Death Rattle and Other Dark Tales

By Michael Potts

In this book of chilling horror stories,there are a varitiety of monsters. There are the Old Ones who once ruled the earth and will rule again, hostile to humankind. A boy who comes by at twilight to play is more than he seems. A man goes through a warp and space and time to learn a horrible truth about himself. An old preacher goes to church and discovered that all the old members to whom he preached have returned, including the dead ones. A woman has an intuition that something isn't quite right about her husband. These and other stories of supernatural and natural horror will keep you up at night with a sense of the uncanny, the chill that starts at the peak of the hair on the head and moves down to the toes. These will stay with you long after you finish reading the book.

 

"A terrifying journey into a grotesque funhouse, in which the darkness of the universe is complemented by the blackness of the human soul."

              --Katherine Kerestman, author of Creepy Cat's Macabre Travels

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Heartsblood Press
• Release date: Aug 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201548889

Michael Potts

Michael Potts is Professor of Philosophy at Methodist University in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He has three novels published by WordCrafts Press in Tullahoma, Tennessee: End of Summer, a Southern fiction coming-of-age novel, and the horror novels Unpardonable Sin and Obedience. WordCrafts also published Aerobics for the Mind: Practical Exercises in Philosophy that Anybody can Do. He has also published a volume of poetry, Hiding from the Reaper and Other Horror Poems. Michael and his wife, Karen, live with their four cats, Frodo, Pippin, Rosie, and Bilbo, in Coats, North Carolina.

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Acknowledgments

Writing  is never a solitary project, and I wish to thank those people who helped make this book a reality. Some of these stories were workshopped in my colleague, Professor Michael Colonnese’s class in fiction writing.  His advice and the advice of my fellow students, was valuable. I would also like to thank Karen, my wife, for reading over these stories for grammar and style. To my friend and fellow writer Katherine Kerestman, owe thanks for encourage me to publish a collection of stories and for reading them over and making helpful suggestions.

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AD MAIOREM DEI GLORIAM

Introduction

Horror has to do with the uncanny, the off-kilter, the weird, the abnormal that stimulates that oldest of passions in humans, fear—as H. P. Lovecraft understood.  Monsters in horror can either be natural, artificial, or supernatural, but all share abnormality, a sense of uncleanness, Freud’s Das Unheimliche, but often a sense of Rudolf Otto’s idea of mysterium tremendum et fascinans—something the repels but draws us in at the same time.  Human beings are fascinated with ghost stories even if the prospect of actually meeting a ghost remains frightening. Aberrations of human nature—psychopathic killers—fascinate despite the evil they do—witness the popularity of real crime books and television shows. There is also the cosmic dimension of horror that Lovecraft skillfully revealed in his later stories with his notion of the Old Ones, alien beings who once ruled the earth and will rule again, who are indifferent at best and hostile at worst to human beings.

Horror claws at the holes in the edge of our reality, widening them into portals that lead to hellish dimensions – and sometimes out of the hellish into a greater appreciation for the world in which we exist. Horror can also point to redemption, a way out, an escape from a world that changes the reader forever. The dimension of hope has been missing from much contemporary horror. Although there are times in which hopelessness fits the logic of a story, overall, the lack of hope—the nihilism—has had a negative impact on horror. Facing nihilism is a traumatizing experience, even for those claiming to accept it. My world view is ultimately hopeful despite the endings of some of my stories. Such stories are meant to show (not tell!) the despair of a world in which hope is absent. Perhaps the endings of the stories are not the ending of the narratives of our lives and of life on earth. Perhaps hell is transfigured into a world in which all is well.

Toxic characters often permeate the moments of horror we experience in life. Narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths, and borderline persons can make life a living hell for those who love these unfortunate individuals. As my stories involving such characters suggest, those who remain capable of love are often those sucked into the abysses of ruined personalities, of human psychic remains still having sufficient vigor to eat—and destroy.

These stories are eclectic—some focus on natural horror, others on supernatural, and some are ambiguous on whether the natural or supernatural applies. They vary in length from a series of six-word stories to the longer and more complex. From Lovecraftean horror to ghost stories to killers to femme fatales, this book has something every horror fan can enjoy. Each story can be read in one sitting if you so dare—so turn out all the lights but your booklight and enter the lair.

The Greatest of These is.... Dread

And now abideth terror, angst, and dread, these three: but the greatest of these is dread. That’s what St. Paul should have said. Your mama and daddy might tell you that what will happen is never as bad as what you think will happen. You might even believe such claptrap – unless you’re the guy with a price on your head, who knows you’ll die today, but you don’t know what time. Your wait, knowing there’s no escape from a boot kicking in a door followed by flashes of gunfire, the last sound you hear as the goons sent to kill you pump you with so much lead that your dead body could set off every airport scanner in the country.

