Horror Library, Volume 6

By Dark Moon Books

The +Horror Library+ anthologies are internationally praised as a groundbreaking source of contemporary horror short fiction stories--relevant to the moment and stunning in impact--from leading authors of the macabr

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dark Moon Books
• Release date: Jul 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781949491364

Book preview

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

by Eric J. Guignard

I’VE FINALLY FOUND YOU

by Garrett Quinn

CARTAGENA HOTEL

by Jackson Kuhl

THE NIGHT TRUCK

by Stephanie Bedwell-Grime

IL MOSTRO

by Connor de Bruler

OLDSTONE GARDENS

by Tom Johnstone

THE PLUMBER

by Bentley Little

THE CREEK KEEPERS’ LODGE

by Kathryn E. McGee

SNOWFATHER

by Josh Rountree

FIVE POINTED SPELL

by Jeffrey Ford

THE RED-EYE TO BOSTON

by John M. Floyd

ELSA AND I

by Raymond Little

MOTHER’S MOUTH, FULL OF DIRT

by Rebecca J. Allred

D.U.I.

by Darren O. Godfrey

PREDESTINATION’S A BITCH

by Sean Eads

CASUALTY OF PEACE

by David Tallerman

THE STARRY CROWN

by Marc E. Fitch

INSTANT MESSAGING

by Vitor Abdala

THE H TRAIN

by JG Faherty

THE GAFF

by Dean H. Wild

KALU KUMARAYA

by Jayani C. Senanayake

WE WERE MONSTERS

by Lucas Pederson

THE NIGHT CRIER

by C. Michael Cook

WAITING FOR MRS. HEMLEY

by Thomas P. Balázs

THE RIDE

by Jay Caselberg

OLD HAG

by Ahna Wayne Aposhian

HEAR THE EAGLE SCREAM

by Edward M. Erdelac

BETTER YOU BELIEVE

by Carole Johnstone

EDITOR’S REQUEST

ABOUT THE EDITOR

INTRODUCTION

by Eric J. Guignard

---

GREETINGS, MOST ESTEEMED READER, AND please come on in. Welcome to the sixth volume of the +Horror Library+ series!

Although ongoing since 2006, this is the first series volume that I have edited, taking over from former editor and co-founder, R.J. Cavender, who’d helmed all previous books. Having been a contributor myself (Volume 5 and Best Of), it was certainly an honor to be asked unexpectedly to step in as the new editor based on my previous editing and publishing work on other anthologies.

So, needless to say, I hope you’ll find I’ve done my part in carrying on the grand tradition of placing before you unique and high-quality horror tales. The process was both a labor and a love, and a much greater undertaking than I ever expected.

Between May and November of 2016, I logged, read, and notated nearly 1,100 original submissions (1,095 to be exact) from authors around the world, and at every level of publishing or career success, whether an unpublished novice or a New York Times bestselling professional.

From that massive slush mountain, I whittled away and selected the enclosed twenty-seven tales. Some are darker than others, stranger than others, more literary, exciting, or impactful than others, but each is a unique voice with a damned good story to share, and together the assembled cross the broad spectrum of horror short fiction.

Whether containing monsters of war-ravaged winter, vengeful ghosts of the dead, murderers lurking in your shadow, or supernatural rites of diabolism, these stories were compiled to evoke emotion, share wonder, incite inspiration, and provoke more than a few grins and gasps. In that, I hope I’ve succeeded.

And I hope you’ll come back for more.

Midnight cheers,

Signature

Eric J. Guignard

Chino Hills, California

December 20, 2016

I’VE FINALLY FOUND YOU

by Garrett Quinn

---

CHILDHOOD GHOSTS HAVE a way of coming back, perhaps sooner rather than later, or perhaps they never leave at all, but linger, hovering in the background of life, in our memories, in our choices. Con knows this, is dealing with it, even when it doesn’t fit into the Stages of Grief as taught by his therapist; for his mother is dead, but she’s not entirely gone either. I’ve Finally Found You is a coming-to-terms tale, though we wonder, exactly, who has found who?

This is also Garrett Quinn’s first published horror story, and if he continues churning out tales as gritty and affecting as the one following, we’re sure to be seeing a lot more of him very soon.

