Deadlines: An Anthology of Horror and Dark Fiction

By D. Alexander Ward, Garry Bushell, Ed Lynskey and 2 more

Deadlines is a nightmarish excursion into fear featuring stories from 20 up-and-coming authors of horror and dark fiction. From serial killers to zombies, from sinister dolls to malicious cats, this collection is a veritable a-z of evil and a deadly trip down the darkside of human nature.

Sonar4 Publications Review:
Deadlines has some of the scariest stories wrapped together in one convenient package. Stories that grab a hold of your breath refusing to give it back until you turn the next page. Authors such as Michael A. Kechula, Shaun Ryan are just two of the twenty that appear with their gruesome, thrilling and amazing stories in this Anthology.

Contents:

BRUTAL ASSAULT by Garry Bushell
THE COWBIRDS NEST by Clinton A. Harris
MADONNA OF THE BLACK MOUNTAIN by Tessa Johnstone
STRIPTEASE ON MOUNT RUSHMORE by Ed Lynskey
MYSTERIO AND GALATEA by Michael A. Kechula
HARRY by Doug Murano
IN YOUR WARM AND DARKENED GRAVE by Frank Zafiro
GIRL IN THE TUB by Cameron L. Mitchell
FRAZZLED by J.R.
THE GIFT OF THE BONEFLOWER by D. Alexander Ward
AS CLOSE AS IT GETS by Karina Berg Johansson
GOOD BOYS by Shaun Ryan
SILENCE by Christopher Allan Death
VISITING HOUR by Michael Pelc
THE DEATH OF LESTER WILLIAMS by Ty Johnston
LA NUIT DU LA CHAT NOIR by Nora B. Peevy
WHITE by David Richards
STREET WALKING by Jason Jeffery
WILL'S LITTLE BLACK FLOWER by Brent Meske
MALRATS by Walter Payne

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Room Press
• Release date: Aug 2, 2010
• ISBN: 9781393709091

Book preview

Deadlines: An Anthology of Horror and Dark Fiction

D. Alexander Ward et al.

Published by Red Room Press, 2010.

DEADLINES: ANTHOLOGY OF HORROR AND DARK FICTION

A RED ROOM PRESS BOOK

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

The stories in this anthology are works of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to an actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

Deadlines: An Anthology of Horror and Dark Fiction copyright © Red Room Press, 2008

“Brutal Assault” copyright © Garry Bushell, 2008

“The Cowbird’s Nest” copyright © Clinton A. Harris, 2007

“Madonna of the Black Mountain” copyright © Tessa Johnstone, 2007

“Striptease on Mount Rushmore” copyright © Ed Lynskey, 2006

“Mysterio and Galatea” copyright © Michael A. Kechula, 2006

“Harry” copyright © Doug Murano, 2008

“In Your Warm and Darkened Grave” copyright © Frank Scalise, 2007

“Girl in the Tub” copyright © Cameron L. Mitchell, 2008

“Frazzled” copyright © J.R., 2007

“The Gift of the Boneflower” copyright © D. Alexander Ward, 2006

“As Close as it Gets” copyright © Karina Berg Johansson, 2008

Good Boys copyright © Shaun Ryan, 2007

“Silence” copyright © Christopher Allan Death, 2008

“Visiting Hour” copyright © Michael Pelc, 2008

“The Death of Lester Williams” copyright © Ty Johnston, 2008

“La Nuit du la Chat Noir” copyright © Nora B. Peevy, 2008

“White” copyright © David Richards, 2008

“Street Walking” copyright © Jason Jeffery, 2008

“Will’s Little Black Flower” copyright © Brent Meske, 2006

“Malrats” copyright © Walter Payne, 2008

“Mysterio and Galatea” first appeared in Smoke and Mirrors, May 2006

“Frazzled” first appeared in The Harrow, January 2007

First Red Room Press ebook Edition, January, 2010

Red Room Press is an imprint of Comet Press

Visit us on the web at redroompress.com

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CONTENTS

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BRUTAL ASSAULT Garry Bushell

THE COWBIRD’S NEST Clinton A. Harris

MADONNA OF THE BLACK MOUNTAIN Tessa Johnstone

STRIPTEASE ON MOUNT RUSHMORE Ed Lynskey

MYSTERIO AND GALATEA Michael A. Kechula

HARRY Doug Murano

IN YOUR WARM AND DARKENED GRAVE Frank Zafiro

GIRL IN THE TUB Cameron L. Mitchell

FRAZZLED J.R.

