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Hi Gang!
September has arrived at last, so I'm very much looking forward to the release of my next non-fiction book, Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances this month! I'm really happy with how this turned out, and the early reviews are all good.
Most other things are in limbo right now. The release of my forthcoming collection Night Terrors and Other Tales has been postponed until next May so we can launch at StokerCon 2021, where I'll be a Guest of Honor. I'm actually pleased with this date change because it gives us more time to promote and gather reviews..
There are other good things happening, although (as always) I can't talk about some of it yet, but let's just say one major upcoming announcement will involve casting and pods.
I do hope you're all staying healthy, cool, safe, and sane.
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Still Life
In which I rhapsodize about favorite movie photos from my collection
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Old Hollywood.
Last month I featured a postcard of Pickfair, the legendary home of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, and at least one reader (hi, Ron!) said they'd like to see more of classic Hollywood.
So, here's another vintage postcard from my collection: Grauman's Chinese Theatre in 1948. Wow, it's hard to believe that at one point this legendary theater was surrounded by trees! I remember it before the massive Hollywood and Highland mall moved in, when the Chinese was situated between parking lots. I saw a lot of movies in that theater, which had a beautiful interior. I remember just gazing at the incredible ceiling, with its detailed ornamentation.
Now known as the TCL Chinese Theatre, Sid Grauman opened his movie palace in 1927. The palm trees in the forecourt and the little canopied walkway in the postcard may be gone now, but the building itself hasn't changed much and of course the concrete is still filled with all the handprints and footprints of stars. And they still hold premieres there, bringing back a touch of the old Hollywood glamour.
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The Halloween Spirit
Tips for keeping it going all year 'round
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"What's Halloween going to be like in 2020?"
As a Halloween expert, my interview season usually starts in July or August, and this year's been no exception. Except...we're in the middle of a pandemic that shows no signs of abating by October, so the question above is what I'm getting asked most often this year.
One of the innovations that we're going to see come out of this may be the "drive-through haunt." Traditional haunts - which involve a lot of visitors squeezed into tight mazes and spewing out aerosol droplets with every scream - aren't practical in the middle of a pandemic. While many haunt operators have just opted out of 2020, others have begun to think outside the box.
Kowagarasetai in Tokyo is a haunt production that's now being touted as the world's first drive-through haunt. Hosted in a parking garage, the haunt is a 17-minute experience that takes place with you, the thrill-seeker, safely behind the rolled-up windows of your own car (or a rental the haunt makes available if you don't have your own car).
Now drive-through haunts are popping up in the U.S., too. Here in Southern California, the popular L.A. Haunted Hayride is reimagining its 2020 attraction as a "live drive-up experience". Some of the key players behind the Queen Mary's Dark Harbor are offering the "Urban Legends Haunt", a drive-through experience at the Orange County Fairgrounds. Perhaps most intriguing is the "Stranger Things Drive-Into Experience", which says it will offer an hour-long trip into Hawkins and the Upside-Down.
Will drive-through haunts become a permanent Halloween fixture after 2020? Only your Ouija board knows for sure.
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Preview for L.A. Haunted Hayride's "Live Drive-Up Experience"
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Strange Fruit
The weirdest thing I've recently uncovered in my research
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Sister Aimee was ahead of her time.
In the 1920s and '30s, one of the most famous figures in L.A. wasn't a movie star or even a politician, but was instead possibly the first televangelist. Aimee Semple McPherson was born in Canada in 1871, but moved to Chicago after marrying her first husband in 1908. That husband died after contracting malaria and dysentery during a missionary trip to China, and Aimee spent the next few years traveling, preaching, and failing at a second marriage.
In 1918, she arrived in L.A., where her natural charisma and preaching skills began to garner her a following. She raised funds to build her own megachurch (possibly the first of its kind), Angelus Temple in Echo Park, where her services included different sets every week and musical performers. Her fame spread even more when she began to broadcast her sermons via radio.
