Dark Horses: The Magazine of Weird Fiction No. 10 | November 2022: Dark Horses Magazine, #10

By Wayne Kyle Spitzer

dark horse
/ˈdärk ˈˌhôrs/
noun
1. a candidate or competitor about whom little is known but who unexpectedly wins or succeeds.
"a dark-horse candidate"

Join us for a monthly tour of writers who give as good as they get. From hard science-fiction to stark, melancholic apocalypses; from Lovecraftian horror to zombies and horror comedy; from whimsical interludes to tales of unlikely compassion--whatever it is, if it's weird, it's here. So grab a seat before the starting gun fires, pour yourself a glass of strange wine, and get ready for the running of the dark horses.

In this issue:

ANOTHER MAN'S POISON
Marlin Bressi

FEAR AND LOATHING IN ALPHA CENTAURI
Colby Woodland

LEGACY
William Jensen

RAIN
Rod Marsden

SPIDERS, SPIDERS, EVERYWHERE!
Bill Link

SUBSCRIBED
Mikel J. Wisler

THE HAND COLLECTOR
Christian Riley

THE SCARECROW
Kurt Newton

THE SOUND
A.S. Remland

KINGS OF THE ROAD
Wayne Kyle Spitzer

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hobb's End Press
• Release date: Nov 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215948774

Wayne Kyle Spitzer

Wayne Kyle Spitzer (born July 15, 1966) is an American author and low-budget horror filmmaker from Spokane, Washington. He is the writer/director of the short horror film, Shadows in the Garden, as well as the author of Flashback, an SF/horror novel published in 1993. Spitzer's non-genre writing has appeared in subTerrain Magazine: Strong Words for a Polite Nation and Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History. His recent fiction includes The Ferryman Pentalogy, consisting of Comes a Ferryman, The Tempter and the Taker, The Pierced Veil, Black Hole, White Fountain, and To the End of Ursathrax, as well as The X-Ray Rider Trilogy and a screen adaptation of Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows.

Book preview

CONTENTS

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ANOTHER MAN’S POISON

Marlin Bressi

FEAR AND LOATHING IN ALPHA CENTAURI

Colby Woodland

LEGACY

William Jensen

RAIN

Rod Marsden

SPIDERS, SPIDERS, EVERYWHERE!

Bill Link

SUBSCRIBED

Mikel J. Wisler

THE HAND COLLECTOR

Christian Riley

THE SCARECROW

Kurt Newton

THE SOUND

A.S. Remland

KINGS OF THE ROAD

Wayne Kyle Spitzer

ANOTHER MAN’S POISON

Marlin Bressi

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Johann tapped the tip of the poker with his fingertip, as though subconsciously testing its sharpness. Then he stood up, made his way over to the fireplace, and stirred the logs until orange embers fluttered throughout the chalet like fireflies. The old physician took the meerschaum pipe out of his mouth.

Keep that up and you're liable to burn the whole place down, he warned. Innkeepers don't care much for lodgers who burn down their chalets. Johann sighed and returned to his seat next to the doctor, poker still in hand. When he saw that Johann was staring vacantly through the window, past the swirling mist, in the direction of the Lagginhorn, the old man laid his bony paw on the lodger's knee and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

Why are you so worried, Johann? he asked. Didn't you tell me at dinner that your brother was an expert climber?

Regrettably, that is true, Johann replied with a humorless chuckle. "Karl was an expert mountaineer. When he observed how quickly daylight was fading, he felt a sudden urge to leap to his feet and poke at the smoldering logs again, if for no other reason than to take his mind off his brother. It was a strong craving, but somehow, he found it within himself to resist. He wondered if the craving seemed so powerful only because he and Karl were fraternal twins. The thing about proficiency, doctor, is that it requires a person to keep a hand in the game, so to speak, Johann continued. This will be his first ascent since he hopped on the wagon."

Dr. Bernays appeared visibly confused, until Johann pantomimed uncorking a wine bottle, pouring a drink, and swallowing the imaginary fluid with a mighty gulp. The old physician nodded sympathetically.

Has he ever attempted the Lagginhorn? asked Dr. Bernays. Johann shook his head. Karl had conquered every other peak in the canton of Valais, from the mighty giant known as Dufourspitze to the treacherous Signalkuppe. Both peaks come closer to touching the floor of heaven than the fabled Matterhorn, which Karl had often boasted was the easiest ascent in the Alpes Pennines. However, because of its remote location and inaccessibility from the village of Saas-Balen, the Lagginhorn was the only four-thousander in Valais he hadn't climbed.