THE GIFT OF THE BONEFLOWER D. Alexander Ward

AS CLOSE AS IT GETS Karina Berg Johansson

GOOD BOYS Shaun Ryan

SILENCE Christopher Allan Death

VISITING HOUR Michael Pelc

THE DEATH OF LESTER WILLIAMS Ty Johnston

LA NUIT DU LA CHAT NOIR Nora B. Peevy

WHITE David Richards

STREET WALKING Jason Jeffery

WILL’S LITTLE BLACK FLOWER Brent Meske

MALRATS Walter Payne

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

BRUTAL ASSAULT

Garry Bushell

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It was a day much like his ex-wife, thought Mick Neale, cold and over-cast; but now he was in the pub he felt a lot happier. He always did. Mick settled on his favourite bar stall, sipped his London Pride, winked at Thelma, and started assembling a roll-up.

“DAD!” A young boy’s voice disturbed the peace.

“Is that your Mark?” asked Thelma.

“Yeah,” Mick grunted. “It’ll wait.”

He picked up a discarded tabloid and flicked through the gossip disguised as news; another kiss and tell girl doing the dirty on an obscure TV soap star … tedious shit.

“DAD!” The boy again; more urgent now. His shout was followed by a girl’s scream. Mick threw down the paper and ran out of the Toad Rock Retreat. He could see the back of his son’s head up on the rocks.

“What is it?” Mick shouted. “This better be good, Marky.”

“It’s a body.”

“What?”

Mick clambered up the damp, slippery rock to where his ten-year-old son was perched, and eased the younger, crying girl to one side. Other kids and a few parents were drawn towards the commotion.

Mick looked to where Mark was pointing and sucked in his breath. It was a body all right. Face down, male, mixed race, young, slim, black hair, cheap clothes, old trainers.

Slowly he lowered himself down between the rocks. He started to take the man’s pulse and recoiled.

“What … who?” The girl’s mother had arrived, scarcely more collected than her daughter. “Has he slipped?” she said. “Here, pass him up, I’ll help.”

“No point, he’s dead.”

“How can you tell?”

Mick looked up at her.

“The bloody great bite mark in his neck’s a bit of a clue. His windpipe’s been bitten clean out.”

A couple of teenagers in Burberry caps leaned forward and started taking pictures with their mobile phones.

“For God’s sake,” Mick snapped. “Give the man some dignity. Make yourself useful with them things, call the cops.”

He stood up and studied the surrounding area. There were an awful lot of boot marks in the mud. DMs. He spotted something in the grass; a button. Mick flicked it over with his foot. It said Brutal Assault, the Ss were runic. Coincidence or sick joke?

“OK, everybody, steer clear of this area until the police arrive,” he shouted. He grabbed Mark by the arm and marched him back to the pub. A crowd had started to congregate at the foot of the rocks.

“Man wha’ happen?” said a pasty white teenager in an NWA t-shirt.

“It’s a body, like on Prime Suspect,” shouted Mark.

“Cool,” the boy replied.

When Tonbridge C.I.D. arrived the corpse had gone.

“It can’t have vanished in the thin air,” DI McCourt was saying.

“I’ve been here all the time, Charlie,” said Mick. “Noone’s been up there.”

“And the bite?”

“It was like a puma had got at him.”

“Half-chat you say?”

“He was mixed race, Chas. Don’t they do sensitivity training in Kent no more?”

McCourt frowned. Mick picked up on his unease.

“This isn’t the first is it mate?”

“Two black men, three pikies and a Paki … stani. All apparently killed by bite wounds. And all of the bodies were gone by the time we got there. Nothing left but blood and slime.” Charlie looked at his old colleague. “We’ve kept it out the press, Mick, but …”

“There are a lot of witnesses.”

“Yeah. It’ll get out soon and I’m fucking baffled.”

It was 9 pm by the time Mick had got back from dropping Mark off with “the enemy”, his ex-wife Clarissa. He poured himself a single malt, fired up his lap-top and googled Brutal Assault. No surprise. They were an obscure neo-Nazi band from South West London. Scum. Mick wasn’t particularly political, but he hated Nazis, especially Nazi skinheads. Morons. They knew nothing about their own heritage. Mick had been a Mod in ’79 but bluebeat had pride of place in his vinyl and CD collections along with Motown and Stax. (No surrender to the iPod in the Neale household.)

He’d quit the Force in 2005, the day after his Lottery win, and did freelance P.I. work to keep the boredom at bay. Only Mark kept him in the country. As soon as the boy was 15, Mick was uprooting to the Costa Blanca.

