Shock Totem 5: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted Read online

  PUBLISHER/EDITOR

  K. Allen Wood

  ASST. EDITOR

  John Boden

  ASST. EDITOR

  Nick Contor

  NONFICTION/SUBMISSIONS

  Mercedes M. Yardley

  SUBMISSIONS

  Sarah Gomes

  DIGITAL LAYOUT/DESIGN

  K. Allen Wood

  COVER DESIGN

  Mikio Murakami

  Established in 2009

  www.shocktotem.com

  Digital Edition Copyright © 2012 by Shock Totem Publications, LLC.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the US Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the written consent of Shock Totem Publications, LLC.

  The short stories in this publication are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The views expressed in the nonfiction writing herein are solely those of the authors.

  ISSN 1944-110X

  Printed in the United States of America.

  NOTES FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

  Welcome to issue #5!

  It’s been way too long, folks. Way too long. If you refuse to wait any longer, please feel free to jump ahead. I won’t be long, though. Promise.

  As some of you probably noticed, we delayed the release of this, our fifth issue. After issue #4 was released in July of 2011, we found ourselves in the same boat we were in when the release date of our second issue approached—dead in the water, without enough fiction for our sails, so to speak. It’s not a good feeling, because it makes you contemplate releasing a sub-par product just to hit a release date. We won’t do that, of course.

  So this time we delayed the release in hopes that when the issue finally came out we’d have stockpiled enough fiction for our next issue. We’ve done that, thankfully.

  Happy dance—GO!

  Going forward, we hope to always be finishing the next issue when the current one is being released. No more delays! My new mantra.

  That said, we’ve got another great issue prepared for you. People often ask us what kind of fiction are you looking for, what is the best way to get work accepted into Shock Totem. There is no correct answer to this, of course, as each issue is clearly representative of whatever collective mood we all happen to be in during specific reading periods. That holds true once again, as this issue is another eclectic mix of fiction and nonfiction, having its own unique theme and personality.

  This time we’ve got on tap Ari Marmell’s “In Deepest Silence,” our first truly Lovecraftian tale, which takes you deep into the ocean’s depths. “The Catch,” by Joe Mirabello, is a lighthearted—sometimes absurdist—romp through the frothy waves of time. (Useless facts: Both stories center around water, contain a “Jack,” and oddly enough, both authors work in the gaming industry. Coincidence? I think...yeah, probably.)

  Speaking of Lovecraft, Darrell Schweitzer, brilliant fantasist, woefully underrated writer of horror, two-time editor/co-editor of Weird Tales, and all-around Lovecraft expert has contributed a story, the oddly titled “Jimmy Bunny.” (Do yourself a favor and check out his past works. Start with Transients and Other Disquieting Stories. Thank me later.)

  We have some returning authors in this issue. Mekenzie Larsen is back and once again ups the weird ante with her short but excellent “Three Strikes.” Jaelithe Ingold was in our last issue (so much for our rule of never publishing an author in back-to-back issues), a result of having won the 2010 Café Doom short-story competition, which we sponsored. This time she won our flash fiction contest for 2011 with a story, “Little Knife Houses,” based on the cover art of our third issue. And Kurt Newton returns to our pages once again, this time with something new for us: a five-part, illustrated microfiction serial. Quite a thing of dark beauty, if you ask me.

  And that’s not all, of course. There is more fiction from Anaea Lay and D. Thomas Mooers. Shakespeare clashes with the undead in the brilliant “To ‘Bie or Not to ‘Bie,” by Sean Eads. We have an interview with horror legend Jack Ketchum, the third installment of Bloodstains & Blue Suede Shoes, the collaborative series from John Boden and Simon Marshall-Jones which traces the jagged veins between music and horror...

  And more, of course.

  As always, my staff and I cannot thank you enough for your support and, most important, your patience.

  We hope you dig this one as much as we do.

  K. Allen Wood

  May 15, 2012

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Notes from the Editor’s Desk

  Taking Root

  An Editorial

  by Mercedes M. Yardley

  In Deepest Silence

  by Ari Marmell

  The Girl and the Blue Burqa

  by D. Thomas Mooers

  Digging in the Dirt

  A Conversation with Jack Ketchum

  by John Boden

  Hide-and-Seek

  by F.J. Bergmann

  Eyes of a Stranger

  Narrative Nonfiction

  by Nick Contor

  Postmortem

  by Kurt Newton

  Jimmy Bunny

  by Darrell Schweitzer

  Strange Goods and Other Oddities

  Little Knife Houses

  2011 Shock Totem Flash Fiction Contest Winner

  by Jaelithe Ingold

  Canon

  by Anaea Lay

  Bloodstains & Blue Suede Shoes, Part 3

  by John Boden and Simon Marshall-Jones

  The Catch

  by Joe Mirabello

  Three Strikes

  by Mekenzie Larsen

  To ‘Bie or Not to ‘Bie

  by Sean Eads

  Howling Through the Keyhole

  IN MEMORY OF

  John H. Boden

  1946–2011

  Father and Friend

  “What shall we use

  to fill the empty spaces

  where we used to talk?

  How shall I fill

  the final places?”