That’s the dread I dream every night, awakening with a scream, knowing that the sights and sounds of sleep are pale copies of reality’s horror. I’m glad I’m unmarried. Would that everyone were as I – maybe the end would be easier. Soon people will face agony so deep they will ask for lightening to strike them dead and burn them to ash. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Would that the world held such mercy.

When I was six, Daddy gave me a rubber globe – all he could afford – so I’d learn the continents. He warned me not to take it outside lest the sun’s rays fade its design, but I wanted to play, not obey. One morning I sneaked outside with the globe hidden under my shirt. Those were the days before parents had cell phones, radars, or five cameras to track one kid. I kicked the ball around and threw it in the air, catching it until I couldn’t catch my breath. I lay down under a sugar maple’s shade. Nearby the rusty steel drum, where Daddy burned trash, was afire. Scraps of burning paper, ringed by yellow fire, floated above my head, mesmerizing me into untroubled sleep, a pacifier fooling me into thinking all was well.

I awakened to the world’s end. My globe lay on clay earth, collapsed and partially melted, a victim of one of those fragments of floating ash the fire in the drum spewed out. The South Pacific was a deep blue, the only undamaged portion. The continents melted, the sea a set of grotesque folds of burnt rubber reeking with the scent of burned tires. I cried, mocking myself for my mistake and collapsing to the ground. Little did I realize that this event was a harbinger of what was to come.

I’m forty now, living out the Last Days, awaiting the second coming of something other than Christ. Three months ago, I made a mistake, one so horrific that not even a Deity could forgive my sin. It was a cold, breezy, abysmal March day with fallen blooms from Bradford Pears covering the campus of Southeastern North Carolina University where I teach anthropology and archeology. After a lunch that dragged on due to an argument with colleagues that turned intense because so little was at stake, I was late to a scheduled phone call. I ran, my academic heart laboring to keep up with a flabby body filled with morsels from a heart-toxic Southern diet. I reached Jackson Hall, nearly running into the doors before they swung open, unlocked my office just as the phone rang. I let it ring a couple more times as I tried to catch my breath.

"This is Nathan Puckett, I said, using academic protocol so people won’t confuse me with the kind of doctor who can do them any good.

I am Professor Dr. Markus Binchoff.

I’m pleased to meet you over the phone, I replied, annoyed that he kept the German academic protocol of address, using all the academic’s titles, even though he taught in Massachusetts. Miskatonic University’s pristine reputation doesn’t give him the right to be an ass.

Professor Binchoff interrupted these pleasant musings and said, "I have noticed that the artifacts photographed in your report of the Honeyville dig are similar to some items I found near Arkham, Massachusetts. I am sending photographs via electronic mail to your university address as I speak. In addition, some of the document fragments found at the North Carolina dig site, apparently written by early settlers, are similar to others I have found. There is a new fragment found in the Arkham area that may relate to another North Carolina site you explored in the past – in the Thothberg area.

Most of the fragments found there, at the edge of a decaying mountain town,  were from flattened foundations of ruined houses. These were crude drawings – a formless blob surrounded by figures with horns, pipes, drums, and some hitherto unclassified instruments. We also found fragments of texts with words that made no sense: When the doubter dreams...., the end is soon.... and similar statements. When I informed Professor Binchoff of finds that were not in the initial report he surprised me when he said, I have a document with words similar to your fragments that seems to contain a complete poem. I will send it via electronic mail now.

The e-mail arrived in less than a minute, and after I opened it every hair on my body stood erect, and I felt like an ancient mammal, vulnerable and small, arching its back to face a hungry predator. The text, written elegantly in a snake-like script, was a poem:

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Near Thothberg’s crags

when a curious mortal

diggeth too deep

the Lord of Chaos cometh

from strange stars to haunt

him with a dream

that is not a dream

yet is. The Lord

of Chaos cometh,

Azathoth the Great.

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The reign of man ceaseth,

disorder reigneth aeons

until nothing remains

but eternal gnawing.

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My ears pricked, my senses sharp with the feeling that someone was whispering behind me, and I jerked my head around. My office looked the same, yet I smelled, or thought I smelled, a foul odor like rotten eggs.  I leaped when I felt something like a sticky, viscous substance with the texture of thick mucus, dripping on my shoulder. I dropped the phone and brushed my shoulders to find nothing there. Slick with sweat, I fumbled for the receiver and heard Professor Binchoff ask, Are you all right, Professor Puckett?

Sorry, I’m an absent-minded professor. I’m sure you’ve heard of the stereotype.

Nein, said Professor Binchoff, and I suddenly I wished I could slap his snobbish face. Perhaps he read my mind, since he said, "you did some fine work in Thothberg – a masterful archeological report and some fine artifacts. I have funding from Miskatonic University to support me, a colleague, and student workers to do a dig at Thothberg. I would be privileged if you would be my partner in this project.

After the requisite pause, I replied, Thank you for your kind invitation. I should be happy to work with such a distinguished colleague on another Thothberg dig.