Fiction Vortex - October 2013 Horror Issue Read online

Fiction Vortex

  A Speculative Fiction Typhoon

  October 2013

  Volume 1, Issue 6

  Special Horror Issue with

  Guest Judge Michael Collings

  Edited by Dan Hope & Mike Cluff

  Copyright 2013 Fiction Vortex

  Cover Image by Viktor Forat

  Cover design by Dan Hope

  Website: FictionVortex.com

  Twitter: @FictionVortex

  Facebook: FictionVortex

  Table of Contents

  Letter from the Editor

  DeathSong — by Guest Judge Michael R. Collings

  Finale in Blue — by Alexandra Grunberg

  Too Much Sleep — by Brendan Verville

  The Most Qualified Applicant — by Kathy Charles

  Blood or Black Tears — by Jennifer Loring

  Windows — by Ben Pienaar

  Best Friends Forever — by Josie Beecher

  Something in Our House — by D.W. Gillespie

  Buried Secrets — by Gary Cecil

  Not Forgotten — by Jay Seate

  About Fiction Vortex

  Letter from the Editor

  Horror, or rather horrifying experiences, have been a part of my life since I was little. I have never liked clowns — they are evil — and Dan Hope is slightly evil for trying to put a clown on this month’s cover.

  My oldest sisters learned early that mental trauma is a far more effective way to exert dominance, and leaves no physical evidence. My older brother had reached a point where he was no longer gullible enough to believe in things such as toilet gnomes that steal you away into their watery kingdom while you do your business, so naturally my sisters’ attentions turned to me, the youngest.

  One night a nasty dream woke me up. I tried to ignore my childish fears and go back to sleep, but I remember the moon shining through the window, onto the bed, and on a ghostly white hand that was creeping over the edge of the mattress. Creeping towards my face. When you are four years old, this is a terrifying experience. I mustered what courage I had and smacked the hand away. Before I could celebrate any victory, the hand shot back up and grabbed my neck.

  Cue the quick fade to fear-induced unconsciousness and my tale shoots forward twenty-five years. I am talking to my sister about reoccurring nightmares and I bring up this weird one I have about an alien hand strangling me. My sister looks at me, guilt covers her face. Covers her face like simple flour covers a hand and transforms it into a nightmare.

  Enough about me. This special issue of Fiction Vortex is strictly horror, for obvious October-related reasons. We give a big thanks to Stoker Finalist Michael R. Collings for being our guest judge. We also have an extra story by him (which didn't appear on our site) for your horrific pleasure. Look to his works, especially his book Writing Darkness for examples of how horror can haunt a reader.

  You will notice a particular lack of graphic horror. Like my sisters, the Fiction Vortex staff feels that psychological terror is extremely effective. We could give you detailed descriptions of monsters. We could supply a supernatural scapegoat to pin the source of your fears upon. Yet in the end we know, as well as you do, that true terror isn’t from the dark corners of the world, but from the dark recesses of your mind, and that beneath a thin layer of imagination (or even flour) the true monsters are quite human.

  Spooky Vortices,

  Mike Cluff

  Editor-in-Chief

  Fiction Vortex

  (Back to Table of Contents)

  DeathSong

  by Michael R. Collings, Guest Judge of the October 2013 Horror Issue

  A month had passed since we filed beside the closed casket, barely able to touch a finger to the polished walnut top. It had looked more like a closed organ console than a final resting place.

  And since then, I had not dared come here to play. The organ had belonged to him; we played on sufferance at best, his presence surrounding us as we did our lessons on the ivory keys. Long, thin fingers would stab out, pointing the proper key, touching the correct stop. We loved him ... and feared him.

  But now I had to play again. The janitor had left; the chapel sat empty as I unlocked the organ loft, my key clicking against the lock. I brushed my hand on the light switch; a bare bulb glowed antique gold.

  And I played. Softly at first — preludes he had loved, quiet balanced harmonies of flutes whispering in counterpoint. I raised one hand to the upper keyboard and felt gentle tension in two voices sinking deeper and deeper into each other. I almost believed ... almost hoped to see a finger reach toward the manuals, toward that single stop that would make my heart cry and wring echoes from the silence.

