Volume 1 Issue 2
David M. Wilson Editor
Steven Esterhuizen Graphic Design
Contents Flash Fiction
7 For I Am Your Shadow,
I Will Always Be There ................... Philip W. Kleaver
21 The Cannibal King ................................ David O'Hanlon
Short Stories 1 Damp Wind and Leaves ................................. Amy Grech 9 The Culverton Woods ................................ Steve Chantos 25 The Red Door .................................... Christopher Powers
Poetry 33 Carousel ............................................................. S.E. Ca-
Riding Shotgun
6 Cover Artist Spotlight ............................ Jeremiah Morelli
34 Reviews ............................................ The Girl on the Train
Editorial
T
David M. Wilson
here is something frightening about the end of fall, isn’t there? It’s something in the way
the leaves flutter down from the trees, curl up and die. It’s something in the way the birds fly south to winter, leaving our skies dead and shallow. It’s something in the way the animals find themselves scarce. It’s frightening. How fitting is it that we, those lovers of Horror, celebrate!
And celebrate-we-will with another great
installment of Shotgun Horror Clips, A Horror Fiction Magazine, for what you read now is our very first Halloween Issue! Leading us off is Amy Grech, a great author who offers us up a little tug at our ‘feels’ with a nostalgic, in-the-spirit-of-Halloween piece, Damp Wind and Leaves. Philip W. Kleaver follows next, taking us into the graveyard for an unearthly tale: For I Am Your Shadow, I
Will Always Be There. We’ll leave the graveyard after that and enter into The Culverton Woods with Steve Chantos, whose Halloween tale is a sure treat. Speaking of treats … David O’Hanlon tells us all about The Cannibal King and his favorite fleshy food, and for a trick, Christopher Powers dives into a mind gone mad in The Red Door.
We hope our cover art, work by Jeremiah Morelli, has put you into the mood for some fun
fiction, but if you’re looking for a movie recommend, instead, we’ve got one for you in the reviews section: The Girl on the Train. We hope you enjoy all of our pages, and, if you’re really feeling in the scare-spirit, read this whole magazine, every bit of it, all in one sitting. At night. With the lights down low. Alone. With the window open, maybe, and … … is that your closet door creaking open? Happy Halloween! —Dave, October 28th, 2016
Things that are (or could be) new: 1) We’ve decided to pay our contributors for the submissions starting 11/11/2016 (our next issue), so spread the word! New authors are most welcome! 2) We've spiffed up our ads a little bit, to give an idea to those interested in advertising space what they can expect, in terms of avaliable surface area. 3) We've been tossing around the idea of making this E-Zine a monthly affair come the new year, to be put out on the 15th of each month. What do you think? We'd love to hear your opinion. 4) We've been looking into making bookmarks for DeadLights Horror Fiction Magazine, and we thought that it would be cool to offer up a free bookmark to anyone who can find typos on our website or in our magazine. We aren't offering this promotion yet, but it may be in the future and it could be a lot of fun. Any interest in this? 5) We've said 'we've' five times in a row now, and we've found that to be very annoying. 6) Six times, sorry. Got opinions? Hit us with them: deadlightsmagazine@gmail.com
Damp Wind and Leaves Amy Grech Amy Grech is a writer from Brooklyn, New York. and she is a very active member of the Horror Writers Association; she is a very active writer, period. New Pulp Press recently published her book of Noir Stories, 'Rage and Redemption in Alphabet City', she has a short story forthcoming in 'Tales of the Lake Vol. 3'. You can visit her website, www.crimsonscreams.com, or follow her on Twitter: www.twitter/com/ amy_grech. In this story, Amy explores Halloween in a way that leaves us all a little nostalgic for the days that once were ...
D
racula. Frankenstein. The Mummy. The Wolfman. Posters covered his walls, as did cotton cobwebs, rubber tarantulas, and bats strung with elastic. Dribbles of wax added authenticity to
the gold-painted candelabra on shelves covered with Tales from the Crypt andVault of Horror comics and antique Aurora monster models. Layered across this display fit for a wax museum was the season’s own finishing touch, stark claw-like shadows of brittle, bare branches cast through his window by the flickering street lamp outside.
As he stood gazing down at Marlborough Street, Jeff wished he were twelve again—old enough
to go even a block ahead of Dad while still young enough to get pounds of free candy. Since he was seventeen, though, he was supposed to be a bit old for that. Might look too threatening to the generally older, wealthy residents of Back Bay Boston should he, a six foot tall walking corpse, lean into a welllit foyer and growl, “Trick or treat!”
Jeff refused to let go of Halloween any more than he had to. He turned from the darkening
street back to his bed, where white facial stage makeup, a sponge, black eyeliner pencil, white formal gloves, a circular, golden amulet on a red ribbon, and the heavy, long, black cape were strewn. Smiling over the goods, he felt totally prepared. Jeff already wore his uncle’s tuxedo, and his hair was black shoe polished and slicked back. After joining the living (his parents) for dinner, he would don the rest of the costume, inspect himself in his bathroom mirror, pretend he couldn’t see a reflection in it, and fully become the only Dracula these trick-or-treaters would care to remember. Practicing his best 1
Amy Grech
October 28, 2016
Lugosi, he said, “There are far worse things awaiting man than cavities.” Then Jeff gave a goofy smile made wicked by the porcelain fitted fangs he had worn off and on all afternoon.
He heard his Mom call down from the kitchen and he returned to reality. Scaring crowds of
costumed kids was not going to be the exciting work it was on TV and in smaller towns. These days, especially in a city like Boston, trick-or-treating was on its way out due to publicized stories of poisoned candy, and most of the neighborhood was reluctant to open doors very often at night. So this year, Jeff’s parents were doing their part for safety by holding a party and asking parents to bring their children.
There was a tap on his door, followed by the wild creaking of the hinges. A couple of tightened
screws had achieved the effect. His Mom entered. “Honey, we’ve got to eat now so I can clear the table in time. And I don’t want you to rush or else you’ll get tomato sauce on your costume.”
He came out of the bathroom, yanking his fangs out. “None of these kids are going to appreciate
it anyway. The effect is gonna wear thin when they laugh at my accent.” Jeff sat on the edge of his bed and sighed.
After a moment, his Mom sat down next to him and put her hand on his knee. “I know you’re
not looking forward to this, Jeff. You probably wish you were a little younger tonight.”
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, we all grow up, whatever.”
“But I’ll tell you something, pal, this was always one of my favorite holidays, and it still is. I’m
forty-four. So there. Incidentally, the Morrises’s daughter Melanie is around your age. They’re making her come along. Now come on down to eat. You can have some wine, if you like, on this grand occasion.”
They stood and she patted her son on the back. In the doorway, he said in character, “I never
drink ... wine.”
They finished eating just as twilight crossed over to the beginning of true night. Jeff flew upstairs
and donned the Dracula wear. The plates went into the dishwasher as soon as the doorbell rang. At the bottom of the stairs, he caught his Mom’s gaze and saw her wink. From behind a newspaper his Dad grunted, “Go suck their blood, son.” Jeff floated across the foyer, wrapped his cape about him, and opened the door.
“Trick or treat!” Before him stood a four-and-a-half foot cat-woman carrying a writhing mouse-
boy on her back. Their eager smiles soon faded to looks of concern. The Mouse’s head whipped back in search of parents back on the sidewalk, but the King of the Vampires held the Cat’s eyes in his piercing gaze.
Then he opened his cape, changing from mysterious to elegant. “I am Dracula. I bid you
welcome.” The girl’s smile returned even if the younger boy was still unsure. As Jeff opened the door Damp Leaves and Wind 2
SHOTGUN HORROR CLIPS
wider Susan and little Mike Morris entered, followed by Mr. and Mrs. Morris. They were both shy, and they smiled at Jeff as they walked back into the living room. As they left the foyer, he noticed Mr. Morris was wearing gorilla feet instead of shoes. This made Jeff grunt in approval; the grunt became a sinister chuckle, and soon Dracula was testing the echo of the empty foyer with a resounding, evil laugh.