One of the strangest incidences in her life, however, happened in 1926, when she disappeared while swimming near a beach in Santa Monica. She was presumed drowned, but her body wasn't found. Just when all hope had been abandoned and her memorial services were being prepared, Aimee called from a hospital in Arizona, claiming that she'd been kidnapped from the Santa Monica beach and taken to a hide-out in Mexico, which she'd managed to escape from.
However, in 1927 the press and L.A. prosecutors put forth a different theory: that Aimee had concocted the kidnapping story to hide the fact that she'd actually run off to have an affair with a former employee named Kenneth Ormiston. The case went to trial, but fell apart when Ormiston denied the allegations and named another woman who he said he'd actually run off with.
To this day, no one knows the truth about what happened to the famous evangelist during that month that she was missing. Was it a kidnapping, an affair...or something even stranger?
McPherson's career lost some of its luster after the trial; her church fell into debt, and she endured other claims of having extramarital affairs. However, she always managed to pull the Angelus Temple out of debt, and also became known for how she integrated her congregation with L.A.'s Black population.
She died in 1944 under (again) mysterious circumstances: although she was found dead in her room with pill bottles nearby, the cause of death was listed as "unknown."
Aimee's legacy - the monumental Angelus Temple, the concepts of broadcast preaching and the megachurch, her welcoming of Black church members - live on, even while the mysteries of her life and death have become part of Los Angeles urban legend.
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"Golden Eyes"
(Originally appeared in Horror Library Vol. 3)
Back in the 1990s, I had some interesting encounters with wildlife around crowded urban L.A. Coming home late one night, I encountered a family of raccoons ambling along a street near my North Hollywood apartment. A few weeks later, I came across a coyote on a canyon boulevard that practically dared me to go around it. One day while tending to a friend's cats, I panicked when I saw a hawk that was bigger than the cats perched on a fence and eyeing them hungrily. Now that I live in the foothills just north of L.A., my backyard has welcomed squirrels, possums, raccoons, rats, mice, lizards, salamanders, and (once) a massive great horned owl.
Whenever I have these encounters, I'm astonished to realize that these wild things are fending in the middle of one of the world's most densely-packed urban landscapes. For the most part, we humans seem to co-exist peacefully alongside these incredible neighbors...
But what if that won't always be the case? What if the wildlife gets pushed too far and decides, one day, to push back?
That's the premise of "Golden Eyes".
Although the story has been reprinted a number of times and received an Honorable Mention in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, I ended up not including it in my forthcoming collection Night Terrors and Other Tales...but hey, you only have so many pages, right? Instead, I'm presenting it as this month's giveaway, and I hope you'll enjoy it. |
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Periods.
Let's talk nuts and bolts this month, with what may just be the most common - and yet most controversial - piece of punctuation.
Yes, I said "controversial" in regards to the ordinary, everyday period, that little dot that ends sentences. How can that be open to even a whiff of controversy?
Well, in the past (like, ummm...when I first started writing), back before we had these here newfangled computers and we wrote on typewriters, it was common practice to put two spaces after a period; this was because not all typewriters were evenly spaced, so two spaces helped editors and book designers to know for sure when a sentence had ended.
Then along came PCs and Macs, and it soon became apparent that there was no real need for two spaces. Editors divided along "one space/two spaces" lines.
Nowadays, most editors prefer one space after a period (and some will go so far as to very firmly specify this in their guidelines). I did recently see one editor on Facebook saying he preferred two spaces, but he was swiftly shouted down by a chorus of one-spacers.
Of course, as always - FOLLOW THE GUIDELINES. I've said it many times before, and I'll say it again here: editors routinely count on at least 80% of the submissions they receive not following the guidelines. Some editors just kick out anything they see that doesn't follow the guidelines, which certainly takes down the size of the slushpile quickly.
When in doubt, though, I'd advise sticking to one space after a period. That way you won't run the risk of being seen as a punctuation Neanderthal.