—EDITORIAL NOTES, ERIC J. GUIGNARD

---

CON HATES HIS MOTHER FOR dying—always has. He hates her because she was drunk, because she’d steered her

eighteen-wheeler through the guardrail and off the cliff, excising herself from his life swiftly and efficiently. He hates her because he has recurring nightmares where he watches the headlights float through the night, watches the underbelly of the cab, watches the tires sag as the suspension gives.

He tightens his grip on the sledgehammer, stares up four stories to his old bedroom. It’s night, late summer. He thinks surely his therapist would have something to say about this, some far-fetched analysis. Con could see it now: the Stages of Grief chart, the one with the man climbing the rock face, raising his arms triumphantly at the top, could see the letters etched into the stone near the bottom, A-N-G-E-R.

You think anyone’s inside? he says to Frankie. Hobos? Addicts?

The windows of the apartment building are boarded over, the bricks faded to the red of dry blood.

Frankie’s clove crackles. She tilts her head back, exhales blue smoke toward the streetlight. Looks like the kind of place you’d find a dead body to me.

Con thinks how she hasn’t changed much over the past ten years. Only now her skin is etched with ink. She’d shown him the ocean scene covering her back when they met earlier, had simply disrobed as if Con were an old lover rather than a childhood friend. Con had gone hot in the face, looked away.

He shoulders the sledgehammer and marches into the overgrown weeds, and a torrent of memories washes over him: his CB radio, the sound of his father sobbing in the living room, the taste of ham slices dipped in mustard. He is honest: I’m scared.

You’re not supposed to say things like that—according to the good book, she says from behind. He knows she’s referring to The Atheist’s Guide to Spirituality rather than the Bible.

I don’t mean for squatters. I mean— he pauses, unsure of how honest he can be—should be—with her. He would’ve told her anything back then, but he might never see her again after tonight, after he closes this chapter of his life. He wants to say, I’m scared of everything coming back, of reliving it—of seeing her all over again.

Well? Frankie says.

He shrugs. I don’t know.

He mounts the front concrete steps, places his hand against the warped plywood covering the glass doors. The musty scent of the lobby returns to him. From far away comes something that sounds like a gunshot. His home city, Manchester, New Hampshire, has gone all to hell over the past decade. It’s inundated with drugs now, and everything that comes with them. The blocks surrounding his childhood apartment are vacant, covered in trash, the skeletons of old cars. He feels uneasy here, unwelcome, imagines having to use the sledgehammer in a way it wasn’t intended.

You know, if you weren’t such a pussy, you might have a girlfriend now—maybe even a wife, Frankie says.

Con opens his mouth to speak, to mention her tattoos, her black lipstick—anything. But it hurts. It hurts because he lives alone, trapped in the past. It hurts because he works at the dump, dismantling electronics, a twisted purgatory for his tech-obsessed childhood. He raises the hammer, takes a breath—smells the crisp October night, the sweet hint of clove—and brings it down. Wood cracks, splinters, opening a black hole that inhales him, brings him back to summer, 1998.

***

AN OFFICER BROUGHT the CB radio to their apartment shortly after the wake. Con had watched the conversation from his bedroom doorway, his father stiff, nervous, the officer hunched. I thought it’d make a good gift for a thirteen-year-old, he’d said, holding the radio out as an offering. He glanced at Con, and quietly added, It was in her truck that night.

More for his father than for himself, Con smiled and took the radio into his bedroom. He placed it on the floor. It was the size and shape of a shoebox, clunky and primitive compared to his Game Boy. But when he powered it on and the front panel glowed green, he knew he’d found an escape. It didn’t have to be hers anymore, he told himself. He even talked to the counselor about the radio this way—as if it’d simply been his all along.

He didn’t know at first—wouldn’t admit—he was searching for his mother’s voice. Each night, after his father left for work, picking locks around Manchester for helpless people, Con locked himself in his bedroom with the CB, sat cross-legged on the carpet, and scanned each frequency, waiting to hear what he unconsciously wanted to hear.

At the beginning of summer vacation, the summer before Con and Frankie began high school, Con told her about the radio. They were sitting behind the gas station, throwing rocks at empty bottles.