Then a creak from the open door made him turn toward it, arms still outstretched, head still
high, mouth still wide open. It was not the usual pose for attracting women. Slouching somewhat in the doorway was Melanie Morris. At least that was who it must be, thought Jeff, as he composed himself—but still remaining in character, for he wasn’t sure how to act around girls he didn’t know. Her wide brown eyes focused on him in an expression of amazement mixed with what must be the Morris Adult Shyness; her head was tilted down a touch so that those eyes looked out from under a prettily concerned forehead. She gave a sudden, brief smile and walked briskly past him into the living room. As he watched her go, he almost shut the door in Mr. Finch’s face, who was just arriving with his wife and their twin boys.
For the next half-hour, the crowd down the short hall in the living room grew. So did the noise,
between uninhibited adults, like the boisterous Mr. Finch who got onion dip in his wife’s hair and proceeded to lick it off, and their children who were high on sugar and numbered around fourteen. Jeff wafted in and out of the room, trying to look darkly dignified when not putting on a show for newcomers at the door.
On one of his return trips he noticed that Melanie had situated herself by the clean but currently
dormant fireplace. On either side of her the festivities raged, but she sat in a pocket of calm. Back out in the darkened foyer, he realized that she was in the one spot where she could see the front door. When he suddenly looked down the hall toward her, her pretty eyes immediately darted away to the right. Although they were at opposite ends of the house, they could see each other as if through binoculars.
By the time the last guests wondered in, Jeff stopped returning to the living room. He rested
out on the staircase near the door in anticipation of the madness that awaited him in the form of the kids. All the gaiety in there seemed about to overflow into his area of refuge. Sure enough, a shadow slowly began to take over the light pooled on the floor by the hall. But instead of his Mom or, God forbid, a couple of bored, costumed children, it was Melanie who quietly stepped into his shadows. At first, she did not see him, and she moved over to the front window, hands clasped behind her, and knelt by the unlit jack-o-lantern. Jeff had forgotten it was there; apparently his Mom had asked Melanie to light its candle. The flickering light from the match she struck and the candle she lit gave 3
Amy Grech
October 28, 2016
him not only an ethereal image of her face but a feeling that slowly made him stand. Then he forgot why he stood and just watched her.
Then he spoke softly. “Melanie.”
Instead of jumping up in surprise, she merely replied, “Count Dracula, is that you?” Then there
was a long moment of exciting silence.
He descended from the stairs. “Actually my name is Jeff. Somehow we’ve never met. I mean...”
“I know.” When the light from the hall suddenly revealed him right in front of her, Melanie
gasped and said, “I really like your costume.” Then she moved out of the shadows.
He saw her try to hide her smile as soon as the light showed it. They now stood two feet apart.
Jeff was terrified even though he knew he must look scary to her. He wanted to slip back into character and was just about speak Transylvanian when rapid footsteps approached from behind him. He knew exactly what to do.
By the sound of it, all fourteen of them were scurrying toward them. His Mom had probably
sent them. Just as they were about to reach the foyer, the Great Vampire turned on them with a vicious snarl, his vast cape of darkness spread wide. High-pitched screams erupted, followed quickly by hysterical giggling, as the hallway became a chaotic mass of miniature monsters, princesses, and various creatures delighting in the scare. Then one small voice spoke up: “Where’s Melanie?” Now all were quiet.
Jeff moved to the side and quickly glanced about the foyer and the dimly lit staircase, but she
was gone. Then there came a low creaking sound as the front door slowly swung on its unoiled hinges. There was nobody there. No body, but there sat the jack-o-lantern flickering away in all its spookiness. They silently gathered around it. In an intentionally trembling voice, Jeff said, “Melanie?”
“Boo!” An explosion of screams perhaps even more impressive than those Jeff had elicited came
from the rear of the group. There stood Melanie in the middle of the foyer laughing proudly at her scheme. She gave Jeff a wink, and he was now in love.
He decided, too, that he wouldn’t mind showing these kids a frightfully good time if she were
there. So he led them all up the pitch-black staircase, using the jack-o-lantern as a light. Jeff prepared them for his Monster Palace by giving an ominous warning not to touch the models or cobwebs, it being in their own best interest as mortals. Then he showed them inside. They gasped and shuddered (and, of course, giggled) as he gave each ghastly prop the show-and-tell treatment. Particularly effective were the glow-in-the-dark, life-size skull and Ben, his gerbil who, he told them, was a rat who came over on the ship from the old country. Finally, he prepared them for Borris Karloff in Frankenstein. By Damp Leaves and Wind 4
SHOTGUN HORROR CLIPS
the time he was done setting the mood, even the older kids were ready for a black and white movie. He set the jack-o-lantern on the shelf above the TV and started the creature feature.
The second feature was a full-color homage to the monster films to which his palace was dedicated,
Fred Dekker’s The Monster Squad. Ten minutes into it, the kids were so hooked on monsters that he felt he could leave them entranced for a while. He put Jamie Barton in charge, told his Mom to look in on them, and stepped outside into the damp, breezy night with Melanie.
Through filling the kids with the spirit of Halloween, he felt satisfied and happy. As he stepped
onto the sidewalk with this girl he had met only hours before, he felt impossibly comfortable with her. Halloween was a night when the impossible, the strange, and the supernatural, aspects of humanity the civilized human ignores the rest of the year, were remembered and celebrated in all their mystery. They had walked more than a block in silence. Now they reached the vacant corner of Marlborough and Exeter, and a cold gust swirled dead leaves around them.
Melanie spoke up first. “You were fun with those kids. You really have a way with them.”
“That’s because,” he said, “I wish I were one of them.”
She though for a few seconds. “Then you wouldn’t be out here with me.” They kept walking in
the crosswind, both suddenly afraid again.
“I wish I had worn a costume, but I don’t know,” she stuttered, “I-I’m, you know, shy sometimes
and ...”
They stopped and more leaves blew past. Jeff looked at the full moon and said into the night:
“You don’t need a costume, because you have beautiful brown eyes.”
5
It was a surprisingly easy thing to say.
Amy Grech
Cover Artist
SPOTLIGHT Jeremiah Morelli Jeremiah Morelli comes to us from Bavaria, Germany, where he teaches art. Though he does enjoy the tactile sensations involved with physically painting, he fell deeply in love with his art when he found that he was able to paint in a digital medium. Since that time, he's been producing wonderful works (such as http://jerry8448.deviantart.com/art/Always-take-the-sun-with-you-584002314 and http://jerry8448.deviantart.com/art/Care-to-join-me-598439455, which we love and reccomend you view on Deviant Art), and, among them, is our cover for this year's Halloween Edition: "Halloween Tree". His art can take darker tones, he says, but he finds inspiration all around him; he doesn't limit himself to one mode or genre, and with his obvious talent, why would you? When asked about some of his favorite horror films, he will tell you that he prefers movies that rely on generating atmosphere rather than the dumping on of fake blood. It's not surprising, then, that he likes movies like 'The Others', 'Let Me In', and 'We Are What We Are'. Excellent choices, and ones that match his flair for the arts so very well. Want more? Get in touch with him! www.morjers-art.de
Shotgun Horror Clips would like to thank Mr. Morelli for use of “Halloween Tree�.
6
For I Am Your Shadow, I Will Always Be There
Philip W. Kleaver Philip W. Kleaver lives with his cat in Baltimore, Maryland, where he works as an educator. He is an avid collector of science fiction and horror paperbacks—preferably the musty, yellowing kind. He can be reached at pwkleaver@outlook.com.
I
t fed off our grief, our fear, our loneliness. It could not be seen, except by those most sensitive to the ragged edges of reality. There, our world is buffeted by the howling abyss beyond what we call
sanity. Small children, paranoids, and invalids catch glimpses of it in the throes of nightmares—an impermanent shadow, devoid of any nameable features, save for one: the shifting constellations of slobbering, ravenous mouths, where sharp fangs glint like distant stars. It feeds off their terror; only through them is it satisfied.
For a little while.
