Midnight Echo Issue 16

By Australasian Horror Writers Association

Featuring fiction and poetry by some of Australasia's best dark fiction authors. The issue also includes the 2020 AHWA Short and Flash Fiction competition winning stories. The issue is guest-edited by Tim Hawken.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Australasian Horror Writers Association
• Release date: Nov 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201150488

Book preview

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Production Team:

Guest Editor

Tim Hawken

Cover Art/Layout

Greg Chapman

Proofreaders

Anthony Paul Ferguson

Paul Sheldon

The Staff Would Like to Thank

Midnight Echo’s fantastic contributors, readers, and fans.

CONTENTS

A Word from the President Alan Baxter

Editorial Tim Hawken

Shattered Reflections Fiona L Renton

Ghosting Naomi Hatchman

The Dead and I John Grey

We Had To, Didn’t We?  Jane Brown

Alma Mater Benedictus Est  Jeff Clulow

The Collapse Emma Nayfie

Politics of the Unalive Jacqui Greaves

Something Unnatural, Something Alien Erol Engin

Between the Lines Melanie Harding-Shaw

Wake In Fright at 50: Quintessential Australian Horror Claire Fitzpatrick

The Hatchling Geraldine Borella

Snip PS Cottier

Goon of Fortune Geneve Flynn

Slim Djinn Ron Schroer

The Stairwell Deborah Sheldon

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep Liz Simrajh

The Beating of Her Heart Louise Zedda-Sampson

Alone in the Dark: Exploring Isolation Horror Tabatha Wood

The Quiet Room Martin Livings

Stella Rebecca Fraser

The Feeding Bronwyn Todd

Spores Erin Munzunberger

Wither Greg Chapman

The Best Medicine†† Pauline Yates

Mother Always Gets What She Wants††† Tim Hawken Guest Editor & Contributor Biographies

††AHWA Short Story Competition Winner 2020

†††AHWA Flash Fiction Competition Winner 2020

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A WORD FROM THE PRESIDENT

Welcome to the 16th edition of Midnight Echo, the official magazine of the Australasian Horror Writers Association. In a time when Covid has been turning our real world into something closer to the apocalypse worlds of fiction, it’s good to see something like this come to fruition. Too many events and projects have been compromised over the last couple of years, but if nothing else, we can all continue to read.

I hope you enjoy this feast of dark delights that Tim Hawken has put together for us. I’d like to thank Tim for all his hard work in putting this issue out from a strong response to our initial submissions cal . Big thanks as well to R.F. Blackstone for his tireless help behind the scenes. And also my undying gratitude to the rest of the AHWA committee – they are great people who work hard and we’re all volunteers. They make my job easy.

I think we can all agree that horror is truly healthy right now. There’s been a lot of press lately about a new golden age of horror or a horror renaissance. We’ve always lived in that time, of course, but it’s nice to see the rest of society joining us in the darkness. Let’s hope this latest issue of Midnight Echo is well remembered as part of horror’s eternal golden age.

Alan Baxter, President AHWA, NSW, November 2021

EDITORIAL

Horror is fiction that scares us. Those who love the genre know it’s so much more than that as wel . It penetrates to our deepest fears, makes us think, makes us look outside at the dark unknown and wonder ‘what if?’.

For this issue of Midnight Echo, we called out to the horror writing community of Australasia and asked them to send us the full spectrum of what horror can be. They answered that call in spades. We received short stories, flash fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

We received body horror, isolation horror, cosmic horror, dark fantasy and brutal realism.

This magazine is the very best of those stories.

In these pages you’ll find tales that terrorise, tantalise and theorise. You’ll find black humour and bleak humanity. You’ll find hope and hopelessness in equal measure. There are stories with happy endings, ones with gut-wrenching endings, and one piece with an ending that’s merely implied. There are characters you’ll think could easily be real, and ones you’ll see your shadowy self in too. There is Australasian culture in all its grimy detail. No punches are pulled. No stabs are censored. You will be entertained.

I’d like to take this chance to thank all of the writers who submitted their work to the magazine (including those who didn’t quite make the cut this time). Without you, our amazing community in the Southern Hemisphere would not exist.

To the readers, you are just as essential, if not more so. I hope we’ve given you something here that hits you deep in the gizzards and keeps your mind ticking long after you’ve put it back in the bookshelf (or on the toilet magazine pile for others to be shocked by).