You know, I heard a story about a guy in Wyoming, a hiker. His wife got lost in the woods, never found, blah-blah-blah, Frankie said and turned, waved her hand, as if the details were inconsequential. Anyway, he’d wake up at night hearing something. She paused, side-armed a pebble toward a bottle. It exploded. So, one night, he searched through his house, found one of their two walkie-talkies, turned it up. It was her voice coming through. What I’m saying is, you should be careful. With the CB, I mean.

That night, with a notepad and pen, Con checked every frequency on the radio. He skipped over the few channels where voices came through—truckers talking about diners, a woman giving traffic alerts, a boy, maybe his age, droning on about the Red Sox to seemingly no one—and zeroed in on the areas of white noise. He thought of them as the in-between frequencies, the white needle hovering between faded digits. He imagined other worlds in there, or in-between worlds, or worlds that held people like the hiker’s wife, people like his mother.

A week later, well past midnight, he heard the knocking, faint, hidden beneath a layer of fuzz. He jotted down the frequency in his notepad: 13.3 . . . knocking. He turned the volume up, cocked his head. The noise was sporadic like the rattling of a wind chime. He switched frequencies, leaned back, and let the buzz wash over him. The moon cut a swath of white across his ceiling.

Then it came again, louder. He leaned up, bit his lip, looked at the display: 17.5. He tuned it lower, to single digits, wondered if the radio was broken, some piece inside cracked or unhinged from the crash. The image came to him then, suddenly, flashing through his mind, frightening him—his mom tuning the radio, oblivious of the guardrail glinting in the headlights. He bit his lower lip, powered the radio down, and looked across the street to the neighboring apartment building, at Frankie’s bedroom window. It was black.

He stood, flicked his own bedroom light on-off, on-off, trying to get her attention. They communicated this way—Morse code—after Con had given her a sheet with the letters and corresponding dots and dashes. She had thought it was interesting, fun, like solving some riddle.

The knocking came again, still louder, and now almost a substantial thing, like somebody rapping at a door several rooms away. Con glanced at the dim radio. He flicked his bedroom light on. Dad? he thought. No, why would he knock? He opened his bedroom door and heard another knock, louder, closer. A wedge of light spilled into the living room. The ceiling fan beat dead air, the pull-string gently vacillating.

Hello? he said. Again, the knock, and now the front door actually seemed to quiver, bending inward. He cleared his throat. Yeah?

For a long minute, there was nothing. Then, as if in slow motion, he watched the doorknob twist, jangle, the door bulge in and out. He could hear the deadbolt, the one his father had installed, clacking against the wood. Only the first line of defense, he’d said, smiling. His father’s lips had been tight, his eyes focused, like when he told him about the accident, like he was scared of losing Con, too.

Con tried to swallow, but his throat was dry. He glanced back out his window toward Frankie’s apartment—still black—and thought of the stories he’d seen on the news: Girl, aged fourteen, never returned home from school, or Boy, twelve, taken from bedroom at night. He clenched his fists and tiptoed through the dark living room. The peephole on the door flashed. His stomach turned, and he wanted nothing more than for his father to be sitting at the kitchen table, toying with an old doorknob and a lock pick.

He placed his palms against the door as if feeling for something on the other side and whispered, Hello?

He leaned up, peered through the hole, saw nothing but the brown carpet, the wallpaper, peeling like dead skin—everything warped and flattened in the fish-eye glass. But he waited, because he sensed someone there, someone who’d been looking back.

Finally, he turned, jogged back to his bedroom, slammed the door behind him. His skin was sticky with sweat. Across the street, Frankie’s light was on, illuminating her silhouette. He put together the fewest possible words in his mind and signaled: C-B, then a long pause, K-N-O-C-K, pause, A-T, pause, D-O-O-R.

Con waited, sucked on his lower lip. What could she do? he realized, hopelessly. Her light flashed: M-O-M.

His finger rested on the light switch, unsure of how to respond, unsure if she were asking him or telling. Because he didn’t know what else to do, he reached for his pills on his bookcase, popped the top off, swallowed one dry. They’d been one of those adult decisions Con didn’t have any say in. He took several deep breaths, calmed himself. N-O, he signaled back, wanting to believe. Logically, he put things together in his mind, thought about telling his father, but realized what would happen. The radio would be taken, boxed, hidden in the closet with his mother’s other things that his father couldn’t bear to throw away. Maybe it was a neighbor, a wrong door. He turned the bottle over in his hand. Maybe it was another side effect of the pills, one the counselor rattled off without him understanding—the scientific word for hearing things tucked between dizziness and dry mouth.