For months, it lingered in the walls of a derelict home. The owner, a cruel, stunted man, beat
his wife and child daily for their perceived sins. His rage seeped from a wound all his own, deep inside, set there by his father. The shadow nursed at this wound, and ate freely the sorrows of the woman and child. But this supply was tainted—their pain became overpowered by the love that the woman felt for her offspring, and when they fled out into the darkness of one late October night, the shadow found that the man’s pain was not enough to sate its hunger
So it drifted, creeping between the headstones of a nearby graveyard. In a large, marble mausoleum,
it laid in wait, thinking that it would feast on the anguish of the wretches gathered to remember their dead. But was disappointed. Although it drank the tears of mourning families, the shadow was repulsed by other emotions in the funereal air: brotherhood and compassion between the black-clad people gathered around a freshly-dug grave; relief, from those who were content that it was not yet their time; and, again and again, that distasteful feeling called love that twisted the shadow into angry, grotesque forms. 7
One cold day, by the gates of the burial grounds, the shadow inhaled an abundance of fear, Philip W. Kleaver
October 28, 2016
confusion, and, its favorite: misery. It traced the scent to an elder, being pushed around in a wheelchair by a nurse, who nodded mechanically and stared ahead as the old man spoke.
The shadow stalked the elder, following as they left the graveyard, loaded into a van, and
drove across town to a squat, brick building. A sign out front identified it as the Wildwood Acres Convalescent Home. The shadow passed through the doors and darted in and out of the rooms ...
In one, a white-haired crone calls endlessly for her husband, long dead. In the next, the banshee
wails of another wrinkled woman echoes off faded, white walls. In the dining hall, an ashen-faced man babbles like an infant. All of them, lost in the labyrinths inside of their minds, see the shadow and tremble in fear.
So it stays, growing fat.
For I Am Your Shadow, I Am Always There 8
SHOTGUN HORROR CLIPS
The Culverton Woods Steve Chantos Unlike most people, Steve’s main concern (as a writer) is not the voices in his head, but rather the terrifying prospect that they may stop at some point! But, of course, this is the dread of all true horror fans—not that one’s demons torment him, but that they may someday ignore him … Steve lives in Illinois with a terrific wife, two great kids, and a couple of sweet pooches. Someone please send help …
S
eeing Halloween displays go up in stores in early October always reminds me of how much I looked forward to it as a kid. If you think about it, roaming the streets for candy accompanied by
the supposed spirits of the restless dead and the very demons themselves seems like an odd idea for a holiday. But I guess it’s no weirder than a clairvoyant fat guy in a red flannel suit delivering gifts, or a giant rodent bringing baskets of chocolate and jelly beans.
What’s certain is that Halloween was, for me, one of the greatest things about being a kid. And
unless you grew up locked in a closet in the Appalachians by “hill-folk” parents, or were raised by a couple of humorless holy rollers, you've probably got some great memories associated with it too. Not least of which surely includes favorite costumes.
As a kid of about seven or eight, I remember always wanting to dress up as a hobo. Just give
me some shabby clothes, a little charcoal dust for a five o’clock shadow, a fake cigar, and the classic stick-and-bag bindle, and I was one pumped up little trick-or-treater!
My parents, however, would usually veto that in favor of something “clever.” Like the year they
gave my brother and me a big white cardboard box each, with several large black dots pasted on every side, and holes cut in the top for our heads. We were then paraded around the neighborhood as a pair of dice. “How cute!” you might say. Yeah maybe, as long as you’re not the one inside the box …
This humiliation was obviously eased somewhat by trick-or-treating for hours on end. Back
then it felt like we went to every house within what seemed like several square miles. Funny though, I still recall how that clever costume made both of us feel as small as an actual pair of dice for a while. 9
Even a cheap “Ben Cooper” would have been preferable to the damn dice costume. Ben Cooper Steve Chantos
October 28, 2016
costumes were the ones with the cheap plastic masks with a length of elastic string stapled to the back. Along with the mask, you’d get a flimsy, nylon jumpsuit with a silkscreened image on the front. But actually, when you’re a child of about six or so, those costumes are really your first choice. They featured standard characters like Frankenstein’s monster, Batman, a skeleton, a witch, a princess, or any number of cartoon characters of the day. I clearly remember Casper the Friendly Ghost and, perhaps scariest of all, ol’ Tricky Dick himself—Richard Nixon!
Anyway, some years later certain people began to complain about how unsafe the Cooper
costumes were—with their eye-cutouts that restricted vision, or “dangerously sharp” edges, etc. But the only real hazard with those masks was possibly rubbing your tongue raw by constantly sticking it in and out of the little mouth-hole over the course of the evening.
Fortunately for us back then—the late 60s and most of the 70s—we didn’t have too many of
the “watchdog” parents groups. Leave it to well-meaning grownups to spoil all the fun …
But as kids, our biggest concern with those masks was the amount of moisture generated around
the mouth slit when you’d stick your tongue through it, or just the buildup of your breath inside. For us though, the slobber was just all part of the experience. Besides, they smelled awesome—kind of like … Halloween!
As you got a little older, egging and toilet-papering houses was (and still is) the big payoff of
the night. It was never really a temptation for my brother and me since, had we been caught, we knew our dad would have literally choked the life out of us for such vandalism.
But the main thing about Halloween for most kids was obviously the candy. You'd get home
after trick-or-treating with your brown, twine-handled grocery bag, or king-size pillowcase full of goodies, and munch on that decadent haul well into the night. Or at least until your parents noticed your bulging chipmunk cheeks and the multi-colored drool running from your mouth. It’s no surprise that my best memories are mostly of my brother and me ingesting enough sugar in just a few hours to put an entire small town into insulin shock. Ah, the good old days.
The only downside I can remember at that age were the stories of the real Halloween monsters—
the psychopathic assholes who put razor blades or poison or needles, etc., into the goodies. Quite the hobby …
Perhaps your fondest memories are when you were older (not to be confused with being more
mature, mind you) and possibly getting sloppy drunk at a Halloween party.
Certain holidays like Halloween and Christmas (but definitely not Easter), have some “staying The Culverton Woods 10
power.” That is to say, one can still enjoy it as an adult, if in a totally different way.
In fact, October 31st of my sophomore year at college will forever stand as a shining example
of unfettered Hallows’ Eve debauchery. It’s all a bit foggy from all the alcohol, but I seem to recall countless parties, widespread nudity, and frequent flights from numerous, blaring squad cars over the course of the evening.
So everyone has their great Halloween memories, no matter how wild or innocent. But the most
memorable of them all for me was, unfortunately, neither nostalgic nor fun. Instead it was, without a doubt, the most disturbing experience of my life …
All of this youthful Halloween merriment I’ve described (except for the college bacchanal)
happened in a fairly decent-size town by the name of Culverton. The population was about thirty thousand at that time, and it offered plenty of things to do for an eleven-year-old boy such as myself. It was actually a relatively friendly town too, for the most part, with a good number of kids to play with. And it just so happened that, included among them, was the coolest best friend on the entire planet by the name of Kevin Morrison.
Kev and I did everything together. We'd hang out every chance we'd get during school and, as
my mother used to say, we were "joined at the hip" on weekends. Just about every Friday and Saturday night we'd take turns staying over at one or the other's house. And by what must surely have been, in retrospect, some low-level political maneuvering by our parents (or maybe just plain bribery) we were even on the same little league team!
Of course during summer vacation we were together every day. We’d run around, play tennis
or swim, and then invariably end up riding our bikes to the arcade at the local mall. Both the arcade and the mall were considered fairly progressive places for the early seventies, or that's how it seemed to us anyway. There was also a small movie theater where we’d expand our cultural horizons with flicks like Rosemary’s Baby or the overlooked classic, It’s Alive! The latter being the old familiar tale about a murderous, deformed infant that can’t be killed and could move as skillfully as a jungle cat. However, if I remember right, the little fella actually became the hero of the equally obscure sequel—It Lives
Again!
If not misspending our youth at the movies or arcade, we'd hang out at a little privately owned
swim club called Sun N' Swim. For about a hundred bucks back then, you could get your kid a membership and have him or her out of your hair for most of the summer, apart from the occasional transport to and from. 11 Steve Chantos
October 28, 2016
It had a full-size pool, a full outdoor basketball court, and a couple of decent tennis courts.
Kind of a reasonably priced country club for kids.
Like every other guy there, the two of us would look for girlfriends, asking suitably “foxy” (the
highest possible compliment back then) females to go steady with us, or simply—“Hey, you wanna go with me?”
Kev and I would do our best to get each other hooked up if one of us was having trouble. It was
basically a "flavor of the month" sort of thing, switching partners as often as we did. But I guess the point was that it made us feel like we were just like actual High Schoolers—the epitome of coolness in the known universe at that point in our lives.