He lit up a roll-up. If there was a gang of racist boneheads at large he wanted to be the man who stuck them inside. There was nothing else for it; he’d have to ring Ginny.

Virginia Slattery was a freelance rock photographer and a skinhead herself, a sensible one with a Ska collection that rivalled his own. She was also Mick’s ex. He dialled her number gingerly.

“Ginny …”

“Fuck off Mick. What is it this time, pissed again and flicking through yer little black book?”

That voice! Like honey oozing on cream. Even when she was frosty, just hearing it made him hard.

“I wish. Listen, babe, this isn’t a social call.”

“Don’t call me babe.”

He filled her in about the attacks, not mentioning the murders. “So I wondered if you’d heard of any neo-Nazi activity in the area?”

“I’ve heard talk of a little mob of arseholes who get down the George in Paddock Wood. Some C18 splinter group, mostly Poles and kids. The new pub-owner is in on it, older bloke in his forties called Kol with a K. Koli’s his name, I think he’s Scandinavian. He’s got a few bob. He’s been putting on Blood and Honour gigs. Some of the lads have been talking about paying them a visit with the baseball bats.”

“Yeah? Well tell ’em not to. Do these creeps know you?”

“No.”

“Good. Tomorrow night, you and me are going down there.”

“Is this a date?”

“No. It’s a recce. Don’t wear any SHARP badges. Tomorrow we’re BNP, OK? I’m shaving me head.”

“Is it worth it, Kojak?”

“Ha ha. Pick you up at 8.”

“Sounds like a date to me.”

“Bye.”

The pub was every bit as grim and time-locked as he’d imagined it. An old man’s public bar with a dull and dusty function room on the side where the Kameraden partied. There were two dozen of them, unshaven and heavily tattooed; the usual shifty losers. And the males were just as bad. An aging three piece band played tuneless heavy metal with hollered terrace choruses. By the time the evening had finished Mick had befriended Den, a weasel-faced dustman with ‘cut here’ tattooed on his neck, and learnt who was who. Turned out two of the skins were public schoolboys slumming it, “egg’eads” according to Den. But the only one of interest was Kol, a charismatic six footer. He had an aristocratic bearing and eyes of piercing blue; eyes that made the Med look murky. He’d made a short speech before the gig in an accent Mick couldn’t place, and then he left.

Back at home, Mick poured Ginny a glass of Fleurie. The air-con was out and the flat was hot, far too hot, but on the plus side, she’d unbuttoned her blouse. Mark had been going through Mick’s photos and left one of his Mum by the PC. Ginny studied it with disdain. “Can you smell mint sauce?” she said.

“Eh?”

“To go with this mutton …”

Mick ignored her and checked his phone messages. McCourt had called. There had been another attack, and another missing corpse.

“But we were with them all night,” said Ginny. “So you must be barking up the wrong tree.”

“Maybe. Except, Kol went AWOL for most of the night.”

“So what do we do?”

“Surveillance. Wherever he goes, we follow.”

“So we’re a team?”

“We are.”

“Am I staying the night, partner?”

He kissed her on the nose. “It’d be a shame not to.”

They moved through to the bedroom. He set the alarm for 3am.

“Not still the night time fag break? You need help for that addiction, mister.”

“You know how cranky I get if I go the night without a ciggy, Gin.” He smiled. “But I have got another addiction you can help me with …”

For the next three nights they staked out the George. Kol never left the pub, and there were no more murders. On the fourth night they got lucky. Kol and a young skin, one of the posh boys, left at nightfall. Mick trailed them to the Toad Rock caves and followed on foot as they walked to a clearing in the woods. Ten hooded men were waiting for them. Two stepped forward and led the skinhead to a stone table. They laid him on it and strapped him down.

“It’s like something out of a crap Frat House initiation ceremony,” muttered Mick, lighting up.

Koli addressed the kid. “You are the bravest of the brave,” he said grandly. “You are one of the chosen few. Today, this night, you will become unique, beyond human.”

He produced something from his jacket pocket.

“Hypodermic,” said Ginny, watching the scene through her telephoto lens. The men stood forward and removed their masks.

“What the fu …?”

“They’re like … zombies.”

“Zombie fuckin’ Skinheads.”

“Shit.”

“OK, where are the cameras, this has to be Punk’d, right?”

The skinhead screamed. “Die like a man!” snapped Kol. “Die so you can be reborn.”

He injected the terrified kid. His body began to writhe and twist on the table, the straps eating in to his wrists, before he shuddered to an abrupt stop.

“Dead?” whispered Ginny.

“Not quite.”