He slid the radio under his bed.

***

CON WEDGES THE butt of the sledgehammer into the opening and pries the entire sheet of wood from the door. The building exhales, loosing mold, musk, the stench of living things. He clicks on his pocket light and passes the yellow beam over the wet carpet and the black mouth of the elevator.

Welcome home, I guess, Frankie says.

Con laughs, ducks through the door. Glass crunches beneath his boots. Not really how I remember it, he says. He pieces it all back together in his mind, as if looking through old photographs: the color of the carpet, the red glow of the Coke machine, the clanking hum of the elevator. This way, he says, stepping over puddles. With the toe of his boot, he pushes open the door to the stairwell.

After he helps Frankie through, he watches the flashlight beam shrink as the door closes, clicks shut. The hairs on his arms raise, and something inside him tells him not to go farther. Then Frankie’s voice echoes through the stairwell. What did you think of me? Back then?

With the light, Con checks each corner, each cluster of shadows. I thought you were the epitome of cool, he says, both sarcastic and truthful. He climbs three stairs, cranes his neck over the railing, and looks up.

Really? God, I feel bad for you. I was a nobody.

Con climbs the stairs to the first landing. A miasma of flies circles his head. Back then? he says. I was thirteen. You were everybody to me.

Frankie stops, her hand clutching the rusted rail, and Con thinks maybe she’s upset, maybe she’s offended. Then she doubles forward and laughs, the noise so loud in the stairwell that he worries anyone still inside the building will hear them, will come swarming like bugs to light. She looks up, her right hand propped on her thigh. You don’t still—do you?

He opens his mouth to answer, but stops. He wants to think about it, wants to be sure. He swats at the flies. No, he says, finally.

Geez. Buzzkill. Then, coolly, she says, What a place to fuck.

Con shakes his head, moves up the stairs. The idea repulses him, not because of her, not even because of the building, but because of the memories. He moves up to the second story. I want you to take this seriously.

I am. She places her hand on her chest, apologetically. It was only a joke.

Con forces a smile, wonders if he should have brought her at all. He swings the beam up to the third story. At the dim edge of the beam, he thinks he sees his mother, her wild hair.

***

CON STAYED AWAKE the next night, searching for the knocking.

This was worse than waiting for his mother’s voice, the constant tension of being at attention. When the sky turned orange the next morning, his nerves were shot, numb. And when he left his room, he felt like an interloper in his own home, like it was dangerous, unfamiliar, each dark corner hiding something sinister. By the time he’d gone two nights without sleep, he stopped taking the pills. Three nights—he was nauseous, delirious. His father asked him what was wrong. Nothing, Con had muttered, not feeling well. Then he went to the bathroom, stared at himself in the mirror. He touched the puffy black circles under his eyes. His skin was wet, pale, his lips colorless.

On the fourth night, he woke in the early morning gasping, reaching toward the ceiling. He couldn’t remember falling asleep. White noise hummed from the radio, so constant and droning that it seemed to fill his bedroom, to blur the corners, the walls. He sat up, leaned against the headboard. A dim green halo circled the CB on the floor. His bedroom door was cracked open, revealing a sliver of inky black.

From far away, echoing through the white noise, he heard a series of beeps. He rolled off his bed, played with the tuner until they came in clear. His heart skipped, thumped—Morse Code. He grabbed his notepad, jotted the frequency: 9.9, and then the message in code: . . . E-R. With the heels of his palms, he rubbed his eyes. The message came through again, and as he copied the first letter, he knew what it would say: A-N-G-E-R. The beeps repeated again, and again, and again, like a tape looping back on itself. Con could feel his blood hot beneath his skin. He leaned forward and thumbed the radio off. The room filled with ringing silence.