Most kids there would be hooked up with someone at any given time but, of course, on occasion
you’d find a girl weeping in the clubhouse after some guy had broken up with her. All her friends would gather to console her, and assure her what an asshole he was. A guy who was jilted, on the other hand, would just sort of mope around for a few days and keep to himself, playing Space Invaders, Galaxian or Pac Man in the clubhouse until his friends accused him of being a wuss. But looking back, even with these occasional breakups, the place was really a pubescent paradise.
Even so, in addition to the swim club, there was a local roller rink across town, in case we needed
yet another outlet for our rampaging hormones.
At that age, it seemed like we had absolutely endless possibilities for having fun. So admittedly,
with all these diversions available to us, there was really no reason to get into trouble. Which meant, of course, you weren't really trying. Like I said, we were typical eleven-year-old boys.
There was, for example, the occasional fight. Of the two of us, it was more often Kev who was
involved, and usually for the same reason. Now I was a pretty good-looking kid, but the girls all swooned over Kev. He had blond hair, blue eyes and a small mole on the tip of the right side of his nose. The chicks loved it, but guys gave him shit about it, saying things like, "Did you have an accident helping your mommy bake chocolate chip cookies?" The fact is that it usually came from the jealous ex of a current girlfriend of Kev’s. Funny, the kind of stuff that can piss you off when you’re eleven.
So, even though he was an absolute “chick magnet” (another legitimately cool term back then),
he was a bit sensitive to the mole, and every so often I'd have to peel him off of some insulting dumbass because of it. But not until the kid paid with a little blood, since I’d let Kev get some good licks in first. Despite his looks, Kevin was a pretty tough kid. The Culverton Woods 12
SHOTGUN HORROR CLIPS
Most times, though, our delinquency just involved minor things like throwing eggs at the house
of a girl that had broken up with one of us, or picking flowers out of some neighbor’s yard for that very same girl the next week after we'd made up.
And we couldn’t resist the classics—doorbell ditch or lighting a bagful of dogshit and leaving
it on someone’s doorstep at night. The trick there was to wrap the shit in just a couple sheets of wet toilet paper to keep it nice and moist and sticky before you put it in the bag (to the currently deviant, fun-loving youth of America—you’re welcome). It seemed like we were always finding our way into some sort of trouble, albeit at the misdemeanor level. And we always seemed to get caught in the act— which is to say we were observed in the act, never actually apprehended. One of us always managed to notice the offended party in time to yell, "Run!" at which point we'd tear ass out of there to eventual safety.
When Sun N' Swim closed for the season in the fall, we tended to settle down a bit. But we still
needed to amuse ourselves, and having a state park on the edge of town full of huge, strip-mine ponds and wooded hills with hiking trails was a pretty cool place to hang out. We’d ride our ten-speeds out there on the weekend, carrying fishing poles and a couple cartons of store-bought worms.
Sometimes, we'd invite a neighbor kid named Mike Jefferies to come along. Jesus, if anyone
could get into more trouble than the two of us, it was Mike. Don’t get me wrong though, we loved the guy for that! The three of us would stop off at the gas station for soda and other assorted unhealthy snacks—chips, candy bars, and beef sticks with oil practically dripping off of them. We didn’t realize it back then, but it was essentially all just nicely packaged coronary artery disease. But we didn‘t care—"Gotta grab some grub," we'd say, and hit the road. It was a good, five-mile ride each way but, being eleven, we could have ridden twice that far and barely felt the difference.
Fall was also the time of year when the subject of the Culverton Woods came up. Or more
precisely, the witch who allegedly lived deep within those woods. Funny how it got pushed out of Culverton residents' collective minds for most of the year, except for a few days around the end of October. It was like a yearlong denial until the falling leaves and chill air sort of tapped us all on the shoulder with its boney, Halloween finger.
Even then, it wasn't discussed much by anyone except kids. I think it was mostly because the
majority of adults in the area actually took the legend seriously and were maybe superstitious about bringing it up. 13 Steve Chantos
October 28, 2016
There was an old, little-used, two-lane
highway that led out to the strip-mine ponds, flanked by thousands of acres of woods in either direction. About halfway out, we'd pass the supposed unmarked trail that led back to her house. Maybe it was just eleven-year-olds' overactive imaginations, but we all swore things were different for a few hundred yards along the road on either side of that trail. We noticed that things got super quiet right around there—like weird quiet. No birds singing, no animals at all that we ever saw, and just tons of bugs—mainly flies.
No one that we knew personally ever took
that trail back into the woods, but four or five years before we started biking out there, a group of Culverton High kids supposedly went in one Halloween afternoon to check out the legend for themselves.
Halloween fell on a Saturday that year, and
Denny Fredrickson, a junior at C.H.S. and varsity football stud, had been out drinking with some friends. They decided to try to find her house in the late afternoon hours before they went out partying that evening.
The story goes that they drove out into the
woods as far as their four-wheel-drive truck would take them, but when the ground became soggy they had to walk for nearly a mile before finally coming upon the house. Supposedly Denny was the only one who had the balls to even get within several hundred yards of the place.
In the following days, the others with him The Culverton Woods 14
SHOTGUN HORROR CLIPS
reported that they refused to go any further into the woods when all sorts of strange things suddenly started happening. They claimed that a bunch of crows began going crazy—cawing and divebombing when they got within a certain distance of the house. It was as though once they had crossed some invisible boundary, her minions mobilized and sounded the alarm. Or at least that’s what it seemed like to them. Some even said they heard a faint hissing that surrounded them the nearer they got to the house. One kid swore that it was actually the trees that were making the sound.
Of course the stories would have been written off as just that—made-up spook stories—if it
hadn't have been for the condition in which Denny arrived home later that afternoon and apparently remained in thereafter.
The boys claimed that Denny, after running back from her house and screaming the whole way,
had his head and face covered in bloody wounds inflicted by the birds. But the boys claimed that the wounds were inflicted only on the way back from the house, as if he alone were permitted to reach it unharmed. Apparently he was a nervous wreck when he finally returned before collapsing on the ground. The other boys reportedly had to carry him for quite a ways back to the truck.
According to them, he talked incoherently the whole way home—mumbling, moaning, and
crying uncontrollably at times. All of which was decidedly unstudly behavior and really freaked his buddies out. In fact, it was the subsequent no-nonsense, sober behavior of Denny’s friends when they returned back to school that created some serious buzz with the youth of the town.
When the guys delivered Denny to his parents after the ordeal, they thought he’d be ok. But he
supposedly went into shock later that evening and was taken to the hospital. For a few days after that, most people's attitude was, "Ok, kid, cut the act—joke's over." But his folks had to have him admitted to a psyche ward a few days later, when he tearfully insisted that the witch had “done something” to him. He developed a strange skin disorder and lost most of the function of his right arm. He claimed that she had grabbed his arm and he watched it instantly decay—the skin peeling back to reveal rotting muscles, and maggots crawling all over and burrowing into it. And although there wasn’t any physical evidence of what he described, the arm began to atrophy in just a couple weeks and he never played football again. The family ended up moving away his senior year and no one heard from them after that.
A lot of secondhand stories circulated about his description of the witch's physical appearance.
He claimed she had greasy, thinning gray hair—all stringy and matted—through which large, seeping tumors protruded and glistened all over her head. He described her facial features as being very sharp, with leathery, ashen skin and a forehead all bunched up into a permanent, angry scowl. He remembers 15 Steve Chantos
October 28, 2016
her skin having open sores all over it, too, and looking more like fungus in spots than human flesh. He talked about the dark, purple circles under her deep-set eyes, but reportedly would begin weeping uncontrollably every time he tried to describe the eyes themselves.
He claimed her breath stank like rotting meat and that he could feel it literally burning his face
as she spoke. He described the words as some strange language that she said very slowly yet sharply while right up next to him before he finally tore himself away and ran back to the group.
