The Cord

by Chris Lewis Carter

It’s just after midnight when her screams wake me. Loud, panicked shrieks that slice through my sleep-fogged brain like shards of glass.

“Carl! Get down here right now! Oh my God, Carl!”

I roll out of bed and stumble over to the window. Across the cul-de-sac, I see my neighbour, Mrs. Richardson, bathed in the dull glow of a street light. She’s wearing a flower-print nightgown and has a head full of curling rollers.

“What is wrong with you? Get down!”

Nearly half-way up the light pole she’s standing beside is her husband, Carl, his arms and legs locked tightly around the wood. He’s naked, except for a bright red bathrobe, which is untied and flapping in the breeze like a terrycloth flag.

“Help! Carl! Please, someone, help!”

Yardwork

by Bruce Blake

Tim made a special trip to buy the shovel he used to bury the nameless man. It was easy: a lady in a blue vest helped him without a second thought. A fifteen-year-old buying a spade doesn’t raise concern; it’s not like purchasing a gun or machete, though a shovel could be as deadly. The shovel didn’t kill the man, Tim used it to bury the bits and pieces.

In the end, his father’s garden shears killed the nameless man.

The Voice in the Night

by William Hope Hodgson

It was a dark, starless night. We were becalmed in the Northern Pacific. Our exact position I do not know; for the sun had been hidden during the course of a weary, breathless week, by a thin haze which had seemed to float above us, about the height of our mastheads, at whiles descending and shrouding the surrounding sea.

With there being no wind, we had steadied the tiller, and I was the only man on deck. The crew, consisting of two men and a boy, were sleeping forward in their den, while Will—my friend, and the master of our little craft—was aft in his bunk on the port side of the little cabin.

Suddenly, from out of the surrounding darkness, there came a hail:

“Schooner, ahoy!” (Continue Reading…)

Kavar The Rat

by Thomas Owen

Translated by Edward Gauvin

But he’d been a skillful artisan, and remained so. At the beginning of his career, his real specialty had been locksmithing. Ah! Nothing to do with today’s dumb little locks, all identical, with grooved keys and four screws to be slapped up any old where, which came apart with a blow of your fist. No. Real locks, ingenious, intelligent, personal, custom-made. He’d built all kinds! Secrets, thief-proof, devilishly clever. But also screaming padlocks that wouldn’t let themselves be violated, latches that struck back, a stack of sneaky, perplexing little mechanisms to turn the most sensible engineer pale.

Looker

by David Nickle

‘Get in,’ she said, ‘I’ll be right behind you.’

It didn’t occur to me that this might be a trick until I was well out at sea. Wouldn’t it be the simplest thing, I thought, as I dove under a breaking wave, to wait until I was out far enough, gather my trousers, find the wallet and the mobile phone, toss the clothes into the surf and run to a waiting car? I’m developing my suspicious mind, really, my dearest — but it still has a time delay on it, even after everything…

I came up, broke my stroke, and turned to look back at the beach.

She waved at me. I was pleased — and relieved — to see that she was naked too. My valuables were safe as they could be. And Lucy had quite a nice figure, as it turned out: fine full breasts — wide, muscular hips — a small bulge at the tummy, true… but taken with the whole, far from offensive.

I waved back, took a deep breath and dove again, this time deep enough to touch bottom. My fingers brushed sea-rounded rock and stirred up sand, and I turned and kicked and broke out to the moonless night, and only then it occurred to me — how clearly I’d seen her on the beach, two dozen yards off, maybe further.

There lay the problem. There wasn’t enough light. I shouldn’t have seen anything.

The Eater

by Michael J. DeLuca

I’ve seen the Eater crawling back to his hut from the darkness, contorting and shuddering. We owe him for that. I’ve heard the madness that boils on the Eater’s tongue when he drinks of the froth from the bone-rattle tree. He is the only one who dares to taste it. I’ve seen him walk across the village as though he’s forgotten in which direction lies the earth and which the sky. He goes into the woods alone. After a time, his body has always returned. But he–the Eater I know or think I know, the laughing Eater with his clever tricks and dances–he stays away for even longer, unable to speak or unwilling, somewhere we can never go or see.

Never, that is, unless one of us follows him.

Blue Eyes

by Jay Caselberg

The man with the dog collar came the other night, standing sweating at the door, thin black hair plastered across his head. Me Mam has dog collars, but he brought his own. He always does. It was too late to go out, not that me Mam would’ve minded, but the streets aren’t safe when it’s dark near our place. So I had to watch.

Me Da wasn’t home. He never is. Or when he is, they fight, the stink of the booze hanging heavy in our two-roomed house.

He stayed for maybe an hour, the man with the dog collar. I watched as he sweated and strained, me Mam’s spiked heel pressed hard against his back, the black leather around his neck cinched tight, stained blacker where the sweat runnelled down from the back of his greasy head. Me Mam caught me looking once or twice and waved my looks away. So I watched the wall instead, pretending to read the old newsprint behind the places where the wallpaper peeled. I asked her once why she did it, but she called me a brat and a stupid little bitch and told me to shut up.

“How else we going to live?” she said.