Earlier that day, his counselor had held up the Stages of Grief chart, pointed to it with his pen, had said, This is all about learning how to live with the ones we’ve lost. Con had stared at it, became so frustrated he had to excuse himself, lock himself in the bathroom and control his breathing. Why shouldn’t he be mad at her? Con had asked his counselor this before several times, but the counselor always seemed to have an answer for him, to respond in that soft-spoken voice, and he always talked about it that way—we, us—as if he had any idea what it was like to have your mom practically kill herself.

He dialed the radio to a different frequency, turned it back on. A woman’s voice listed off something that sounded like locations, longitudes, latitudes. He wondered if he would recognize his mother’s voice through the radio, all tinny and muffled.

Frankie’s light flickered, catching his attention. L-E-A-R-N-E-D, pause, M-O-R-E.

Con went to his light switch. H-U-H. The sudden presence of light burned his eyes.

D-E-A-D, long pause, W-I-F-E. Behind her silhouette, he could see the empty bedroom, her bedroom door, closed. Her light flickered, went out, came back on. F-O-U-N-D, pause, H-E-R, pause, W-A-L-K-I-E, pause, I-N, pause, A-T-T-I-C.

Con deciphered the words. Before he could stop himself, he looked up. There was a storage unit above him, he knew. The radio buzzed, and Con heard the beeps again. He translated: . . . R-W-A-L-K-I-E-I-N-A-T-T-I-C.

Con stared down at the radio, as if he expected it to move, to do anything other than emit noise. Quickly, he signaled back, S-T-O-P, short pause, S-O-M-E-O-N-E, pause, L-I-S-T-E-N-I-N-G.

He moved to his bedroom door, peered out into the darkness. The front door was framed in light from the hallway, and he waited for the knocking, expected it, because—he knew—this is how it would happen: he saw himself on the news, a childhood picture, one where he was smiling, one taken before the accident. He saw his father, sobbing, muttering things he was supposed to say into a microphone. Across the street, Frankie’s window went black. Then it came on, went out, came on, went out again, stayed out. Con realized he was holding his breath. His chest burned. Her light came on. Behind her, over her shoulder, the bedroom door was open. Her light went out. Con ran to his window, opened it, leaned out. Hot wind ruffled his hair.

Frankie! he screamed into the night. The beeps came through the radio, spelled out his name. Her light came on.

He covered his mouth, fell back. Behind Frankie, slouched in the corner, was his mother. His name came through the radio again, fast, barely discernible. His mother looked just as he imagined she would. Her hair was oily, wild. Her skin was translucent, so much so that her face looked like a skull. The radio screamed white noise, screamed his name, and her lips peeled back in a too-wide smile.

***

WHAT DID YOU think when I showed up at your door that night? Frankie says.

Con steps into the fourth floor hallway, his shoulder burning from the dead weight of the hammer. He aims the light into the corridor. It seems longer than he remembered. I was thankful for your company, your safety, he says. A bit nervous. Con aims the light toward an open door, peers into the black gap.

I’d thought it was all a ploy, she says. He feels her hand against his back, thinks maybe she’s scared, too. But when we were together, when she came, crawled out of the vent—fucking Christ.

Con moves forward, notices the silence, the lack of city sounds, like they’d entered a vacuum. She keeps her hand against his back, but it doesn’t comfort him as it would’ve back then. As he passes each open doorway, he holds his breath, shines the light inside, readies the sledgehammer. There are mattresses. There are hypodermic needles, spoons, old rags or t-shirts twisted and knotted. Beady eyes of rats glint in the light, stare back at him, unafraid. In one apartment, there’s nothing but a stool resting upright in the center of the floor. He pauses, aims the light up, finds the handles of kitchen knives pointing down like jagged teeth. Frankie balls his shirt into her fist. Quickly, he pulls the beam away, tries to keep it steady as he shivers. I wasn’t sure if she was real before you saw her, he says.

"Maybe she wasn’t—isn’t. Maybe she’s the reason I’m still so fucked up."

Con thinks the she Frankie is referring to is he, being himself. He stops in front of his old door, looks at the rusted brass numbers. Someone had removed the seven, but the faded image of it remains. He grasps the doorknob. What do you mean?