The young skinhead was changing. His flesh was rotting but it grew back, the skin coarser, the eyes vacant, and the body larger, stronger … until he snapped his restraints and stood erect. The process took about five minutes.

Kol hugged him. “My son, I am proud of you. You are hungry, yes?”

The zombie-skin grunted.

“Release the sub-human,” Kol commanded. “He must be blooded.”

A tall zombie marched stiffly into a near-by opening in the rocks and emerged with a terrified black woman on a leash. He tore off the collar with one hand and she started running, straight towards Mick and Ginny, with the zombie-skin lurching after her.

Mick Neale didn’t hesitate. Sticking out his boot, he tripped her pursuer and jabbed his cigarette hard into his face.

They managed to reach the car ahead of the mob, picking up the shaken woman on the road, and dropping her off outside Maidstone hospital accident and emergency unit.

She was incapable of speech and remembered nothing.

Back home, Mick poured two large measures of raspberry vodka and lit a joint.

“So do we tell Charlie McCourt?” asked Ginny.

“Tell him what? That we saw zombies? He’ll think we’ve been tripping.”

“We should …”

“Yeah, but let’s go back in daylight and have a nose around first.”

“But …”

He gripped her arm. “Give me one day, Gin.”

“K.”

“I’ll bring my Beretta just in case.”

“And put another call in to the air con guy.”

“Yeah.”

That night, they went to bed together but they didn’t make love and neither of them slept.

It was 8 pm when they returned to Toad Rock. Still light. The rain had driven away the urchins. Mick led the way through the woods to the clearing. There was no sound except the rain and their footsteps, and no sign of last night’s blood-chilling ritual. Even the stone table had gone, and there was no way that had been washed away. Whoever these pricks were, they were organised, he thought.

Ginny took pictures of the rock face. Mick studied the graffiti. Amidst the usual pledges of devotion to girls, football teams and oi-oi punk rock, there was a small area covered in runes. He brushed away the water, but he could make no sense of it. Mick turned away, but then something, maybe some old cop instinct, made him turn back. That stone table was too heavy to have gone far without a crane. Perhaps the rocks weren’t all they seemed. He took out his gun and started tapping around the runes with the handle. On the seventh tap, the rock started to vibrate. A narrow hidden entrance opened slowly.

Motioning for Ginny to keep quiet, Mick advanced into the crevice.

It was cold and dank and reeked like a fisherman’s nets. Everywhere was bathed in dim electric light. The man-made passage led deep into the rocks. He inched his way along, with Ginny behind him. The passage turned and opened up. Mick gasped. Around the corner was a cell full of people: two Asian girls, a Chinese man, a Turk, and an Arab couple.

“Help us,” pleaded the Turk. The girls started screaming.

“Shhh,” snapped Mick. “Keep it down, for Chrissakes.”

The cell had a solid padlock.

“Stand well back, I’m gonna shoot this off.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, do you Michael?”

Mick span round to find Kol with Ginny. He had her in a headlock with his left arm. His right hand held a needle. Two skinheads loomed behind him.

“Put the gun down Mr. Neale or your pretty friend will be going on a one-way trip.”

Mick did as he was told.

“Now put your hands on your head and back off.” Again Mick complied.

The skins opened the cell and pushed Ginny in. Kol produced what looked like a fancy TV remote and aimed it at the section of wall behind Mick. It opened up.

“My office, Michael, now,” he commanded.

Mick stumbled in, glancing around for a makeshift weapon. There were some odd Viking-style figures on the wall but other than that all he could see was a wooden desk, two chairs, a mess of paperwork over the floor and a shed-load of complex machinery. The back wall was another cell housing the hoard of Zombie-Skins who swayed blankly to hypnotic electro-synth music, their dilated pupils gleaming in the dark like rats’ eyes.

“My babies, aren’t they glorious?” said Koli.

“What the fuck is this?”

“A new world order, my friend. Aren’t you going to ask how I knew who you were?”

“You took my picture off the pub’s CCTV cameras, it wouldn’t take Lex Luthor to ID me.”

“Mr. Neale, I’m disappointed you think me so mundane … I could make you as immortal as I am, you know. One little squirt of this”—he held the needle aloft —“and you will become beyond human.”

“What, like those poor saps?”

“Those ‘saps’ are the spearhead of a new model army who will liberate Gaia by wiping the human virus off the face of the planet.”

“Sorry, you’ll have to speak English, pal.”

“Your species has become an infection, Mr Neale, a planetary malady. Earth is threatened by a plague of people.”

“And you …”

“We are going to eradicate the