He was saving it for a special occasion, added Johann. He said that if he could maintain his sobriety for one solid month, crossing the Lagginhorn off his list would be his reward. The physician thoughtfully gummed the stem of his precious meerschaum, savoring the residual flavor imparted by years of smoking. That's the wonderful thing about meerschaum pipes, Dr. Bernays had said to Johann after dinner. A new pipe begins its life as white as alabaster, deepening in color over time as the tar from the tobacco is drawn deep into the porous stone, becoming part of the meerschaum itself. The doctor had been smoking his pipe for fifty years and it was presently the color of wild honey, and it might be another fifty years before it obtained the exceedingly rare and highly prized color of amber. He noticed that Johann was tapping the floor with his foot. Certainly a symptom of intense anxiety, noted the doctor.

Truth be told, Johann continued, I'm not convinced Karl ever put down the bottle for good. He's been on and off the wagon so many times you'd think he was a junk hauler. The old physician shook his head sympathetically, picked up his newspaper, and went back to his pipe. Johann continued to gaze out the window, though the mountains were shrouded by fog.

The rich, sweet smoke drifting through the chalet like a fragrant ghost stirred Johann to his feet, and once again he made his way toward the fireplace. He stopped halfway across the room and looked at the poker in his hand. No, the sudden craving had nothing to do with restlessness, or an uncontrollable urge to stir the fire. It had nothing to do with the tobacco smoke, either. For some odd and inexplicable reason, Johann desperately needed a drink. Strange, he thought; in his thirty-nine years of existence, liquor had never passed his lips. And now he felt that he might actually die unless he found a bottle, keg, or flask in short order.

––––––––

Just as a seasoned birdwatcher can identify a dozen species of wren by subtle differences in song, a seasoned mountaineer can detect danger by the subtle changes in the whistling of the wind. Karl knew from experience that he was in imminent danger, though whether he knew this from the sound of the wind alone or by a feeling in his bones, or perhaps a mystical combination of the two, he couldn't be sure. He was just a few hundred meters short of the summit, and he was confident he could reach the apex before late afternoon. Yet his gut instinct told him to descend at once. He had passed a berghaus at thirty-one hundred meters—the final hut before the summit—but had decided not to stop. And now, for a reason that both saddened and angered him, he found himself returning the way he had come, feeling like Napoleon during his ignominious retreat across the Berezina.

Darkness had already descended upon the Alps by the time Karl reached the berghaus. Smoke curled from the chimney and a warm yellow glow flickered behind the windows. There hadn't been any climbers on the Lagginhorn during the two days he'd been on the mountain, and he was curious to find out who was inside the hut. Karl was closely acquainted with every climber in the canton of Valais, and he assuaged his feelings of disappointment over his retreat with the hope of a joyful reunion with a long-lost friend.

When Karl nudged open the door to the hut, he saw a young man sitting contentedly atop a bedroll. Much to his surprise, it was a mountaineer he'd never seen before. The young man smiled and gestured for him to come inside. The youth seemed friendly enough, Karl decided before long, albeit a little cocky and smug for climber of such limited experience.

Don't let my age fool you, the young man said, after Karl pointed out his lack of climbing equipment. I've been playing on these rocks for longer than I've known how to walk. I prefer to travel light, you see. Just give me an adze and a pair of crampons and I'm ready to go. With a casual wave of his hand, the stranger swept his golden curls off his forehead. What about you, old-timer? You appear to be traveling pretty light yourself.

This isn't the Dufourspitze, replied Karl. Of all the four-thousanders in Switzerland, the Lagginhorn is the smallest. The young man stared back at him with an impish grin, and Karl felt a wave of nausea pass over him like a storm cloud. When he looked down at his hand, he saw that it was trembling. I made my first ascent of Matterhorn when I was about your age, Karl continued after he had regained his composure. With scarcely more than an ice hammer, a little rope, and a pocketful of pitons, I might add. The youth laughed as if he'd just heard the funniest joke ever told.

"Everyone knows the Matterhorn's Hörnli ridge is the easiest ascent of any four-thousander in the Alpes Pennines, said the stranger. It's a cinch, as long as you know how to read the wind."

I would be a little more humble if I were you, cautioned the veteran alpiner. Many skilled climbers have lost their lives on this very ridge.

And many English Channel swimmers have drowned in their bathtubs, the stranger replied with a yawn. And, with those words, the berghaus was enveloped in thunder. The hut swayed on its rocky foundation for a moment like a punch-drunk prize-fighter after a vicious hook, but the berghaus was too solidly built to fall down. Avalanche, declared the young man with a professorial air. I knew it was coming. I felt it in my bones. That's why I decided to bivvy down for the night. Karl stood up on wobbly legs and groped for the door. When he returned, his face was as pale as death.

Looks like we're going to be here for longer than just the night, he announced gravely. Much longer, perhaps.

