Black Sheep: Unique Tales of Terror and Wonder No. 9: Black Sheep Magazine, #9

By Wayne Kyle Spitzer

Welcome to Black Sheep: Unique Tales of Terror and Wonder, an extraordinary anthology magazine that transcends the boundaries of science-fiction, fantasy, and horror. Prepare to embark on a thrilling journey through the darkest corners of the human imagination, where the ordinary becomes extraordinary, and the mundane transforms into a realm of unspeakable terror and awe-inspiring wonder.

Within these pages, you'll discover a collection of captivating stories carefully curated to transport you to realms beyond the mundane. Each issue presents an array of unique tales crafted by talented visionaries, both established and emerging, who dare to defy conventions and push the boundaries of speculative fiction.

Whether you're a seasoned lover of the fantastic or just curious to explore new frontiers, Black Sheep: Unique Tales of Terror and Wonder will be your guide through the realms of the extraordinary. Prepare to be enthralled, enchanted, haunted. So put on your dark sunglasses … and unleash your inner Black Sheep.

In this issue:

SHADOW AND SONG
Andrew Brenza

DOCTOR WEGMAN'S MIRACLE MIST
Christian Green

DUST TO DUST
Anthony Ferguson

ERROR_CODE: 1072
J. Paul Ross

THE DEVIL DRIVES A '66
Wayne Kyle Spitzer

POND MOUTH
Keith LaFountaine

TAKE IT AWAY
Ryan Honaker

CECIL, THE DEMON, AND THE TREE
Michael Schulman

TO TAKE WHAT IS BEST
Paul Cesarini

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hobb's End Press
• Release date: Feb 28, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224082537

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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SHADOW AND SONG

Andrew Brenza

DOCTOR WEGMAN’S MIRACLE MIST

Christian Green

DUST TO DUST

Anthony Ferguson

ERROR_CODE: 1072

J. Paul Ross

THE DEVIL DRIVES A ‘66

Wayne Kyle Spitzer

POND MOUTH

Keith LaFountaine

TAKE IT AWAY

Ryan Honaker

CECIL, THE DEMON, AND THE TREE

Michael Schulman

TO TAKE WHAT IS BEST

Paul Cesarini

SHADOW AND SONG

Andrew Brenza

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Claras left the safety of the understory to have a look around. They were compelled to. Through miles of dark forest, they had followed the remnants of a brutal scream to this very spot. Now, having arrived, they could feel the residue of its terror like a sludge in their mind. Claras was sure of it, something horrible had happened here. 

Cautiously, Claras mounted a low ridge that overlooked the parched and pitted earth of a remote forest road. They also sprinted simultaneously to lookout points 20 meters to the north and 20 meters to the south of the ridge, fearful of being flanked or surrounded. But everything was quiet, still. Once in position, Claras was too.

Always careful, they waited. Minutes passed. Nothing stirred. It was strange. There was no activity in the forest. No creatures nosed around in the undergrowth. No birds sang in the canopy. Claras felt claustrophobic in the stillness, as though even the wind had been banished. Yet ostensibly nothing seemed amiss. Beyond the abnormal quiet, no strange sights, sounds or scents presented themselves.

This wasn’t what they had expected. In some ways, it was even worse than what they had expected. But Claras decided that they wouldn’t rush into anything. The earth was still loud with echoes of the scream, and they couldn’t shake its terror from their thoughts. Crouching low to the ground, hiding behind trunk or boulder, they continued to wait and to watch.

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Hours earlier, while they foraged mushrooms in the dew-damp grass of a dawn-gray meadow, the scream had reached out to Claras through the mycelial network, battering the sensorium of their body. Its sudden arrival forced them to the ground, and they pawed at their ears and howled against the eviscerating intensity of its horror and pain. But Claras could determine neither cause nor owner of the cry, whether human or animal. There was only the brutal fact of it, emanating from a power fundamentally different in its cruel focus from the mainly misguided, though familiar, hatreds and prejudices of the ever-violent world around her.

It was this difference that had compelled Claras to investigate. It took some time, but the debilitating wave of horror eventually subsided and Claras regained their mind. Then, Claras began to run. The cry had burned itself like an afterimage into the mycelium, which made tracking easy, but frightening. Some hours later, wary but driven by the urgency of the cry, Claras arrived at the forest road, where they now waited, hiding, scanning for some sign of the evil that had brought them here.

But still, nothing stirred. Claras decided closer exploration was necessary. They dropped from the low ridge and landed lithely on the edge of the road. It was a quick and silent movement, after which Claras paused, alert for anything that might be waiting in ambush. When nothing occurred, Claras picked up a handful of dirt and raised it to their nose. Meanwhile, Claras’ flanks closed to within 10 meters of the ridge on either side, taut with fear and anticipation.

Death, thought Claras, throwing the handful of dirt to the ground with revulsion. Bloody death.

Suddenly, eight meters to the north, Claras also began to whine. Something had caught their eye. In an instant, all of Claras had converged on the position, four large black wolves and a humanoid figure wearing neatly fashioned deer skins. Two of the wolves kept watch on the road as the other two and the humanoid cautiously examined the area. The earth of the road was freshly torn like something large had swiped at it repeatedly. Additional disturbances of the landscape suggested a violent struggle. Claras did not recognize the tracks, but apart from them, nothing else presented itself as evidence. There were no bloodstains, no scattered belongings, nothing. Meanwhile, the surrounding forest remained disturbingly silent. One of the wolves noticed drag marks leading to the edge of the road, disappearing in the undergrowth.