  I don’t know how long I played. When I feel like that, I enter the organ, become one with it. Time becomes meaningless. But gradually I noticed that my fingers were stiff, my vision beginning to blur. Each note on the page was preceded by a ghostly presence. I stood and stretched. Outside the window above my shoulder, darkness pressed. A wind must have risen. Something scraped against the roof, murmured against the windows in the chapel.

  I sat down again. This time, my melodies rang louder, more stridently as I fought a growing weariness. My fingers stumbled on Beethoven, even on Bach. The scrapings outside seemed louder, more insistent.

  And then I knew ... somehow I knew that I was hearing more than elm branches scratching tiles. I heard something in the chapel — not much ... only the faintest suggestion of a sound. But it differed from the others. It sounded like ... footsteps, perhaps ... or a body sliding across a wooden pew, then lifting itself to stand in the aisle. It sounded ... purposeful.

  "You idiot," I said, startled as my voice echoed above the organ’s softness. "There’s nothing there. It’s just wind."

  But I stopped playing, stopped and stood and peered through the opening between organ loft and chapel.

  Some shadowy form huddled against the altar. Even as I watched, it shuffled forward, making a soft scraping as of something barely substantial against the carpet.

  I jerked back and my foot slipped onto the bass pedals. Through the silence rose a muted roll, a deep unwavering note.

  The shadow stopped ... or at least I thought it did. I sat down, flipping frantically through my music for just the right piece. I threw off the brash diapasons and pulled out flutes, melodia, dulciana (named for its sweetness) and began fingering chords and soft arpeggios. In the breaths between chords, I listened. I heard nothing. Even the wind had died.

  Then I laughed. What a fool! How many times had I played here at night, with the chapel empty and silent. How many times had I thundered Bach toccatas and rumbled marches. "Don’t be silly. There’s nothing there."

  Even as I spoke, though, I felt it again. A shadow darker than blackness, a coldness spilling from the chapel. And I knew that only music could keep it away. I played softly meditative pieces to diminish the shadow. My mood altered from sadness and loss into fear; I played the organ — but something was playing me, touching stops in me and playing through my soul with deft power.

  I threw on louder stops, defying darkness. I pressed the expression pedal, imagining as I did so the louvered doors to the pipe chambers opening wider and wider onto the empty chapel, sounds drowning minute scrapings and scuffings.

  I glanced toward the chapel. The splotch of darkness floated down the aisle — a perverse, phantom bridegroom — toward me! sweeping even faster than before.

  I stifled a cry and threw off everything except the muted flute and shifted without pause into "Abide With Me." The shadow stopped. But it didn’t retreat.

  It demanded that I play. Silence drew it closer; strident, vibrant, life-fil
led music drew it closer. Meditative music stopped it — but nothing drove it back.

  The night passed, infinitely slowly. I tired. My fingers slipped. Notes blurred, transformed into disharmony. The shadow would deepen, and I would feel coldness washing my spine. Once I thought I felt fingers on my shoulder, when I fumbled a passage he had drilled me on for hours; I felt the anger.

  Finally, I could barely keep awake. The music, the incessant quietness of it, controlled me. I wanted to sleep, had to sleep. I dropped my hands.

  And the shadow was beside me, blotting out the glowing light, shadowing the keyboard itself. I screamed and crashed fingers onto the manuals, not caring what I played. I grasped the first thing from my memory — the piece we had been polishing the night he died.

  With my right hand, I played the intricate sixteenth-note runs, while my left pulled stop after stop, throwing the organ on full, demanding all that it could give. I plunged my left hand through shadows and formed the opening chords of the Widor Toccata. It is fast, loud, exhausting; it makes my fingers ache and my shoulders knot; it stretches my calves to reach the octave-plus chords on the pedals. But it makes me sing.

  It grew darker; I could barely see the manuals. I closed my eyes. The cold swirled closer, joining sounds like branches scraping — but inside my head, painful and insistent.

