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PseudoPod 980: Nesters


Nesters

By Siobhan Carroll


They killed the last calf that morning. Ma wanted to hold off, give the poor thing a chance, but Pa said it were cruel to let a body live like that. He cracked the hammer on its head—a sick, sad sound. Later he slit the calf open and showed Sally the animal’s stomach, choked with dust. “Suffocated from the inside,” he said.

Sally cried, or would have cried, but her face was too caked with dirt. The Vaseline in her nostrils couldn’t keep it out. She wondered how much dirt was in her stomach and whether her body was already full of it, like the calf, her tears and blood just rivers of dust. But when she asked, Ma said, “Jaisus, quit nattering and help the bairn.” So Sally did, even though her baby brother was curled up like the calf had been, under a skin of dust that never went away no matter how they cleaned. (Continue Reading…)

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PseudoPod 979: Two Esoteric Texts: Old Things are Meant to Be Found and Shared and The Secret in the Tomb

Show Notes

From Leanna Renee Hieber: “Much like the introduction to this story will have you believe, I am, in fact, a licensed New York City tour guide who leads haunted and weird history tours specifically around Greenwich Village. I do, in fact, lead folks to the courtyard address on Perry Street that inspired Lovecraft’s “He”. So, when I was approached to write a piece posited as if it were non-fiction for The Book of Starry Wisdom, where this story first appeared, I created the finding of the diary outside the Perry Street address as a fun device, one I’d like to think Lovecraft and Poe- the latter of which I take pains to laud as my personal inspiration- would appreciate.”


Revenants for Howard Phillips Lovecraft

Howard Phillips Lovecraft

Zatara in The Books of Magic by John Bolton (EXTREME CONTENT WARNING: Dead animals)

Books of Magic

Neil Gaiman

Joss Whedon

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Becoming Quotes (Includes Spike’s reference to humans as Happy Meals on legs)

Edgar Allan Poe

Who the Hell is Edgar? by Teya & Salena

Psycho

Alfred Hitchcock


Old Things are Meant to Be Found and Shared

By Leanna Renee Hieber


Dear Reader,

A very curious thing happened on a Greenwich Village tour I have been known to lead as a reincarnate Victorian, antiquated speaker and consummate old soul; a walking tour that takes guests along the very same paths that famed horror writers Edgar Allan Poe and Howard Phillips Lovecraft walked in prior centuries when they lived in the West Village. I speak passionately of the stories these men penned in and about certain locations, and of course I must throw in the occasional ghost story as no tale is complete without supernatural influence. I think of Greenwich Village as a sort of spiritual and literary haven. And I’m hardly the only writer to have thought so. There’s quite a legacy on its streets and behind its townhouse facades.

I was nearing the end of my lecture, building my love of history and of Old New York into an artful crescendo when I stumbled across a weather-beaten leather volume, placed directly in my path, leaning against the foot of a gnarled tree. The roots had begun to upend the sidewalk leveled ineffectively to suppress its growth. The black volume, its corners damp with an odd oil, gleamed in the vaguely sulfuric glow of those modern streetlamps built to appear historic. The iron posts of replica gas lamps pepper many old neighborhoods where landmarking laws protect architectural treasures against the ravening jaws of modernity’s bulldozers. Their amber light illuminates a history reinventing itself into an uncertain future. (Continue Reading…)

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PseudoPod 978: Where the Brass Band Plays

Show Notes

From the author:  “This story grew out of the feeling that we live in an increasingly polarised world. More than at any time I can remember, it seems as though people exist in different realities, regarding not just one issue but many. Politics, climate change, gender distinctions, public health – it can be isolating and even traumatizing to realize that the people around you see the world so differently to the way you see it. At times, it can feel as if you’re going mad. This story ties that sense of isolation to the continuing decay of the UK’s once-bustling seaside towns, and to the ongoing problem of coastal pollution.”