Claras approached and, smelling nothing, stepped into the knee-high weeds. Drag marks gave way to trampled foliage, then, among a low tangle of vines, a haphazard pile of freshly shattered and splintered wood. Claras recognized the fragments as the broken components of a simple wooden horse-drawn cart, likely a farmer’s. The humanoid had seen such things when young, but not for many years. Since becoming Claras, the humanoid had successfully forsaken the world of Men. They had no plans to return.

Almost unrecognizable and perplexingly scentless, the splintered cart offered no additional information. However, the drag marks continued deeper into the forest. Cautiously, Claras followed them until they came to the hollow trunk of an enormous tree. Inside, still odorless, they saw the shadowy figures of three humans lying on the ground. They were motionless. Claras let out a low growl, but the bodies didn’t move. With a thought, the two wolves from the road were suddenly searching for tracks and for anything that might have been left behind. They spread out in concentric circles beginning two meters from the tree’s base. Meanwhile, the humanoid picked up a stick and poked the largest of the bodies, which looked to be a man. With a weird and sudden jerk, the body raised its left arm and then slammed it down on the ground. In an instant all four wolves were at the entrance of the hollow, growling at the body as the humanoid fell backward in surprise.

But soon Claras had regained their composure. In the minutes that passed, the body displayed no further signs of life and remained unresponsive to continued prodding. Sensing no immediate danger, the humanoid entered the hollow, while the four wolves watched on and whimpered nervously. Indeed, the body was that of a man. Placing a hand on the man’s chest, Claras noted with certainty that he was dead. But the naked body looked very strange, blackened, as though it were burned, but not charred, eyes hollowed out, skin taut, desiccated, and still no smell. The other two bodies, which Claras guessed to be the wife and child of the man, appeared much the same. Yet, despite the disfigurement, there was something familiar about the man’s sunken and mutilated visage. Claras felt that they had seen it before, a long time ago.

The face seemed to be from a time before the birth of Claras. To remember that far back was almost impossible. The integration of the five component minds that constituted Claras’ collective consciousness seemed to prevent it, and access to discrete memories that had formed in the pre-integrated minds had long since been cut off. Yet Claras, their vision fixed on the dead man’s face, began to see something emerge in the dark recesses of their networked imagination. At first, it rose vaguely, like a cloud, but after putting another hand on the man’s body, it began to resolve.

In the distance, as though Claras were looking through a tunnel, they saw overbright fields of corn and barley. They saw the half-melted façade of a shabby farmhouse located on a dirty smear of road. They heard the unintelligible voices of human children playing far away as though underwater. Yet, as they strained to look, the scene began to change. The sky, at first almost blindingly blue, began to darken. Soon it was night, and Claras watched a line of lights approaching through the blackness. The lights became the fires of torches, and the dark grew electric with anger and hatred. Twisted faces of men and women smothered Claras’ mind; bared teeth shouting with rage and a shadowy anger jerking in firelight plagued her thoughts. So many faces, so much hatred, they seemed to strangle Claras. Then long arms of shadow reached from the dark, gripping Claras’ throat, squeezing them, suffocating them, the darkness fading into liquid black. Breath became hard to grasp, and a bursting pressure mounted behind Claras’ eyes. More arms, more darkness. Then, revelation: A creature of opaque shadow and a thousand tentacle-like appendages. A creature with a thousand burning, yellow eyes and a mouth of flame and blood. A creature wrapped in and drinking Claras’ thought, Claras’s mind, Claras’ soul. A creature dragging Claras into nothingness.

Fear overwhelmed them. Claras tried to run, to break free from the creature’s asphyxiating grip. The creature overpowered them and dragged Claras deeper and deeper into the night. Soon the angry voices of the men and women were no longer audible. Soon their torch fires had been snuffed by indelible blackness. Desperately, struggling for breath, Claras tried to fight. They bit and clawed, but, in the black silence, they had no strength. It had all been leached from them. Claras fell, enervated, unable to move. Then, suddenly, like a door slamming, Claras’ mind snapped shut and they were gone.

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Daylight. Quiet. A wolf’s warm tongue licking her face; a wolf’s snout sniffing her ears, the gentle comfort of his living breath. Then, unbearable isolation. Heartbreak. Sobbing. Tears.

Noor. Noor, she coughed between sobs, the involuntary word caught in her throat like a thorn. At the sound of it, the wolves ceased tending to her.

Noor. Noor, she was compelled to repeat, and the wolves withdrew. Pacing anxiously a few meters away, they whimpered and looked at her with uncertainty. But, lying on her side, she saw that there were only three of them. What had happened to the fourth, the largest and strongest of the pack? For reasons she couldn’t understand, the word Njal came to mind and, with it, more heartbreak.

In the effort to sit up, pain exploded through her weak body. She let out a cry that frightened the wolves. In an instant, they fled into the forest and were gone. She couldn’t believe it. She tried to call them back but could not find them in her mind. In fact, there was no trace of them. There was only her strange, lonely and broken self.  She hardly recognized it as she collapsed in sobs, crying deeply, beseeching Claras’ return. But Claras, who was never lonely and