  "Damn you!" I screamed, as I thrust out my foot to begin the melody. "Damn you! Leave me alone!"

  My toe touched the lowest C — and I almost strangled on the wave of hatred that swept through me. I played, faster and faster until my right hand must have been only a blur — but I didn’t open my eyes to see. I pulled out more stops — bass stops, rumbling giants so low I could almost count their vibrations. But I did so instinctively, without opening my eyes. The cold intensified; my fingers were like ice against the keys. I shuddered in spite of my violence as I pressed myself into the keyboard.

  And then I recognized the feeling that surrounded me. Not anger. Not hatred.

  Envy. Pure, unalloyed envy. It wrapped my fingers, stiffening them to the forward thrust of the music. It pressed into my mind, blurring memory. It wanted me to stop. The toccata was life, energy, movement — and it ... whatever it was ... did not want me to have that. Power and motion and vitality threatened it.

  The shadow spread. Sound and silence, music and shadow struggled, with me at the center, oblivious and uncaring. Only my music mattered.

  For the last crescendo I threw on the 32-foot pedal stop. The final chord — ten fingers, both feet, sounds pulling in every voice from the pipes and spanning three octaves lower than the lowest note to three octaves beyond the highest — the final chord chilled with a coldness beyond the frigid envy that filled the loft. I held the notes, pressed fingers into the ivory until they lost color and bleached as white as the keys. I closed my eyes tighter, shivering under vibrations that rattled windows in the chapel. The building itself shook as I pushed, harder and harder, drawing even more from the exhausted organ, from my exhausted mind. One grand, consummate chord to push back darkness.

