her shoulders straightening. A young man. I sensed a much older presence. What is the animal with you?

I clutch Arlen closer. Dog.

She pauses, her nearly toothless mouth working the space around the few uneven stumps. Are you looking to go in?

In where?

One hand rises out of the voluminous garments and points across the lake.

Where are we? I ask.

The unmoored and the dead walk the same plain. Her head wobbles as if palsied. Didn’t your grandmother ever tell you that?

No. I had only my father, and now he’s gone.

Doesn’t matter. Her expression remains neutral. I can let you in.

Am I dead? The question escapes me before I can assess its prudence.

If you were, you wouldn’t need me.

And who are you?

She stiffens, turning her head up and away from the lake, her one eye panning the landscape blindly as if she hears something. Make up your mind, boy. Come with me or go, quickly.

I take a few steps back. We’re going.

Her face crumples into a sly grin. Better watch out for them, then. You’ll be back.

I walk away with Arlen still in my arms. Then her words register, and I start running. He struggles to jump down, and I let him so we can both run faster. I don’t know what we’re fleeing, but the inky fear billowing in me lightens my feet and soon we’re over a crest that descends to a plain filled with goldenrod, unexpectedly bright under the thickening clouds.

RICHIE?

A blast of cold air hits me, packing pain that centers in my nose but branches down my cheek and up my temple. I’m on the living room floor, trembling.

Eric hovers over me. Can you talk?

I swallow something thick, and mumble without words, glad to have a roommate now despite all the times I’ve wished I could afford to live alone.

Should I call 911? His voice is carefully modulated but his face is a map of panic. Around the room the winking lights of a police car or emergency vehicle loop from left to right and back again.

Am I shot? My whisper, hoarse and grainy, settles into the air unnaturally. The lights circling the walls make me dizzy. I close my eyes, but the dizziness stays, so I reopen them.

No, but you hit your head pretty bad.

Did it stop?

You mean the shooting? Yes. The police are out there now. He leans forward intently, his face wavering before me. I’ll get help.

No. I’m okay. Where’s Arlen?

It’s the way he flicks his eyes to the left with a tic of the head. I try to sit up but feel a swirl of nausea. He must be in the other room, Eric says.

He reaches for a pillow on the sofa and slides it under my head. Now that he no longer blocks my peripheral vision, it catches something on the floor nearby, and I don’t want to believe it. The crumpled black shape gives truth to my foreboding.

Arlen.

AS I SWIM UP FROM DARKNESS into the goldenrod, I heave a dry sob. It’s that moment when you realize all has changed, and as bewildered as I am to be in a vast field buzzing with thousands of bees, I’m more undone at the death of my dog. How I know he’s dead and not just injured, I’m not sure, but the knowledge of it is bitter and absolute.

I’m standing in a yellow, undulating ocean of flowers tall enough to tickle my chin and reeds that sway gently from the bees’ ministrations. The bees tend to their business and leave me alone as I wade toward a clearing. And then I hear it, a whuff like a small chortle, a close-mouthed spontaneous note of excitement, and I think, Why not? He was here with me before.

Arlen? I enter the clearing.

He bursts through the remaining layer of plants and jumps up to put his paws on my shoulders as I crouch to hug him. The knowledge that he’s actually dead makes me cling to him with my face buried behind his ear, and he lets me for a long time. I smell the faint chocolate odor that tells me he’ll soon need a bath, and as I pull back to look at him, he gazes at me with an expression that needs no explanation. I kiss him roughly on the head.

For a while I do nothing but scratch the belly, he offers me. Then, Come on, boy, let’s see where we are.

The clearing is no more than the start of a path that’s just matted grass and maltreated soil. Gradually the path widens, swinging to the edge of the field, where the goldenrod rises on one side and a wooded area begins on the other. Arlen bounds ahead, only to run back to me as if to rush me along.

We walk a while, acutely aware of the orgy of pollination quivering through the flowers. The smell of dry grass and something vaguely like low tide simmers in the sunlight. I look down at my dog, whom I fed with an eye dropper when he was a puppy too young and runty to know how to eat on his own yet, and I’m happy in this illusion the brain is granting me.