He later spoke in detail about what had happened when he reached her house. He claims he
snuck into an extremely cold, dimly lit front room and spied on her down a long hallway as she sat stock still in a chair with her back to him in the other room. He described her as dressed all in black, and that she seemed very small for an adult. He said he could hear a sort of low, gurgling laugh now and then and decided to leave at that point, but hesitated when she got up and walked out of view for just a second. He said he lost sight of her in the room for only a moment, but that she appeared instantly at his side, glaring at him face to face as if she had somehow grown to match his height. He claimed that when she was next to him, she grabbed his upper arm so quickly and with such force that he was almost lifted off the ground until he thought his arm would break. He said it felt like when Coach Dunne had grabbed his arm sophomore year and cussed him out for complaining during twoa-day summer football practices. Of course the difference was that Coach Dunne was about 6'6" and 260 pounds of solid muscle, unlike the witch who Denny put at just over five feet until, like he said, she stood right next to him.
Whatever the truth was, I have heard that a lot of people ended up moving out of town because
of what supposedly happened. And although the cops claimed to have extensively searched that area of the woods shortly thereafter, they reported never having seen a house or any evidence of anyone living in the area. But there were rumors about a cop who was later fired for admitting that none of them ever really went into the woods themselves, only searched the perimeter near the highway where the group of boys went in.
What I can tell you for sure though, from firsthand experience, is that not only is there a house
and some thing that lives in it, but Denny Fredrickson was lucky to get out of there at all. I now believe with all my heart that my best friend, Kevin Morrison, and my neighbor, Mike Jefferies, went in there and never made it out.
I wasn't with them the day they went looking for the house. I was out of town for a few days
before and after Halloween that year. My family and I had gone up north to visit my granddad who The Culverton Woods 16
SHOTGUN HORROR CLIPS
was close to dying. I called Kev and told him it looked like I was going to miss Halloween, so he and Mike should trick or treat without me. But since the three of us had planned to go looking for the house together, he asked if he and Mike should wait to do it until I got back. I told them it would probably be more fun to do it close to Halloween, so just go ahead, but give me all the details when I got home.
He called me after they went the first time, the day before Halloween, and said they rode bikes
as far into the woods as they could and walked for another hour in the woods until they came upon what looked like a house way off in the distance. He was all excited and said they were going back to try and take something out of there on Halloween sometime in the afternoon. I said something to the effect that they were crazy but be careful if they did, and reminded him about Denny Fredrickson. And that's the last time I ever spoke to Kev. But I now believe that it's not the last time I ever actually saw him.
The cops recovered what were later identified as Kevin’s and Mike's shirts, socks and shoes near
one of the strip-mine ponds. They said their bikes had been found there as well. And since there had been several days of Indian summer, with record highs in the eighties, the fact that they went swimming wasn't necessarily unusual. They said during that time of year, even though it was warm enough to swim, there were "cold pockets" in the water and that they probably cramped up and went under. They showed me photos of their clothes and bikes when I got back, and I recognized Kev's shirt and both bikes but noticed that something definitely wasn’t right in the pictures. The bikes were laid on
top of one another, like they had just been tossed there. I told the cops that no kid ever puts his bike on top of his friend's bike. Apparently a few days later they brought in some people to drag the pond but no bodies were ever recovered. They said it wasn't unusual since some of those strip mine ponds were seventy-five to a hundred feet deep in some places. But by that time I had already decided to check things out for myself.
After they showed me the pictures and interviewed me, I decided that these cops, like the ones
rumored to have lied years ago, were too chickenshit to check out what really happened.
A cold front had begun to move in early in the afternoon about a week after Halloween, and
it was fairly chilly and overcast as I rode out to try and find the house. When I arrived at the edge of the woods, I rode my bike in as far as I could, for what seemed like maybe fifteen minutes, following the exact directions Kev had given me. My tires began to bog down as the ground became somewhat soggy, so I set off on foot from that point. The wind had also picked up, causing me to bury my face 17 Steve Chantos
October 28, 2016
in my coat as I walked. In fact, I was about to give up and had even turned around to go back and head home when I heard what sounded like a crow cawing. I turned around again and looked ahead in the same direction that I had been walking, but this time I noticed a house, very small and set behind some trees in the distance.
As I approached it, I saw several large crows, maybe five or six, perched high up in a tree. As I
continued to walk, they would fly off in a group and all land in another tree twenty yards or so ahead of me. Then, as I reached that tree, they would do the same thing again, all the way up to the house.
Leaves and twigs crunched beneath my feet but it sounded weird somehow, almost like the
sound was quickly muffled. It was like being in a very small, well-insulated room where the sound is stifled almost as soon as it happens. It's kind of hard to explain, other than to say that it feels somehow claustrophobic. Also, the whole area had a kind of deathly silence—no birds except the crows, and no wind through the trees. I could barely even hear the rustling from the leaves blowing across the ground.
I admit I was getting pretty damned scared at that point with my heart pounding in my ears,
and I explained away the strange silence because of that. What I couldn’t explain, and the reason I almost turned back again, was when I noticed what appeared to be eyes looking up at me from some of the shadows beneath the leaves which blanketed the ground. But as I’d walk closer to them they’d vanish, and begin to reappear some distance ahead. I forced myself to stop looking at the ground at that point.
As scared as I was, the thought of finding out if my best friend was still alive was really the only
thing that kept my legs moving forward.
As I came up to the house, I could see that it was an old stone house, like something out of a
medieval village almost. I guessed it to be about twenty feet wide across the front, and about twice as long. Much of the place was overgrown with vines and ivy, and a thick moss covered most of the slate roof. It appeared dark inside through the age-warped glass, which itself appeared to have some kind of a faint, reddish glaze over it.
There was a small, rotting porch deck that was busted in spots, so I carefully walked across the
boards that were still in place, trying not to make any noise. Unlike the woods, everything here seemed overly amplified.
And suddenly there was a sound. A loud sound of boards creaking under my feet in the dead
silence. I stopped, frozen to the spot. I was about to turn and leave again at that point when I noticed The Culverton Woods 18
SHOTGUN HORROR CLIPS
something familiar hanging on the top corner of the door frame—a white, puka-shell necklace with a shark’s tooth. It was Mike’s.
After what seemed like a solid minute, I finally forced myself to take one final step and I reached
a spot in front of a large window on the front wall, just a few feet to the side of the door. As I slowly willed my head close enough to look inside, I thought it odd that only the slightest bit of daylight managed to get in from outside since there were no drapes. Only the sill on the inside seemed to be lit, and perhaps just a few feet of the floor beyond. A jolt of fear went through me as I suddenly noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. It was a cat, sort of light yellow, sitting inside on top of an armchair near the very corner of the sill.
Even though it must have been aware of me, it seemed indifferent, finally turning its head lazily
to look at me. At that point, it suddenly perked up its ears and began furiously pawing at the window, as if it were trying to reach me.
What I saw next chilled me from the inside out, and literally sent a huge shiver through me. I
felt sick to my stomach as well when I looked closer—the cat had blue, human-looking eyes and what looked like a small mole on the right side of the tip of its nose.
I don't know how long I stood looking at him as he looked back with loud cries of seeming
desperation, but all of the sudden a face appeared a few feet above him from out of nowhere. All at once, she snatched up the cat by the scruff of the neck and brought it up to the glass in front of me.
Until that moment, I had always thought that being paralyzed with fear was just an expression.
But I was literally frozen where I stood. She slowly lowered the cat to her side and I was left looking straight into her eyes. I remember them being very bloodshot with jaundiced-looking whites, and the irises a dark gray, except for the pupils that somehow seemed impossibly black, almost hollow.
The eyes widened until the bloodshot, yellowed whites showed all the way around, and I can't
remember seeing anything else at that moment except those two eyes and how they bored into me and seethed with anger. I now realize that it was right at that moment I truly understood there was such a thing as real evil in the world. Not just some devil-with-a-pitchfork caricature, but a real, murderous hate; an absolute loathing of my life.
Her eyes were locked on mine, and I don’t know how to describe it other than I could physically
feel the hatred burning in them. It was then she began to lean slowly forward, and move her face toward mine. The pane of glass seemed to disappear between us, and my body became more and more rigid the closer her face got to mine. I remember things beginning to go dark and fuzzy at the edge of my vision, and then feeling nauseous again, as if I was losing consciousness. I'm sure I would have blacked 19 Steve Chantos
October 28, 2016
out had it not been for what happened next.
I remember seeing her start to grimace, then open her mouth, revealing long skeins of saliva.
Her scabbed lips pulled back from rotted, snaggle-teeth and a dark, lesion-covered tongue. She began to yell—a loud, throaty cry that seemed forced through a mass of mucus, as she turned her head away from me and toward the source of her pain.