  I fainted.

  ~~~~~

  When I woke, sunlight had broken through the window behind me. I was slumped against the wall. The chapel was gray. There was no lump of blackness at its center.

  But there was a sound ... a low rumbling, like the lifenote that opens Zarathustra and 2001. It entered me, not through my ears but through my back and legs and feet where they touched cold stone walls or wooden bench or pedals. The loft vibrated with it; the chapel echoed it.

  I stared. All of the stops had been silenced except the 32-foot bass. Its voice sounded as if from the bowels of the earth, so low as to be barely music. It seemed primal, an earthtone itself.

  I straightened and turned off the power. My muscles ached; my fingers, knuckles, legs were stiff and bruised. Even my lungs pained me when I breathed.

  But underneath the pain swelled a frantic joy that threatened tears and laughter and exultation. I knew what ... who I had touched. And I knew what I had to do.

  Tonight I will return to the chapel. And tonight, I will play his ghost to rest.

  Michael R. Collings is a two-time finalist for the Horror Writers Association annual Bram Stoker Award, once for poetry and once for non-fiction. He has written over 120 books, including bestselling horror novels, mysteries, science fiction, non-fiction (with Stephen King as a specialty) and poetry.

  A professor emeritus from Pepperdine University, he is a professional editor and reviewer as well, with multiple contributions at JournalStone.com, Hellnotes.com, and in the print journal DARK DISCOVERIES.

  This story originally appeared in Wer Means Man and Other Tales of Wonder and Terror (Wildside Press, 2010). Reprinted with permission from the author.

  (Back to Table of Contents)

  Finale in Blue

  by Alexandra Grunberg; published October 1, 2013

  Third Place Award, October 2013 Horror Contest

  Bernadette ignored the young woman’s muffled screams as she added another coat of paint to the canvas. The piece glistened in the light of her tiny studio, the window shut against the pressing darkness of the night outside. The woman’s body was tightly contained between the wooden back and the canvas surface stretched taut across the frame, though her minimal bucking caused the brush to jerk off course, just as Bernadette had planned.

  When she was done, she would be left the outline of a moving form against an abstract background, this one done in orange. "Flare in Orange." The body would be discarded, but the life would remain. Life in art. Art from life. It was her third piece in the series, and she was getting quite popular.

  It was messy, difficult work, but after years of struggling and starving, it was worth it. Bernadette remembered attending the opening of Angelo Viscari’s "River," nothing more than blue liquid moved around the floor of Le Musée de Moderne by air currents, the dull and impressionable public sheep laughing as they trailed the blue behind them while they moved on to the next exhibit, staining the white marble floor with Angelo’s so-called artwork. Nothing more than currents!

  She remembered Lucas DeJour’s naked women, standing motionless at every doorway, children giggling openly as they pointed and adults trying to hide their smirks as they took in the view, while taking plenty of pictures. She took off her clothes every night. It was not art.

  "But it’s life," explained Angelo, her ex-lover, part-time friend. He smiled at her, his smile condescending, the smile of a winner to the person who jogged across the finish line last, who people cheered as a winner for just competing while laughing at them behind their backs.

  "You paint beautifully, but people don’t want paint," Angelo was kind enough to explain to her, as he smiled his little smile that burned like red fire through her blood, tightening her throat, shortening her breath, clouding her vision. "They want life. Your work is static. Your work is dead."

  Your work is dead.

  Bernadette knew that, at that moment, she snapped.

  The closest thing to her was a canvas, so she grabbed the thick fabric and pressed it over Angelo’s face, pressing harder and harder with increasing resolve and a surprising and frightening joy. He struggled against her, but she was strong in her rage, and he had been caught off guard, still in complete disbelief as he died by her hand. In a desperate attempt, he lunged away from her, throwing himself headfirst into the brick divider of her small studio with a loud and, to Bernadette, satisfying crack.

  He fell to the ground, his body limp, his limbs splayed at odd angles, blood seeping through the rug from the freely flowing break of his skull. A paint can, balanced on the divider, fell on its side from the impact, and a lighter, pinker red, splashed on the fabric that sat loosely over his still twitching face as he eased slowly and painfully into death.

  Angelo went still, but the movement remained, stained red and full of life. He had given up his life and had become her art. "Rebirth in Red." Bernadette eased her conscience, convincing herself that if an
artist could choose their death, what better death than becoming what they loved?

  His body was found the next morning, floating in the river by Bernadette’s apartment, but she was never considered a suspect as it was never considered a murder. The police ruled Angelo’s death a suicide. A common fate for an artist. They all seemed to die so young with so much unfulfilled potential. Bernadette dedicated her piece to him, and critics swore they could feel Angelo’s spirit in the violence and passion of her piece.

  The next one to go was Lucas. She invited him over for drinks, drugged him, and trapped him inside her specially made frame, large enough for a body to move within, tight enough that he could not escape. She was able to work on her piece, entitled "Life in Purple," this time a whole body instead of just a face, without worrying about her work being judged as static, or dead, though Angelo’s grating words still echoed in her ears. When she was done, she hit Lucas repeatedly over the head with her paint can. The critics stated that the faint red hues, almost like a halo, were a lovely homage to her last piece.

  When they found his body, in the same river, Bernadette was once again skipped as a suspect, as no one was looking for a murderer. The police decided that Lucas’ suicide was a copycat of Angelo’s, another example of the unstable mind of an artist. His head injury must have been caused by hitting the edge of the bridge he jumped off of, or the jutting top of a pipe under the water. Journalists hypothesized that they were lovers, and Lucas killed himself in despair over Angelo’s death. Bernadette told reporters that, no matter the cause, their deaths were a tragic loss to the art world, and that her new piece would be coming out the next week.

  Bernadette did not know this girl, an art student studying abroad who had been inspired by her work and was ecstatic that Bernadette would take time out of her busy schedule to chat with her about art, careers, and life. It was as easy as preparing Lucas, easier actually because Lucas was not exactly a slim man and this girl slid easily into place.

  Bernadette poured the last few drips of golden-orange by the girl’s feet. Her limited ability to kick still made the paint flow beautifully, a clear struggle trapped in a modern still life. Bernadette picked up the now empty paint can and with great joy and gusto added the final touch of red, the necessary thread tying her pieces together. She sighed as she admired her work. She was not worried about the girl, who was now motionless, still trapped. Young ladies disappeared in Europe all the time.