Enjoy your discomfort. After al , that’s what horror is all about.

Tim Hawken, Guest Editor and fellow horror fiend.

SHATTERED REFLECTIONS

BY FIONA L RENTON

Safely tucked up in my soft, warm bed, dreaming of a life in fluid motion without rules or reality, I stir. Desperate to cling onto my dream-state, I nestle deep into my pillow and squeeze my eyes tight. As I exhale, I begin to drift, and the visions that once more dance behind my eyelids, beckon to me. I reach for my lucid dream, but something grabs hold of me and drags me back. I wake, startled and clear headed, with every hair on my skin standing tal , surrounded by the familiar stillness of my bedroom.

Scratch. Scratch.

Something is in the darkness. Something that shouldn’t be. My heart pounds in my chest, threatening to break the very ribs set to protect it. Without thought or care, I leap from my snug bed and take sanctuary in my closest bunker. My wardrobe, where I hid many years ago as a child afraid of monsters, now protects me from the intruder who has snatched me from my slumber.

Scratch. Scratch.

Shadows fall across the window and the scratching becomes louder and louder. I look out through the slats in the wardrobe door but the darkness consumes the room in layers of pitch and blackness. A creak stirs in the night, somewhere near the windows ledge, and I gasp into the still and desolate void. The curtains fly in a whirl of breath cast in from the wild night and they revel in its fancy and fair.

Scratch. Scratch.

I cast my eyes around the room and see nothing out of place except that which caught the winds breath. My bed sheets lay where they fell after my desperate dash from their soft embrace. My door stands firmly closed, showing no signs of being breached, and the lamp by my bed shines as dead as a burnt fuse. Stil , in the darkness, I can hear it.

Scratch. Scratch.

My eyes dart around the vacant crevices where moonlight throws shadows awry. Nothing stirs. No sound can be heard except the thundering of my heart beating down the wal s of my chest. My ribs threatened to break free from the confines of the skin that encases them and the blood in my ears bursts like a torrent. My body threatens to betray me in the stillness and I try to stem the tempest within.

Scratch. Scratch.

I think of calling for help. But what help could come in the depth of night? I think of running for my life. But how far can you run from shadow and dread? Your body is but a tomb for your soul, a design of your own creation, and there is no hiding within. I know I have a choice. Bare all to the world around me and get lost in the throng or risk being exposed as a solitary creature, easy prey for those on the hunt. I am frozen, consumed with turmoil, as fear makes my decisions for me.

Scratch. Scratch.

I hold my breath and count. One. Two. Three. I count right up to ten and then do it again. If I am going to make it out of this, it has to be of my own doing. If I am going to see the dawn, it has to be off my own back. I peer out through the darkness and breathe not a sound.

Scratch. Scratch.

I push on the door that holds my location at bay. I press into the room and stand exposed to the darkness and the voided light. I wait for the ambush in the silver shadows that consume each and every space between me and the night. It does not come.

Scratch. Scratch.

As my eyes adjust, I spin on my heel, ready to face my attacker and fight for my life. I turn this way, that way, every way but the way of the sound. I look up and down and over and beyond and yet I find nothing but the stil , dark night. Like dancing on the edge of a knife, I wait for the moment of the attack. I wait for anything to come at me. I wait. I wait.

Scratch. Scratch.

The mirror. I leap toward it like a mouse trap closing tight. Like a cat whose feet get burned by a sun baked roof, I react in an instant. It is no longer fear, but guts and gumption and a determination I don't know I possess until the very moment I need it. I spring into action and I pounce in the direction of the noise so as to startle the source.

I expect an intruder. I envision a monster. Instead, perplexed, I face myself.

Just me and my mirror in the darkness. I stare into my eyes for the longest time and my reflection apes my every being. We blink. We sway. We flinch and gaze and meet one another with a hollow intent. I am drawn, but resolved to the fact that the other is no more or less than an image. An image of myself, in reverse but the same.

I am just about to concede delusions and defeat and take myself back to the warmth of my bedsheets, cast aside without ceremony and disregarded without a care, when my reflection makes a movement that does not match my own.