  —Pink Floyd

  TAKING ROOT

  An Editorial

  by Mercedes M. Yardley

  Keep your ear to the ground long enough and you’ll hear the same questions posed over and over. Recently somebody asked me point blank: Is horror dead? Is there a place for it in the literary market?

  It’s certainly a valid question. Slip into your favorite brick-and-mortar bookstore (if your favorite brick-and-mortar bookstore is still standing, that is) and make your way to the horror section. Is it still there? Did it shrink dramatically? I remember getting lost in that dangerous, slightly taboo section when I was a kid. The covers and blurbs were terrifying. Peter Straub, H.P. Lovecraft, John Skipp, Stephen King. Monsters, ghouls, and killers. I wanted to recapture that feeling not too long ago. I went to my local bookstore and headed straight for that well-known section.

  It wasn’t there.

  It used to be here, five rows back. Now there’s a section of vegan cookbooks. Where did they hide my horror?

  I finally found it, shoved in the very back between manga and crossword puzzles. It was reduced to one tiny section of the obligatory Stephen King books, a few by Dean Koontz, and two copie
s of the Flavor-of-the-Week creature feature. That was it. King, Koontz, sexy werewolf.

  I flagged down one of the employees.

  “Hey,” I said. “What happened to the horror?”

  He shrugged. “Nobody reads horror anymore.”

  Nobody reads horror anymore. Is he kidding? Looking at the miniscule offerings of that sad shelf, it sure seems that way. But if nobody is reading horror anymore, why are we finding horror elements everywhere?

  You can’t turn on the TV without tripping over ghost hunting and paranormal shows. Everybody and their dog is DIYing their own EVPs and other attempted communication with the dead. There’s an entire channel devoted to true crime documentaries. We’ve fallen in love with the world’s most likable serial killer. The last few movies that have come out have to do with Chernobyl, stereotypical horror movie tropes, and ghostly women.

  Horror seems to have developed the stigma of being the ghetto of the fantasy world, which is a label that I adamantly disagree with. Yet many people shy away from owning the horror label. Many will say that they write dark fiction, because then their work falls into a broader category. It’s easier to sell dark fiction than it is to sell “horror,” because horror attracts a very specialized crowd. A deliciously beautiful, fearless, and strange crowd, to be sure. Horror crowd, I love you.

  Horror hasn’t died but I think it’s been renamed. There has been quite a bit of genre-splicing in literature lately. For example, let’s say that you wrote a dark, paranormal romantic thriller. If it’s dark enough, it can be branded as horror. If you’re looking to entice the romantic crowd, then you push the romantic elements. Hype the paranormal aspects to reach a new crowd, and the fact that it’s a thriller will interest yet another crowd. You have just hit four different target markets with the same book! Brilliant, you! However, if you had called this book simply Horror Romance Paranormal Thriller, you would have drastically reduced your novel’s exposure to interested groups.

  Darkness has become mainstream. Tim Burton used to be that off-the-wall director who made strange films, but now he’s a dark star in a shadowy sky. We want violence in our romance and blood in our tea. Horror isn’t dying as much as it’s infiltrating.

  It’s insidious.

  It’s creeping into every form of entertainment, curling up, and taking root.

  It’s doing what it does best, which is eating its victims alive while they aren’t looking.

  IN DEEPEST SILENCE

  by Ari Marmell

  “Depth is now five-five-zero feet.”

  “Five-five-zero, acknowledged. Ease the bubble; let’s straighten her out.”

  Just another chorus of the daily song. The anthem of the USS San Jacinto (SSN 744), performance without an audience except the fish and the sharks and the octopus... Octopuses? Octopi? Whatever.

  “Sonar?”

  “Nothing yet, Skipper.”

  “Well, keep at it, Petty Officer. They’re around here somewhere.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Should it be possible for voices to blur together like these do, while the ear and the brain still absorb every word? Maybe that’s what our training’s really for, to help us pull what we gotta know from what we hear, even when we don’t really hear it. ‘Cuz I know all the voices—Commander Pierce; Sam Franks (one of the two Sams) on bow planes; Hoag on sonar—and I know what they’re saying, but I don’t really hear ‘em anymore. They’re like, I dunno, the audio equivalent of the dull glow that soaks everyone in the control room; kind of a sickly glow, the combination of humming bulbs and the yellow and reds and oranges and greens of a couple dozen displays.

  I guess maybe that is the ultimate point of training, all told. Way I see it, if we didn’t know how to just pick what we needed out of the sounds and the lights and everything around us, it’d all be too damn much. You’d just sit there, staring, like your brain just got kicked in the balls, while the boat sank around you.

  Petty Officer Demarco—the other Sam—steps away from his charts, squeezing around the con to hover over Hoag’s shoulder. I can’t hear what they’re saying, not that I’m really trying to.

  “Problem, Quartermaster?”

  Demarco—currently standing Quartermaster of the Watch—looks up with a gloomy frown. “Not sure, sir.”

  The control room vibrates with the skipper’s footsteps. Doesn’t do that for anyone else, even though Commander Pierce isn’t that big a guy. Guess maybe even the San Jack knows her boss.