Where the Brass Band Plays

by Katie McIvor


The day I found seaweed on my sister’s shoes was the beginning of the end, for me as well as her. I grabbed her by the shoulders as she tried to scoot past me into the house. “Audrey, where’ve you been? Were you at the beach?”

She looked behind her. At the green-slimed tennis shoes she’d left by the front door, with brownish globules of air bladders squished between the laces. A frown creased her little face.

“A bunch of us went,” she said, in the high-pitched whine she always adopted when she was being defensive. “Just along the shore a bit. It’s not a big deal.”

I crouched so our faces were level. “Audrey, you don’t go near the beach. Not without me or Dad. Okay?”

“O-kay, Ve-ra,” she sing-songed. She was only seven, and I couldn’t always tell if she was being sarcastic.

She ducked around me and slipped into the kitchen. I heard her greeting Dad. I heard the comforting rumble of his big deep voice asking her how school had been, and I stared after her with an ache that was half-panic and half-dread clenching my guts. (Continue Reading…)

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PseudoPod 977: The Fruits Of


The Fruits of

By Chelsea Davis


They’d long since passed the point where road gave way to trail gave way to forest. Bright green ferns now rose to their knees. Around them, old-growth redwoods loomed forth. It had been like this for miles: only trees, ferns, the sweet scent of pine, and the two walkers, lost and silent.

At least, Amber was fairly sure they were lost. Anton’s navigational methods didn’t exactly inspire confidence. The gruff, stout man in a camo sweatshirt and buzzcut—both style choices that were, she now suspected, aspirational rather than markers of actual military service—barely ever paused to check his compass or beat-up map. Amber didn’t dare question him, though. He had a fragile ego and a short temper, a powder keg of a personality that had both scared and intrigued her when they’d first met behind Danny’s Pub last month. He’d told her, then, with a smug calm that made her breathe harder, that she had literally nothing to go on without him and his knowledge of the nightfruit. “Zilch. Zip,” he’d slurred in the bar alleyway, slashing his Miller from left to right in the universal gesture for “nothing.” His small eyes had shone watery in the red light of the bar sign above the back door. “Also, first hint of funny business and I’ll leave you out there. Don’t care how far we are from the road.” She’d nodded, handed him the cash, watched him count it.

At least it wasn’t dark out yet in the woods, she told herself, her boots sinking into damp soil again and again. Judging by the sun’s place in the sky, they still had two more hours of decent light. Two hours from now they would hopefully have found what they were looking for. And then it wouldn’t matter whether she could see well. (Continue Reading…)

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PseudoPod 975: James Courtney Goes Home

Show Notes

Get Out


James Courtney Goes Home

By Jamie Grimes


The personal effects of the late Mr. James Courtney found their way to me some months after his passing, once the stipulations of his will had been addressed and the remainder of his belongings had been picked over by his friends and family. He had made a promise to me long ago, and I to him, and now, some decades after he’d done his part, the rest was mine to fulfill.

His steamer trunk was left like a flag staked in the yard, the ghosts of a former life reminding me of the claim they had on my soul. Inside were a pile of well-worn journals, some wadded papers cushioning a couple of chipped dinner plates, and a few books. In with all of this was a letter addressed simply “To Thomas.” In it, Courtney recounted the better part of the last two decades of his life, during which time he never married, made but a few close friends, most of whom helped him put his meager fortune into “charities benefiting the advancement of our peoples.” He wished me great health and lamented that he could never bring himself to come back to the island no matter how he longed for it.

Underneath the letter, next to the plain brass urn containing Courtney’s earthly remains, lay a troublesome volume I’d hoped never to have the ill fortune to see. I’d heard tell of Henry Barksdale’s Statements and Observations Concerning the American Negro Species. What colored person in learned circles hadn’t? So obnoxious it was in its assertions, in its blanket characterizations of a whole people as nothing more than savages tamed to the brink of enlightenment by their enslavers. I had more than half a mind to burn it on sight, but with that urge came an appalling curiosity, and I found myself thumbing through its overwrought suppositions, its “there can be no doubts” and its “undeniable facts” about “the primitive American Negro.” No wonder the world is as divided as it is. If this is the thinking of one of the South’s allegedly preeminent minds, what hope is there in finding our common humanity?