I’m twenty-three, Frankie says, and Con can tell she’s about to say more, about to pour everything out, as if she planned it all, has been waiting to say it for years. I’m twenty-three, a college dropout, unemployed. I’m covered in tattoos guilt-paid for by my mother. I have no dreams. I have no aspirations. I’m back near my old place, walking around a burnt-out apartment building with the only boy who ever paid any attention to me.

He releases the doorknob, turns. She looks so strikingly similar to her thirteen-year-old self—pixie cut, round face, painted-black lips—that he checks his own hands, wonders if, somehow, he is still thirteen also. Goes for me, too, he says. Then, not because he wants to, but because he thinks it has to happen, like he’s completing some ritual, closing some circle, he leans forward and kisses her. He can taste the clove, that summer night air.

He turns back before she can speak. The door opens easily, as if it had been waiting for him to come back all along. The inside of the living room is empty, gutted. He steps through the threshold and closes the door behind Frankie, and he is thirteen again, his anger raw, all the memories of his mother—alive, in the casket, dead—still vivid, unfiltered by everything between then and now. It comes to him, bluntly, stupidly: he would do anything to bring her back.

***

YOU KNOW, I MADE up the whole thing about the walkie-talkies, Frankie said, sitting at the foot of his bed, her knees knocking rhythmically together.

Con stared up at her from the floor. What . . .  he said, still struggling to put together sentences, still in disbelief by her, here, in his bedroom. He had talked to her at school, while walking home, at the gas station, but never somewhere so intimate.  . . . do you mean? he finished.

The bedsprings groaned as she stood, moved to his cabinet. I mean I made the whole thing up. There is no dead wife, no walkie-talkies. No one’s ever told me anything so interesting. She opened his drawer, sifted through his underwear as if looking through a stack of albums. I only wanted to scare you.

No—I saw her there, behind you in your room. Are you sure you didn’t see something, sense something, anything? he said, trying to picture his mother again, pale and slouched.

Nada, Frankie muttered. She held up his underwear, twirled it on her pointer. Nice.

Con blushed. Why?

She shrugged, looked out the window. I guess I’m sorry.

He stared at her back, wanted to stand up, to yell, to hit her. He closed his eyes, breathed in through his nose, out, the air whistling. He turned on the CB. She’ll come back, he said. He tuned it low, to 3.1, the station where he’d heard something that sounded like muffled breathing. There was nothing but white noise. He spun the knob, waited to hear the traffic announcements—nothing. There was no knocking, no beeps. He couldn’t even find the truckers again, or the traffic alerts. Stupid thing, he said. He lifted up the transmitter, unmuted it for the first time ever. Hello? I’m here.

Frankie sat in front of him. I didn’t know you’d get this way about it, she said, suddenly serious.

"I’m not getting any way about it. Con pressed the mic against his lips. Hello?"

She grabbed the coiled wire, yanking the transmitter from his mouth. Listen to me. I only said it because I wanted you to talk to me, to want to hear more.

This is what breaking up feels like, Con thought. Fuck you.

He stood, stepped out of his bedroom, closed the door. He was alone in the darkness of the living room. He’d never said that to anyone before, only toward his mother after she was gone, his voice shouting inside his head. He stared at the door, willed for someone to knock. He turned in circles, gazing into the blackness, as if the whole world was around him and he was completely alone. He imagined his mother somewhere similar, surrounded by white noise. He imagined her hurting, wanted her to be hurting just as much as he was, wanted to hear her say it, to tell him.

Con? Frankie called out. He opened the door, looked back in. She was staring at the ceiling, bathed in the glow of the radio. I think there’s something up there, she said, pointing.

From the ceiling came a long squeak, like his palm against his counselor’s leather chair.

What is it? Frankie whispered, fast.

Con followed the sound to the wall. There was a thump, the squeal of metal bending. Static hissed from the radio, pierced his ears. Then, on its own, the radio spun through frequencies. Con moved to it, looked down, saw the needle sliding back and forth. He smelled electricity. Voices came through sporadically, pieces of conversation, faster and faster until it was nothing but garbled sounds. The front panel cracked, spider-webbed. Then the lights went out, and Frankie screamed.

Con held his arms out, found his bed. He shouted, Frankie!

Blood rang in his ears. He became lightheaded. The world spun, and he fell, his chin meeting the carpet. His teeth clacked together, seemed to crack, vibrate his skull, and he could taste blood. From somewhere, he heard Frankie’s voice.