The wooded area is soon replaced by marshland full of reeds that stretch even higher than the goldenrod. The funky odor that’s part mud, part rotten fish, intensifies.

And then I see it.

The first one.

Standing upright less than fifty feet away among the blanched stalks, it has the body of a man and the head of an emaciated lion, cheeks hollowed under glittering eyes that pin me as I halt in mid-step. Arlen’s dark, resonant snarl breaks my momentary paralysis and I swoop to pick him up and run back in the other direction just as the second one emerges from the goldenrod, eyes pulled tight in the wrinkled amber of its face. I notice the outline of ribs in its chest, each one a shadowed stripe. I weave away from it and stumble over the dirt path, Arlen clutched tightly. They’re behind me, very close, and I dive into the goldenrod just as Arlen leaps out of my arms and into the droning shimmer of tangled stems.

I crash through after him, upsetting the bees, their heavy bodies catapulting every which way. I’ve lost Arlen. Behind me the whipping and breaking of stems stop suddenly, and I hear a sound that cuts my heart: a high-pitched squeal, the whine of vivisection, then nothing. I wait for a second, then jump up and scream, I’ll kill you!

I’M STILL SCREAMING when a hand yanks fiercely at the cargo loop on my jeans. I feel the pants slip lower on my hips and automatically pull them up as the brownstones across the street ripple into view under the street light.

What the hell is wrong with you? The voice belongs to Carissa. I’m standing on her front stoop. Eric is seated on my right, Carissa on my left. She stubs out a cigarette and flings it onto the sidewalk.

It’s the bump on the head, Eric says. I told him he should see a doctor.

Carissa gets up, wipes her hands on her army fatigues, and lumbers down the steps in her motorcycle boots. From the back she looks twenty years younger. From the front she looks like she’s trying too hard. She turns and screws her face at me. You need help. And I don’t mean just because you hit your head. Listen to Eric. Then she enters the door to her basement apartment.

I glance at Eric, who’s being careful not to meet my eyes. My nose feels full, encrusted inside, and I’m not getting much air. I touch the bridge and experience a deep throb at the gentle probe. Then I glance at my watch, which used to be my father’s and now spends every moment of every day in my pants pocket. It’s 8 p.m.

What’s going on? I ask.

What do you mean?

What day is it?

Eric’s gaze slants at me sideways. Are you serious?

Yes.

You really don’t know?

I shake my head but the vague pain in it stops me.

Crap. Eric whistles through his teeth. It’s Monday. Tell me you’re shitting me.

My breath comes quickly. No, I’m not. I don’t know how I got here. My voice rises. I don’t remember getting here.

Easy. Eric grabs my arm, letting go when I fling it aside and get up. Where you going?

Home, I say. I’m shaking inside.

He follows me down the steps. I’ll walk you.

No! I move away. No. You need to get going to that thing you’re going to. Whatever it is.

But you remember that?

I think. I remember something but don’t know what.

Eric’s serious brown eyes examine me as I turn away. Carissa’s right, you know.

She should mind her own business.

When was the last time you looked for work? Or showered, for God’s sake? You talk about your old girlfriend like she dumped you last week. And now— now, since your father—

I wave him off and start walking. He’s still watching a moment later.

The uneven pavement and the jangle of traffic on the avenue are less real than the sweet dry smell of soil and the prickle of goldenrod. Only minutes ago, my dog was killed for the second time. Adopting him saved my sanity after Jenny walked out. I hunch into my jacket and try to keep my eyes down. The few people I pass stare at me as if I carry a terrible aura. In the window of a small electronics store the sidewalk camera and TV monitor show my bruised face. I stop and look, wondering where I’ve been the past couple of days, afraid even to ask the question.

A block from home I see a young kid in the middle of the sidewalk, picking papers up off the ground and trying vainly to keep them in his arms. It’s my next-door neighbor.

Ravi, what’s wrong? I bend down and help him.

Someone stole my knapsack. He hitches with suppressed sobs.

You mean—just now?

Ravi nods, swiping at his face under the glasses. He went into the park.

You okay?

He nods again. Took my money. His voice