I cursed Courtney for bequeathing me this nonsense, but I was quick to apologize. Never get on the wrong side of the dead. With Barksdale so fresh on my mind—with his feverish rantings about his last days on Ediwander Island in my hands—I ought to have known better. (Continue Reading…)

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PseudoPod 976: Every Last Gossamer Strand


Every Last Gossamer Strand

By C.J. Dotson


The high windows of the Bluebird Lake Lodge ballroom let in warm afternoon sunlight. Gilded embellishments glowed upon white columns and high door frames, ornate chandeliers glittered, and bloated black flies swarming outside the glass made the light seem to flicker. The insects, tiny intruders from a different kind of place than this, had noticed me so quickly—I’d arrived at the Lodge and its surrounding campground only half an hour ago.

Mother must be lonely. Or whatever her version of loneliness is.

Unsatisfied? Hollow?

Maybe she’d be happy to see me. (Continue Reading…)

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PseudoPod 974: The Half-Pint Flask


The Half-Pint Flask

By DuBose Heyward


I picked up the book and regarded it with interest. Even its format suggested the- author: the practical linen covered boards, the compact and exact paragraphing. I opened the volume at random. There he was again: “There can be no doubt;” “An undeniable fact,” “I am prepared to assert.” A statement in the preface leaped from the context and arrested my gaze:

“The primitive American Negro is of a deeply religious nature, demonstrating in his constant attendance at church, his fervent prayers, his hymns, and his frequent mention of the Deity that he has cast aside the last vestiges of his pagan background, and has unreservedly espoused the doctrine of Christianity.”

I spun the pages through my fingers until a paragraph in the last chapter brought me up standing:

“I was hampered in my investigations by a sickness contracted on the island that was accompanied by a distressing insomnia, and, in its final stages, extreme delirium. But I already had sufficient evidence in hand to enable me to prove ”

Yes, there it was, fact upon fact. I was overwhelmed by the permanence, the unanswerable word of the printed page. In the face of it my own impressions became fantastic, discredited even in my own mind. In an effort at self-justification I commenced to rehearse my impressions of that preposterous month as opposed to Barksdale’s facts; my feeling for effects and highly developed fiction writer’s imagination on the one hand; and on the other, his cold record of a tight, three dimensional world as reported by his five good senses. (Continue Reading…)

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PseudoPod 973: Flash on the Borderlands LXXIII: Perpetuation

Show Notes

“The First Mrs. Edward Rochester Would Like a Word”- From the author: “Many readers want better for the attic wife from Jane Eyre. We see her only in a diminished state, and the person who tells her story is the man who wants to leave her. In this—and perhaps only in this—she’s similar to du Maurier’s eponymous Rebecca. But there have been other women whose voices were stolen in real life and real death: the so-called “witches” of Salem Village, for instance, and the many women whose murderers painted them as wanton or mad. I wanted Bertha Mason Rochester to have not just a life story, but an afterlife story, and to offer one to other women whose stories have been erased or co-opted. To bring everyone out of the attic, ready to shout their truths across the moors.”


“It’s making life a misery, you would have taken the liberty”


Shallow Fangs

By David Marino


Finally worked up the courage to see me, huh? Don’t worry, just because I can suck your blood doesn’t mean I will. And it’s not like you can’t; humans have all the teeth and tongue to do it too. My fangs make the puncture a bit easier, but my throat is no different from yours. Of course I’ve had some, but so have you! You never sucked your finger after a paper cut? Lukewarm tea, hint of iron. Blood tastes mid. Doesn’t keep me alive any longer than normal. Like you, I can go out into the sun, I just burn easy. You’ll have to go elsewhere if you want to cosplay some gothic fantasy.

You came to me because you want to be pruned. (Continue Reading…)