But his eyes were focused on the radio, the green haze, and beyond, the heating vent screwed into the wall, the black spaces between the slats. At first he saw nothing but the whites of eyes glinting in the moonlight. Then he saw the cheekbones, the grin. He tried to scream, but only a gurgle came out. His crotch was warm, hot, and he smelled urine.

Finally, he heard her voice—or something like it—above the buzzing radio, above Frankie’s shrieking—in his head, maybe . . .

I’ve found you. The voice was husky and rattling, what comes from a life of smoking, from a death of fire and rending metal. Her fingers slid through the slats, scratched at the carpet. I’ve finally found you.

Con tried to move, to crawl, to lift himself up, but couldn’t. His mother’s fingers worked at one screw, then the other, then the grate fell to the carpet. Her translucent face leered in the opening. He heard footsteps pattering and turned his head, caught Frankie’s shape at the front door fumbling awkwardly with the deadbolt—only the first line of defense. His mother had worked her head through the opening, was pinching her shoulder blades together, grasping at the carpet. She was naked, thin, emaciated, her skin bloodless, a dull gray, as it had been at the wake when he had to stare at her face and pretend he still loved her.

She laughed, a high-pitched cackle. I’ve been looking, she said, her voice leaking from her throat. Con saw what was left of her teeth since the accident, all cracked and bloodied from where they met the wheel.

She opened her mouth wider, as if trying to turn herself inside out. Her jaw popped. The corners of her lips stretched, tore. Her teeth worked over the top of the CB radio, pulling it back into the black hole of her mouth. She sucked the transmitter in, and when her lips closed, Con could still see the soft glow behind her cheeks, behind her bloodshot eyes. He could still hear the voices, garbled and muffled and wet.

***

CON IS ALONE in his bedroom, remembering everything. He’d told Frankie to wait outside. She’d half-heartedly objected, but Con knows she understands. This part of his life is his own.

In the center of the empty room is a ribcage, cream white in the moonlight, and in the center of the ribcage, hugged by the bones, is his old CB.

Jesus, he mutters.

He kneels in front of it, lays the sledgehammer on the carpet. Back then, that night, when the bedroom light came back on, when Con finally pushed himself up from the floor, the radio was gone. Later, when his father asked, Con told him he had thrown it away, and his father placed his hand on Con’s shoulder, told him he was proud of him. Denial, his counselor had said, as a statement rather than a question. Whatever you want it to be, Con had answered.

He reaches through the ribs, rubs dust from the CB’s front panel. He turns it on. It hums to life, warms beneath his fingers, just as he remembers. He plays with the volume, the tuner, focuses on the white noise. There’s a voice, high-pitched and frantic.

Mom, he thinks. Then he says it, to try it out, to see how the word feels in his mouth. Mom.

Hello? The voice crackles through the speakers. But it isn’t her, he realizes. It’s him—younger, as back then. Again: Hello?

Through the radio, he can hear breathing, huffing, as if he’d been running. Then, Help.

Con reaches for the transmitter, wants to guide himself to safety.

Help, again. As if he’s lost in the static, trapped in the other world he created in his mind.

He stands up, reaches for the hammer. He lifts it over his head, brings it down, crashing through the ribcage, filling the air with powder, crashing through the plastic, through the electronics, the speakers, silences the white noise, his voice.

---

GARRETT QUINN lives in North Carolina. I’ve Finally Found You is his first published horror story.

CARTAGENA HOTEL

by Jackson Kuhl

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JACKSON KUHL MAY not be the most prolific of writers, but what he puts out is smart, quirky, and always unique. Author of the novel, Samuel Smedley, Connecticut Privateer, Jackson sets his tales in the adventures of history, and writes most often in this following world of the Weird West.

For there are horrors among us, if only we know where to look or, perhaps, avoid, though little can be done if such horror lies just beneath the ground and comes slithering for us in the dead of night. School girls, Eudora and Poppy, set out to uncover the mystery of Ophir’s missing townspeople, though even their imaginations may not help them to victory or to what awaits in the Cartagena Hotel . . .