The cat had twisted itself around and swung up from her grip to grab either side of her wrist
with its front paws and dug its claws in. It began to draw a thick, black-looking blood from her punctured skin. I could hear the cat growling loudly, too, as it began to furiously rake the underside of her forearm with its rear claws. It had its teeth dug into her hand just behind her thumb, and the same black ooze flowed from there as well.
As I glanced at the cat's familiar face with its eyes tightly shut—as if intent on keeping its teeth
buried in her—I heard a faint but familiar voice shout, "Run!"
I honestly can’t say if it was audible or just in my head but it was the same warning—the same
voice—that I had heard a hundred times before from Kev. A warning shouted in the past to merely keep us from getting caught by the angry Culverton residents we had pranked, but now with an urgency and seriousness to it.
The familiar command made me suddenly alert again, and I began to move. I started to fall back
and I turned, trying to scramble off the porch, but stumbled as my foot went through another rotted board. I righted myself and jumped over the few remaining feet of porch and onto the ground. I ran from the house as fast as I could, the air roaring past my ears, along with the sound of my panicked breathing.
I next heard the crash of shattering glass and the sudden, loud cries of both her and the cat.
Then I heard only her screams as the cat let out a final, injured cry that stopped abruptly. I turned only long enough to see her pulling its impaled, limp body off a large spike of bloody glass still attached to the window frame. She then wheeled around and disappeared back into the darkness of the house.
With crows swooping down trying to attack my eyes, I flailed my arms to fend them off, and
continued to sprint in the general direction of my bike. I stopped only once when I had run for what seemed like a mile, with the house and crows well out of sight. Exhausted, I bent over and reached my arm out, placing my hand against a tree to catch my breath for a second. Suddenly, I felt the tree bark move under my palm, as if trying to pinch my skin. I heard a yell of sheer terror coming from my own mouth, and then ran the rest of the way until I finally reached my bike. The Culverton Woods 20
SHOTGUN HORROR CLIPS
My breathing was a continual, labored wheeze—both inhaling and exhaling. My lungs were
on fire, and my chest heaved for oxygen as my heart pounded against it and throbbed in my sweatdrenched temples. I jumped on my bike and tore off toward town with the screams of both the witch and the cat still ringing in my head.
I have never told anyone what happened until now. The kids in town would have shunned me
and the adults would have said (if only to themselves) that it served me right for messing with things that are better left alone. Instead, I quietly accepted the sympathy of classmates and townspeople at losing my friends to the strip mines.
So now, every year in late October, when the weather turns, and the leaves have already begun
to fall and gather on the ground, I sit and I remember my friends. And even though I’m grown now, I remember them from the perspective of an eleven-year-old. Especially the good times with Kev. Memories as sweet as the candy we collected every October 31st.
But, those memories come with a price. The price of recalling what I firmly believe became of
Kev and Mike, and the encounter with that repulsive, soulless … thing ... that, as far as I know, still lives in that house in the Culverton woods to this day.
21 Steve Chantos
October 28, 2016
22
The Cannibal King David O'Hanlon David O’Hanlon lives in Arkansas with his two horribly misbehaved children. He spends his free time writing and teaching people how to grievously injure one another. His writing is best known for its dark humor and morally questionable "heroes", set against the backdrop of Arkansas' unique folklore, ecological diversity, and glorious collection of trailer parks.
C
ascading against the snow, the blood came in fountains. Crimson geysers erupting against alabaster waves. Blooming flowers spread coppery perfumes across the quaint village. Flames lept up to
the heavens in mock praise of those absentee gods as they reduced the homes of loyal worshippers to ashes. Iron struck bone and flesh with subtle, yet intoxicating, notes that strengthened the melodious screams and prayers that carried on the bleak winter winds for the entire world to hear.
For him, this was how it should be. The din of the slaughter was just a beautiful piece of music,
composed by his will and word. Those agonized wails were as glorious and as joyful as a mother’s birthing of a brand new life. Life cannot begin without pain and blood.
He raised the bone and leather helm from his head, freeing his white braids to blow in the
wind—his skin prickled from the Arctic chill. Blood splashed across his path, and it steamed before rapidly cooling. He looked across his army with a crooked grin, now widening. He had created them, birthed them all, throughout this tireless march.
He, the Cannibal King, held sway over all of the lands within his Kingdom. His borders were
defined by power and fear, and wherever he was feared, he was powerful; in time, all outer villages would join the fold. The survivors of the night would tell his tale and spread the gospel of his hunger. His empire would span the world, so long as his name was carried on in the whispers in the night.
As the Cannibal King continued on his stroll down the footpath, he encountered a young boy.
The child clung to life as he crawled through the snow, snow that still fell into pools of blood. His life was but a trail of red ice, blood streaming from his wounds and freezing the instant it touched ground The incoming drifts sped up as the King knelt down and raised the boy by his collar to lick a gory trail 23 David O'Hanlon
October 28, 2016
from the side of the child’s head.
The Cannibal King always ate first and this boy, this morsel, would be his and his alone. His
men could eat the dead, but he liked his food to squirm as he chewed meat off the bone. He leaned in to taste the life of the boy once again, when the child’s head snapped forward in a blur. He bit down on the King’s out-stretched tongue. The King rose to his feet, staggering and stumbling, and then he fell on his back. His bleeding, twitching, tongue flopped about stupidly from a small strand of flesh. The pain had been dulled by the shock of the child’s attack, but now it exploded into a throbbing heat as he pushed the flailing meat back into his mouth.
He could not understand how it had happened.
Against all odds, the child rose. The fires that consumed his home, his family, his people, reflected
in his dull, grey eyes as he pushed his intestines back into the wound that they slithered from. He made no sounds. His lips curled away from his teeth in a smile. Yes, the Cannibal King always ate first, and no one stopped their new Child King as he bit into the throat of the dethroned …
The Cannibal King 24
The Red Door Christopher Powers Christopher Powers lives in Essex, United Kingdom, with his wife, and works full-time as a content copywriter. He began writing scary stories from an early age, and loves to scour charity shops and market stalls for horror paperbacks—the more yellowed and grimy the better! "The Red Door" is his first published work of fiction. He can be reached at powers1902@yahoo.co.uk.
I
dreamt about the place that is my hell.
To you, it will look like, sound like, and even smell like, a regular diner. But to me, there’s an
underlying fear, a deep torrid awfulness that accompanies these facts. If you scratch the surface hard enough for long enough, you might start to see the things I did, or, at least, what I felt to be true in my sleep.
The diner is called Pop’s Liner. Do you see what they’ve done there? Pop’s Liner Diner? Yeah, it’s
fucking ridiculous—almost as ridiculous as a thirty-three-year-old man shit-straight terrified to open the store room door behind the counter.
I asked once if they would let me look in there, and they said yes. I only asked because I honestly
believed they would tell me no. And I would have left it at that. Willingly.
When they said I could look, they said I’d find only a couple of brooms and cobwebs—they said
with a curious smile, to believe them. I turned and fled the place. My intention was to never return; that had been my intention, but the quack I went to see about the dream thought it best to go back there and face the truth head-on.
I’m paying this guy a hundred pounds an hour so he can take me to a diner in the middle of
the afternoon and then tell me to stop pissing my pants over a dream.
So I should tell him where to get off, right? I should say thanks for the effort, doc, but seriously,
I’ll be fine. I should do that, maybe sue him, too, for putting me through hell all over again. I should, but I won’t.
You see, he has a plan. And with his help, I think it will work.
25 Christopher Powers
October 28, 2016
Sitting in Pop’s feels strange now. It used to be my local go-to joint. A round of pancakes every
Tuesday, drizzled with caramel when I was feeling extra generous, followed by a large mug of hot, steaming coffee; coffee with free refills for ‘special customers.’ Sometimes, I could even be swayed into slicing off a chunk of apple pie, but only when there was whipped cream fermenting in the fridge; otherwise, it tasted like crap.
Then my dream changed all that.
I know you think I’m foolish. I know you do. Linda did. Right before she left I found a scribbled
message on the kitchen table. It had been done in a rush, disjointed and smudged along the single sheet of stationary paper. The message was short, sharp and painfully blunt:
Brad, I can't stand here and watch you do this to yourself any longer. Here's the ring. Please don't call me. Linda X
Six years of partnership and one year of engagement wrapped up, knotted, and delivered in
barely a whole page of crinkled stationary paper.