I watch the cold hand reach up and grasp at the mirror from within. I see the nails meet the back of the glass. The corner of its mouth curls up in a smile and does not reflect my fear at al . I watch as it pul s its nails down the inside of the mirror and snarls as it rejoices in my dread.

Scratch. Scratch.

I back away from the mirror. Sweat beads on my brow and my skin goes a pale shade of grey in the gloom of the desolate bedroom. My reflection's eyes follow me across the room. It watches me as I slink back and try to hide in the darkness. It sees my fear swell and feeds on the horror it creates. There is no escape. There is nowhere to run from your own reflection, for you are both made of the same essence, good and other.

Scratch. Scratch.

I fall to the floor. A crumpled heap in a silent night. No-one to rescue me. No one left to be saved. There is only me and my reflection and one sound left in the darkness.

Glass breaking...

GHOSTING

BY NAOMI HATCHMAN

She didn’t know who she was.

She did know that she was trudging along train tracks and dragging a large suitcase behind her, its little wheels bumping and rattling over the sleepers and bal ast. And, oh God, the suitcase was ugly: it was hot pink covered with gaudy yellow flowers, a jarring contrast to the greyness of the world around her.

She looked up at the washed out sky where the sun had been sitting at mid-morning for hours. Nothing moved except for her and the luggage.

Redfern station was up ahead with trains at the platforms and commuters crowded around, waiting to board. Too many obstacles. Maybe she should go back to the roads and weave around all the cars again, or take the footpaths and zigzag between the frozen pedestrians.

There was no easy way forward, but at least she could mix things up.

She had to complete her task somehow. It was the only way to make this stop.

***

It was hot, dusty and cramped under Auntie Laura’s house. Melanie should have been spending her Saturday drinking wine in front of the TV, not crawling around in a dirty space sorting through old-people crap. But, Auntie Laura was about to move into a retirement home, and Melanie wanted to ensure her place in the wil .

Ugh. Was it worth it? She’d spent all day going through boxes and had only found mildewy clothes, faded photographs and other stuff that belonged on a bonfire. Hardly rich people stuff. There wasn’t anything good that Melanie could pocket, like old jewellery that Auntie Laura wouldn’t miss.

She checked her phone: nearly five pm. Great, she’d lost the whole day, plus it would take her half an hour to get home once she called a taxi. At least there was only one more box to pull out and take up to the back verandah.

The last big box was jammed under the floor joists, and Melanie grumbled as she worked it free. Great, behind it was another box, but at least this one was smal . Melanie pulled it towards her. It was blue, with black marker scrawled on the lid.

Do NOT open under ANY circumstances!

Melanie grinned. Score. Maybe Auntie Laura was a perve? That might actual y make the day worthwhile. She gingerly lifted the lid. Inside, on a bed of satin, lay...

A stick. Seriously?

Next to it lay a little paper scrol . Melanie unrolled it and read the calligraphy.

Say what you want, then flick the magic wand. But be careful what you wish for!

Melanie rolled her eyes. When she was a child, she’d believed that Auntie Laura was a witch.

How else could her aunt know things nobody could know, always get her way, and have so

much money to donate to charities when she never had a job? As Melanie had grown older, she figured that Auntie Laura was probably committing fraud. Maybe this dumb novelty wand would be Auntie Laura’s defence if the Feds ever came after her. I used magic, officer.

Melanie chuckled, picking up the wand. It was cold and smooth, heavier than it looked, with a fine grain pattern through the dark, crooked wood. Yup, real y convincing.

Hey magic wand, she said, I want to go home.

She flicked it.

***

She didn’t know who she was, and she didn’t care.

There was nothing but ocean as far as she could see, the waves frozen in time, creating little tripping hazards wherever she went. Her destination was seared into her mind, but she still had to find her own path there. She had spent an interminable time navigating around a violent storm because she couldn’t get up and down the gigantic waves, and now, to make things worse, the sky was getting darker the further she walked west, leaving the sun behind.

How long had she been walking? Weeks? Months? She couldn’t tel , trudging endlessly with nothing but her own footsteps tapping on the solid water and the bumping of that damned bag for company. She was still dragging that luggage behind her like a gaudy dead pink albatross.

How much longer would this take? What was even the point of this? Why?

Tipping her head back, she screamed into the cloudy sky. The sound was muffled, but she kept screaming. She couldn’t do this anymore.

She sank to her knees