––––––––

There is no way to disguise the taste of human flesh when one is forced to consume it uncooked. Even worse than the flavor is the sensation of a man's leg hairs tickling the back of the esophagus. Worse, still, is the feeling that comes with the realization that you have feasted upon a fellow member of the human tribe, not out of hunger, but out of confusion.

For two nights Karl had been in a fevered state, drifting, like an ember from a fireplace, in and out of consciousness. The golden-haired stranger offered little in the way of sympathy, insisting that a rescue team would arrive before long. Karl may have been weakened by his sickness, but was well enough to recognize false bravado when it crossed his path. Sure enough, the disappearance of the young climber's resolve coincided with the disappearance of his rations; panic set it the moment he swallowed the last bite of his biscuit.

The sharp, stabbing pains in Karl's belly, he had assumed, were pangs of hunger. Yet, after his appetite had been satiated by the fat and muscle and stringy gristle of tendon that had once belonged to the unfortunate young alpiner, he discovered that his stomach still ached. Like unreliable phantoms, the pains in his stomach appeared and disappeared at irregular intervals, sometimes causing him to pass out from the pain or vomit onto the filthy floor of the berghaus. At times his torture was so great that he had to bite down on the wooden handle of the adze he had used to fell the brash, young mountaineer as he lay sleeping. It was either you or me, he apologized to the corpse as he hacked at the dead man's knee with the curved iron blade. It had to be done, my friend. Surely, you can understand that it had to be done.

Karl's head began to reel as he took those tentative first bites, but he forced himself to persevere. To kill a man was a sin, but a sin might be forgiven by God if there was a purpose attached to it. To waste the precious meat, he told himself, would be an even greater sin—an unforgivable offense—because it meant that he had killed the youth in vain. But the taste! The texture! It was like gnawing on rubber or whale blubber. Don't be a fool, Karl, he said, as he stared at the fleshy strip dangling from the blade of the adze like a marionette made of meat. Protein is protein, and fat is fat. Your belly doesn't know the difference between a pig or a person. It's all the same to the digestive system.

And now, having consumed a portion of the young man's calf, Karl wretched violently, and then wept like an orphaned child when he saw the undigested particles mingled amid the bile on the floor. All his efforts had been for naught.

Several hours later he tried again, and this time was greatly surprised to discover that the meat went down like succulent lamb. The pain in his stomach has lessened considerably, though he was still too dizzy to risk standing up. He soon grew tired, more tired than he had ever felt before in his life.

When he opened his eyes, he saw that he was staring into the stranger's expressionless face. It really was quite a handsome face, Karl admitted, even though the color had drained out of it like a flag that had been flown too long in the sun. Even the golden curls seemed to have faded to a colorless hue. The longer he stared into the young man's unseeing eyes, the more the face began to change. Maybe it was a trick of the light, or maybe it was some natural process that followed death, but Karl thought the face of the young climber began to resemble his own. Not as it appeared now, or as it had appeared at any time in the past, but the way it had appeared only in his own mind, when he was young, nimble and arrogant, when he thought only of himself. It was a face of his own design.

I think I understand now, Karl groaned. He looked at his hand. It was no longer trembling. Sure enough, it, too, was beginning to lose its color. Yes, I think I finally understand.

––––––––

It was just past noon the following day when the body was brought to the makeshift morgue, which had been set up in the wine cellar of the chalet. With the nearest hospital beyond the Simplon Pass in Zwischbergen and the coroner away on business in Bramois, the cheerless honor belonged to the lone physician of Saas-Balen.

Let's see what the rescue team has brought us, shall we? asked Dr. Bernays. The police chief of the village, who hadn't been in his position long enough to have encountered a dead body, turned as white as a new meerschaum pipe when Dr. Bernays yanked off the sheet covering the corpse. What happened to him? the doctor demanded. The gendarme shrugged, but his eyes were fixated on the body on the table.

I was hoping that you'd be able to find the answer to that question, doctor, he replied.

You say that's how they found him? asked Dr. Bernays. It looks like a murder to me, plain and simple.

Or maybe an animal got to him, ventured the police chief. He immediately realized the stupidity of his statement. What manner of wild beast is found at four thousand meters? The gendarme knew there could be no such animal outside the realm of mythology, but he also knew that he didn't have the means, or experience, to conduct a homicide investigation. He'd never even learned how to dust for fingerprints. Finally, one of the rescue volunteers cleared his throat and jumped into the debate.

Both theories are impossible, gentlemen, he declared. There was a half-ton of snow, talus and scree blocking the berghaus door. No one could've gotten in or out after the avalanche. The old physician took the police chief aside and told him that he would have to perform an autopsy.

It was a little before nightfall when the police chief returned to the chalet. Much to his relief, he located Dr. Bernays in the drawing room. He had no intention of visiting the wine cellar, at least not until after the coroner returned from Bramois to claim the corpse. When the old doctor discovered contents of the dead man's stomach,