I pawned the ring. It wasn’t worth a lot, about five hundred. She wanted better, and I tried to give
her better, but in the end, a milkman only does so well, grinding shoulders against major supermarket chains that know what it means to be better.
Anyway, Linda is gone now. Where? I have no clue. I didn’t contact her, didn’t leave a message
at her sisters, didn’t bother with her mother’s in London. Far as I was concerned, she could have died moments after writing that letter, and I’d be none the wiser. I hope she’s happy wherever she is now. God knows I’m not.
You will tell me it was just a dream, of course, and I will have to nod and accept that belief. But
Linda, she knew more than I did, for she would not speak of that night the following day, and she never was the same woman. In fact, she recoiled when I placed even a single finger on her, and rarely did she undress in my presence. The Red Door 26
SHOTGUN HORROR CLIPS
“I need to know what happened,” I pleaded with her one evening. “I have a right to know!”
But, Linda would not speak of it. “You had a nightmare, Brad, that’s all. Get over it and move
on.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Her eyes were gloomy, distant. Stone cold sober.
“Please,” she said. “Let’s not talk about it anymore.”
But, I did not listen. For several weeks, we argued. That dream was ripping me apart, and with
it, her as well. The scary thing is that I honestly think she understood more of the dream, more of its meaning, than I did.
And if so, why did she refuse to tell me?
It was Linda who called the shrink, too—Doctor Sheldon. He was a family friend and available
at short notice. I agreed to see him because I thought she might stay if I went to some sessions. In the end, nothing I did was enough to give her back her smile.
Doctor Sheldon is here now, sitting on the opposite side of the booth from me. There is a pale
expression of concern stretched across his face, but I see no trace of strain on his forehead, no furrows of worry. The dark bags, which hang beneath my eyes, do not weigh on Doctor Sheldon’s. His hair, too, is perfectly trimmed and impeccably dark; it has lost none of its vigour despite him being well into his mid forties.
On previous consultations, Doctor Sheldon brought with him a notepad on which he takes
down everything I say—probably everything, I don’t really know for sure—and he scribbles on that pad incessantly, to the point where I think I might scream. Today, however, his hands are empty, fingers linked and resting on the table. I am distracted by the tufts of black hair protruding from his knuckles, twisting and twirling like a swarm of black spiders, and when he speaks I try not to listen.
“Bradley? Bradley, are you ok?”
“I’m fine,” I tell him.
“I think it might be time,” Doctor Sheldon says softly.
I shake my head. No.
Doctor Sheldon regards me in a solemn, almost fatherly like way, like a priest guaranteeing
the man on death row that God will forgive him when his sins are paid for. He reaches out with both hands and takes hold of one of mine. His palm is warm, dry, a polar opposite of my own.
“This is what we’ve been working towards,” Doctor Sheldon says, giving my hand a squeeze.
27 Christopher Powers
October 28, 2016
I nod my head, not because he’s right, although he is, but because this is exactly what he’s been
working towards. Him. Not me. I’ve just chugged along, going through the motions, as they say, never really considering that there would be a test at the end of all of this. Doctor Sheldon calls it closure, but the last thing I expect to find inside that storeroom is closure. No, what I expect to find will be lurking right there in the darkness, out of reach, for now, but drawing closer.
“We’ve worked so hard for this day,” Doctor Sheldon is saying now. “Months of therapy, of
opening up to me, and this could be the payoff. Who knows, after today, you might not need me anymore.”
I want to tell him: good, I never needed you to begin with. Before these ‘sessions’ my bank balance
wasn’t lower than the earth’s core, and Pop’s Liner Diner was on the other side of town. I could stay away. I want to make it clear to him now that I only used him because I thought Linda would come back to me if she knew I was actively seeking help without her around, that the horrible nightmares have faded, occurring once a week, and, even then, it’s not so bad. I don’t wake up screaming anymore, or crying. I still sweat, and my heart still races, but you can’t say it isn’t progress.
I want to tell Doctor Sheldon where to stick his theories and his notebook. I want to throw
off his large spidery hands and leave the diner, and never look back. But of course, I won’t. Because I need Doctor Sheldon. Maybe that’s because he’s the last shred of Linda; maybe I’m still clinging to that. Or, perhaps, on some level, I think these sessions may actually work.
I don’t know.
“Come back to me Bradley.”
I look up. Doctor Sheldon is watching me, a half-smile on his smooth face. “You were wandering
for a moment there,” he says, and then releases my hand, leaving behind a warmth that isn’t entirely uncomforting.
“I’ve arranged for the staff here to close the diner for half an hour. That should be long enough,
I think?”
“It’ll never be long enough,” I tell him. And then, as though the thought had been on the tip of
my tongue the whole time, despite the fact it had not crossed my mind until now, I ask, “Did Linda tell you about my dream?”
For a moment, Doctor Sheldon seems surprised by the question. His usually smooth face reveals
a shimmering blush, perhaps even guilt, and then it is gone, hidden behind that same solemn mask of understanding once more. “What makes you say that?”
“It’s just a thought I had.” The Red Door 28
SHOTGUN HORROR CLIPS
“Linda spoke with me only once, briefly. Our conversation revolved around her concerns for
you, and how these dreams were translating through you while you slept.”
“I don’t follow.”
Doctor Sheldon leans forward on his elbows. “You know everything there is to know,” he says
calmly. “If there was more information available, I would tell you.”
“What did she mean by the dreams are ‘translating through me’?”
Doctor Sheldon looks over his shoulder at one of the waitresses who nods back. She saunters
over to the door of the diner, empty now, save for myself and Doctor Sheldon, and turns up the latch. Then she spins the sign from OPEN to CLOSED. She walks around the bar and out the back door.
We are alone.
“I can’t tell you precisely what Ms. Holmes told me, Bradley, and quite frankly, I see no reason
why it’d help your progress in any way.”
“If she said anything, I’d like to hear it,” I say. I don’t think I truly believe this, but all the cards
are on the table now. Time to show the hand.
Doctor Sheldon sits in silence a long time. When he eventually speaks again, I jump in my
seat. “She said you tried to kill yourself.”
I gape at the psychiatrist. I can barely cram those seven words into my brain. Tried to kill myself.
That couldn’t be right. Could it?
“From the little information she divulged, the dreams which you have documented to me, the
dreams about the thing in the storeroom—” he points a thumb towards the red storeroom door and cold water washes through my veins—“started to affect you on a subconscious level.”
“I wouldn’t try ...”
“She said that you climbed out of bed and opened the bedroom window. She said you tried
to throw yourself out of it. It was only when she pulled you back inside, an effort in and of itself, I’m sure, that you finally fell back into sleep.”
I shake my head vigorously. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“It is counter-productive to your therapy,” Doctor Sheldon says. “Ms. Holmes couldn’t bear the
thought of you being so depressed. She was terrified that one day she’d wake up and find you dead. Surely you can understand her fear?”
Maybe I could, I don’t know. Right now, it feels like a betrayal. I was scared. Every time I closed
my eyes, I was scared that thing, that awful thing, that thing living in the storeroom, I was scared it was going to creep out of the diner and eat me. 29 Christopher Powers
October 28, 2016
“She should have told me.”
“She did tell you.”
“No, she never told me any of this!”
“Calm down, Bradley. It’s alright. This is going to be over soon.”
I glance towards the red storeroom, at the rusted knob, the chipped wood, and I know what
comes next.
“You go inside that room, look around for yourself. See that there is nothing to fear.”
“And what if there is something to fear?”
“There won’t be,” Doctor Sheldon says. “For reasons I cannot explain, you’ve become sure there
is something in that room. Now you can prove to yourself that there isn’t anything there. You can be free of these nightmares, free of the past. Look inside that room, take in the smells. Really see that nothing in there can harm you. Are you ready to open the store room now?”
I nod my head. Fear is bunching up inside of me, a twisted knot of knowing. If you have
experienced dread, then you understand my feelings now—why I cannot bring myself to stand from the booth we sit inside.
He reaches out a hand. I take it willingly.