—EDITORIAL NOTES, ERIC J. GUIGNARD

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A NEWSPAPER ONCE WROTE ABOUT a burglar who, after entering a home and making his selections, would rearrange the furnishings to disguise the absences. If there were two candlesticks at opposite ends of the mantle, the robber would seize one and place the other at the center. Dishes left behind on the plate shelf would be evenly spaced to mask a swiped platter. The emptiness formerly occupied by a place setting nabbed from the silver drawer would be filled by the remaining utensils. In this way, the occupants were long to realize the thefts and, when they finally did, could never say for sure when they might have occurred. Had the lonely candlestick leapt to the middle of the mantle yesterday or had it been there for weeks? At what time the disappearances happened was impossible to pinpoint.

It was very much the same when people began to vanish in Ophir.

***

THOUGH ITS TOPONYM was Biblical, neither verse nor psalm was heeded much in Ophir. It was a boom town full of unmarried men coming and going—the company employed thousands but there were still never enough to work the fields. If somebody was there one day and missing the next, his mates just figured he’d upped and run out on his debts, and soon enough somebody else would arrive to fill the gone man’s job, and nobody would think twice upon the matter. In Ophir, everyone had a carpet bag or bindle half-packed by the door.

So the first time folks scratched their heads over the issue was after Milt Hopkins disappeared in the company of his associate, a Tejano named Rodriguez. For tragedy to strike two men as commonplace as Hopkins and Rodriguez would not have stirred an Ophir newspaperman to open his notepad if it weren’t for the circumstances involved.

The two were returning to their respective flophouses after a night in the town’s overpriced saloons when they took an alley shortcut. Rodriguez, slightly in the lead, tripped over what was thought a tree trunk and collapsed. Hopkins, seeing little in the darkness but hearing Rodriguez’s resultant cursing, broke into laughter. For his part Rodriguez was less embarrassed than confused: It was a strange thing to cut down a tree larger than any species native to the area and then abandon it, of all places, in an alleyway. More unusual was the tree’s bark, which seemed oddly textured. But as Rodriguez leaned forward to examine the bark more closely, Hopkins’s laughter turned into a scream, and the trunk jumped and struck Rodriguez in the face. He remembered nothing else until a laundress and her bucket woke him the next morning.

Opinions were divided on the veracity of Rodriguez’s story. Nonetheless it was the troubled conversation over his version of events, point for point and back and forth, that provoked Ophir to question the disappearances and tally the rather startling sum of men—and a handful of women—who had gone missing in recent memory.

It numbered nearly a hundred.

Almost overnight change swept Ophir as the disappearances became the chatter in every saloon and front parlor. The Republican newspaper blamed Democrats. The Democratic paper blamed the oil company. The townspeople blamed the marshal who, depending on his mood and the hour and the amount of whiskey consumed, variously blamed bandits, Indians, and mountain lions.

For his part, Eudora’s father blamed sinkholes. The oil is running dry, he told the family at supper. Pumping it out has left empty crevices and caverns underground. The sinkholes are swallowing people whole.

Eudora’s best friend had a different theory. That man was ate by a giant snake, Poppy Edwards said.

For all the population, there weren’t many children in Ophir. Some were the sons and daughters of the roughnecks while others, like Eudora and Poppy, the children of clerks and bookkeepers in the company office. Ophir had a one-room schoolhouse but a line ran down its floorboards as tangible as any steel rail, and that line wasn’t the usual division between boys and girls; it was a circumscription between the scions of the office and the brats of the fields.

A giant constrictor snake, Poppy said, showing Eudora a picture in a book, a drawing of a python wrapped around a rat. A viper would bite a man and we’d hear the screaming. But a constrictor squeezes so they have no air in their lungs. That and most snakes being nocturnal mean it’s been living among us this whole while. The only reason we know about it now is because there were two men that night instead of one, and the snake was too full for that Rodriguez fellow.

But where would a snake like that come from? Eudora asked. Nothing around here but rattlesnakes, and they bite. Snakes like you’re talking about live in Africa.

Poppy shrugged. "The oil they pump up isn’t anything but crushed jungle plants from a million years ago. If Professor Marsh and Professor Cope can dig dinosaur fossils out of the ground, why can’t the derrick workers pull up an