  We’re just coming up on the end of my first sub tour, you see, and I still haven’t really decided if the Navy is right for me. Most of the other guys are lifers—though Jones, Chief of the Boat, is getting on in years and might be retiring soon; and Demarco’s been talking about Hazel Something-or-other back home, and how she’s starting to hint around the M-word in her letters, and maybe he’s not gonna re-up this time. We keep telling him he has to, though—if we lose either him or Franks, we’ll have to stop calling the boat the “Two-Sam Can.”

  End of my first tour, and this is about the most action we’ve seen (exercises notwithstanding). And we’re not even the right boat for the job, just happened to be the only sub nearby when it happened. Coast Guard got the call, and they called us.

  Someone’s gotta get the Coasties their own subs one of these days.

  “What do you mean, ‘Not sure, sir,’ exactly?” I know that tone; snaps me right out of my daydreaming even though it’s not aimed my way. Pierce can’t be more than five-foot-eight, and rumor is he shaves his head so nobody can see how gray he’s already going, but he’s got the voice of a man twice his size. We’re not afraid of him, exactly—but nobody on the San Jack wants him angry.

  Sam Demarco straightens—so does Allen Hoag, so smartly that his headphones almost come off his ears—and starts talking low and fast. I don’t get all of it, from way across the con, but I hear enough, combined with his hand flapping back and forth from the sonar readouts to his own displays, to get the gist.

  “Huh.” As usual, the skipper’s voice carries a lot clearer. “Recent seismic activity, maybe?”

  “Maybe, sir,” Demarco answers. He doesn’t sound convinced. “The readings don’t match up with the charts of...” And then I lose the thread again.

  “Slow us up,” the skipper says over his shoulder. “Ahead one-third.”

  “Helm!” That’s the XO, Lieutenant Commander Morgan. Dark hair, somehow tan despite life down in this tin tube, and about as physically imposing as the skipper wasn’t. “Slow to all ahead one-third!”

  “All ahead one-third, aye!” That’s Andy Malhotra, sitting beside Seaman Franks. Malhotra’s the only Indian aboard, and keeps telling us that he’s our practice token until we’re ready to handle an Arab.

  The San Jacinto shudders as Malhotra fiddles with the throttle, the propellers straining like horses eager to run. Or that’s how I think of them, anyway, but I’ve never ridden, so who knows?

  “Keep your ears open, Sonar,” Pierce orders. “Active and passive systems.”

  “All eyes and ears, aye, sir.”

  “Helm!”

  “Aye, sir?” Malhotra again.

  “Soundings don’t match the charts around here. Sonar pipes up about an obstruction ahead, you correct for it. Don’t wait for my order.”

  “Aye, sir!”

  Hoag goes active on sonar, and every one of us hears the first faint ping as the system starts bouncing waves of sound through waves of water. Like a blind man tapping his cane, the San Jacinto picks her way through the crevices on the ocean floor.

  All ‘cuz some damn civvies got in over their heads. Literally.

  I hadn’t heard the specifics; didn’t really care, either. Bunch of scientists and students... Archaeological? Geological? Some kind of “ogical.” Bunch of ‘em messing around with some find or other, and then all of a sudden the Coasties get a couple of seconds of what might be a distress call. And of course, nobody’s got any rescue subs anywhere nearby, gonna take them over
a day to get here; but us, we’re running exercises not five hours away and hey, could you go see if they’re really in trouble, do what you can until S&R can get there...

  Only, here we are, and... nothing. No distress signal. No any signal, according to Seaman McKenna on radio.

  “Sonar?” the skipper asks again.

  “I don’t...” Hoag scowls. “Nothing clear, sir. Not even fish. I...I think I’m hearing something, but it’s faint, and it’s far.”

  “Details, Petty Officer!”

  “Uh, yes, sir! Bearing... zero-three-seven relative!”

  “Helm, steer zero-three-seven.”

  “Helm!” the XO repeats. Barks, really. “Steer zero-three-seven!”

  “Zero-three-seven, aye, sir!”

  We all feel the San Jacinto pitch a bit as she adjusts to her new course.

  “Distance, sonar?”

  “Honestly can’t tell you, sir.” Hoag sounds confused, with a small side order of apologetic. “I can’t get a clear... It’s like when you’re switching radio stations, sir. And you find one that almost reaches you, but not quite? So you keep thinking you can almost make out the lyrics?”

  “I assume you’re not telling us that someone’s singing to you, Petty Officer.”

  “No, sir, of course not. Just an analogy, sir.” Hoag leans in close over the display, as though trying to get closer to the source of the sound. “At least five thousand yards, though.”

  We creep ahead slowly, silly little action figures in our steel packaging. Minutes crawl slowly past, staggering and dying, and I feel sweat beading on my forehead. I’m always hot in the control room, even though the San Jack’s AC works just fine. Maybe I just run hotter than the other guys. Maybe it’s the thought of the nuclear pile just a few hundred feet away; you’d think I’d have gotten used to the idea, but it’s always squatting in the back of my mind like a hobo taking a dump on the curb. I don’t know, whatever. I’m hot.