Together, we make our way across the diner, side by side, hand in hand. His warm palm is
comforting in a way, but as we edge closer to the diner’s counter, and the store room looms before us, I try to pry my fingers loose.
“Fight it,” Doctor Sheldon urges. “If you can make it this far, then you can go a little farther.”
Shuffling my feet, I move onwards. We slink around the bar and now I’m here, standing in
front of the same door that has plagued my dreams every night for the past nine weeks, before Doctor Sheldon’s arrival. It even smells the same as in my dream. Old, earthy, the stench of rotted wood one might find in the barrens of bog or buried deep under forgotten debris.
The handle in my dream is chrome and rusted, much the same as this one, and as I take it in
hand, I feel a sudden urge to turn and run—an urge so powerful, it almost buckles my knees, slams into me. Doctor Sheldon steadies me from behind.
“It’s the same,” I whisper, too scared to speak aloud while this close to the door. “Everything is
the same.”
“No,” Doctor Sheldon says calmly, “It isn’t. This is real now. No more dreams, Bradley. This is
happening, and you need to allow yourself to understand that. Open the door, and see what you’ve always known.” The Red Door 30
SHOTGUN HORROR CLIPS
And with that, I twist the handle.
The storeroom door inches open on silent hinges, and I wince back into the crux of Doctor
Sheldon’s wide chest.
It looks empty. A single bulb dangles from the ceiling, coated in thick dust, the light switch
nailed to the wall just inside the room. With a shaking hand, I reach across the threshold, and depress the button.
My eyes flicker with the sudden pooling of light. From behind me, I can feel Doctor Sheldon,
his hands pushing into my lower back. He wants to move forwards, but this is far enough.
In one corner of the store room is a broom, snapped at the neck. Beneath it lays a tin bucket,
dented, dripping the last of its contents. On the other side of the room, I can see cardboard boxes, neatly stacked one atop the other, sealed with tape. There is something scribbled on them, but I cannot see what it is.
Is it safe here? Yes, I think it is. Take away the awful stench and this is just an ordinary store
room closet.
“Why the obsession then?” I ask myself aloud.
“It isn’t uncommon for a person who is highly stressed to see something and have the unconscious
mind then develop some kind of phobia for said object. In your case, it was this store room.”
“Was I that stressed?”
“Not anymore,” Doctor Sheldon says, and pats me on the shoulder.
I breathe a sigh of relief. It’s barely out of my mouth when a figure lurches from the thicket of
dust-riddled darkness, from a place in the store room I could not see from where I stand, and claps one gnarled skeletal hand on my forehead.
Skin the colour of autumn leaves stretches over the thing’s body; a gangly, fearsome creature
with elongated arms and legs and which sees through eyes as old as a mummy’s remains. Its hair is a tangle of dirty brown, like watery reeds plucked from some swamp. Its fingers are long and sinewy, so much like the thin twigs of trees that they seem to snap as they latch onto me.
“Doctor Sheldon!”
I scream his name but no sound comes out, only sobbed chokes and heaves, caused by the dust.
A moment later I am on the ground, gasping for breath as my heart bursts against my chest like
a thunderclap of wild stampeding horses.
It wasn’t a dream. It was a premonition.
31 Christopher Powers
Linda left because she couldn’t face my maddening, midnight ramblings. She was afraid I
would try and kill myself. I almost had before, and now I wish she had allowed me to fall through my bedroom window, to plunge to my death so that I could have avoided this terrible fate.
My eyes are wide and I try rolling onto my belly. I just about see the creature as it bounds away
towards the diner door. As one gnarled hand wraps around the latch, I am gripped by a sudden jolt of agony which wracks my whole body.
My heart lurches, beating too fast, and now, suddenly, there is no feeling in my chest, no thudding
of organ, no pulsating of blood through the vein. I lay on the ground and I am slipping away.
But, I try to tell Doctor Sheldon, who is now kneeling beside me: I was right.
It was in there.
It was in there, and it was waiting for me.
In there.
Behind the red door.
The Red Door 32
Carousel A Poem by S.E. Casey Commanding props to keep from landing, Throwing, catching all the same. Axes flash; danger demanding, Dexterous hands to parry maim. How can man, so frail and mortal, Submit himself to such parlay, As rictus masks his lying portal, Skirt the edge and dodge the flay? Spinning blades ascend to aerie, Pursuing dreams beyond the man, Learn the nest is bleak and weary, Seek the place down where began. Awake, the Juggler, on life's stage This tireless Carousel, a barless cage.
Vacated scarecrow poles. Smoking factories without doors. An hourglass filled with ants. Clinging to the coast of New England, S.E. Casey writes of the darkly wonderful, weird, and grotesque. His short stories and poetry have appeared in many magazines and anthologies that can be found at secaseyauthor.wordpress.com 33
REVIEWS
October 28, 2016
Shotgun Horror Clips reviews material in an objective manner, and rates works in a subjective, out-of-five system. Works rated one-out-of-five Shotgun Shells are considered not-so-hot, while a five-out-of-five is fantastic! A combination of our ratings and reviews is reccomended before giving our suggestions a shot!
Movies
The Girl on the Train The Girl on the Train, written by Erin Wilson and directed by Tate Taylor. The movie is based off the novel by the same title, written by Paula Hawkins. The movie was released on October 7th, 2016, in the United States. Since that time, it has scored favorably on IMBD at 6.7/10, but was met with mixed feelings on Rotten Tomatoes, with a 44% approval rating. We give it 3 Shotgun Shells out of 5. Here’s why:
T
he Girl on the Train is a movie the runs right down the middle, in terms of Genre. Is it a Horror Movie, a Thriller, or is it a little of both? Could it be considered a Mystery, or should it be labeled
a Drama?
The truth is that it's a few of those things, mixed into one.
There are horrific elements in this movie, including small bits of psychological terror framed
with horrific depictions of domestic violence. And worse, too, once you find out that not a single character is really a good person, deep down. Talk about a great set up for some Drama!
It's a Mystery, in that you really are made to wait until the end to figure things out, and the fact
that it does keep you guessing along the way, keeps mild interest engaged in the viewer.
But is it a thriller? In our opinion, no. The Girl on the Train could have been a thriller, and,
indeed, the novel was written as such. But the movie's pacing is so slow that, in places, it seems to drag 34
SHOTGUN HORROR CLIPS
... drag, when unfortunately, it should be racing. This movie is 112 minutes long, but it feels longer, and the stretches where you find your mind starting to wander do damage, deescalating what could have been an edge-of-your-seat, psychological horror-thriller spectacle.
The movie does redeem itself, however, due to the acting; particularly, in the acting of Emily
Blunt (who plays Rachel Watson). Blunt lifts her talents beyond her roles previous to deliver a character that is believable, relatable, and one we can almost emphasize with. Almost. That’s saying a lot, because her character is a drunk who may or may not have killed Megan Hipwell (played by Haley Bennett).
Bennett is another actress in this movie whose performance shines; between these two, the
movie is a mind-bender, and one that is worth a view. Is it worth it, dropping cash at the box office to see this movie? Maybe not, but we do recommend that you view it when it comes out on Blu-Ray or DVD.
The acting, in this case, saved the writing and pacing from what could have been a ‘the-book-
is-way-better-than-the-movie’ film. You could do worse than to purchase this film when it comes out, or at least rent it for a fun friday night flick. Just make sure to make plenty of popcorn!
35
October 28, 2016
The Fine Print: Shotgun Horror Clips, A Horror Fiction Magazine. ISSN Forthcoming. Vol. 1 No. 2, Whole Number 002. October 28, 2016. Published Bi-Monthly, unless otherwise stated on our website: www.deadlightsmagazine.com/deadlights-shotgun-horror-clips/. Shotgun Horror Clips is a free production of DeadLights Horror Fiction Magazine, trademark pending, ToBoldlyGo LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or use of editorial or pictorial content in any manner without expressed permission is prohibited, except by the contributing authors and artists in regards to their original or reprinted works, to which said rights belong. To make a submission to this, or any other publication of ours, please visit our website: www.deadlightsmagazine.com, or email us at deadlightsmagazine@ gmail.com Shotgun Horror Clips is produced in Pullman, WA, United States of America.
36
Brought to you by:
First issue out: 02/01/2017
Join us next time for Shotgun Horror Clips, A Horror Fiction Magazine on 11/11/2016!