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WIP It
My current works-in-progress
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One of my August projects was an interview with Alma Katsu for an upcoming issue of Nightmare Magazine. If you haven't read Alma's work yet, I can't recommend The Hunger or (released this year) The Deep highly enough!
I just recorded an episode of Ghost Magnet With Bridget Marquardt...as the guest! We had a great chat, and it should be going live on September 7. You can listen then here (or at other podcast venues).
Weird Women has been garnering some great reviews! Here's the starred review from Booklist, and here's the starred review from Library Journal. CrimeReads reprinted the book's introduction, which you can read here.
I will be signing Calling the Spirits for Dark Delicacies later in September, and you can pre-order here.
Les Klinger and I had a great signing for Weird Women at Dark Delicacies - as you can see from the below photo, we practiced proper social distancing!
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Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances
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Coming September 26: my comprehensive survey of the history of spirit-calling looks at necromancy, Spiritualism, modern ghost-hunting, and more. Illustrated and fully indexed.
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Miscreations, which includes my story "Imperfect Clay", is available now in hardback, paperback, and e-book.
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My story "Antonia and the Stranger Who Came to Los Feliz" will be in this fabulous new anthology, forthcoming from Akashic Books in February 2021.
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In League With Sherlock Holmes
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My story "A Seance in Liverpool" appears in this forthcoming anthology edited by Leslie S. Klinger and Laurie King.
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Includes my poem "We Live Through This."
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Weird Women: Classic Supernatural Fiction by Groundbreaking Female Writers 1852-1923
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My Ghost Stories partner Les Klinger and I have re-teamed to dive deep for this anthology of amazing, terrifying stories by early female writers.
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Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween
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My award-winning history of Halloween has just been re-issued in a new less-expensive paperback format!
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The Lovecraft Squad: Rising
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The final volume in this incredible "mosaic novel" includes a chapter by me.
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My story "Family" is in this fabulous anthology, coming in June.
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Great British Horror 5: Midsummer Eve
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I'm the honorary American in this upcoming anthology.
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Are you listening to the free Ghost Magnet with Bridget Marquardt podcast? Each week I provide a "Ghost Report" in which I talk about some cool little bit of history. Plus, there are great guests, and Bridget's a wonderful host!
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Because I'm suffering guilt over not using a story I really liked in my collection Night Terrors and Other Tales, I decided to share it here with all of you instead! Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy this not-so-nice animal story.
NOTE: The story includes adult language and violent situations.
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Megan was gazing out the kitchen window, thinking about how they needed to remind the gardener to trim back the bougainvillea, when she glimpsed the dead animal.
At first all she saw was a patch of fur, partially hidden in the thick sage and rosemary where the rear of their property, tamed and trained, seceded to the slope of the wild canyon wall. She moved from the kitchen to the sliding glass doors in the living room, and now she could make out paws, a pink snout, scattered patches of gray hide.
“Barker?” she called out, turning. She waited until her 85-pound Labrador came bounding into the living room, tongue lolling, tail wagging. Stroking his head, she murmured, “Stay here.”
Megan slid carefully out the door, closing it behind her despite Barker’s insistent cries. She crossed the yard, moving around the pool and past the citrus trees (still fruiting in the Los Angeles winter) until she reached the small corpse. It’d been partially devoured, and it took her a few seconds to identify it as a possum.
“What is it?”
She jumped slightly as David poked his head out of the house, holding the anxious dog back with one hand.
“Dead possum.”
“A possum? Since when do we get possums around here?”
Megan shrugged and stood there, gazing down at the shredded remains until her husband joined her. “Do you think Barker did this?” he asked.
“Barker wouldn’t do this.” Megan had adopted the dog six months ago from an animal shelter that had warned her he might be untrainable. She hadn’t believed it, and when David had acquiesced she’d brought the animal home. In less than a month she’d had Barker heeling and performing tricks, and the dog obviously worshipped her. Even though she knew his canine ancestors had been hunters, she refused to accept now that Barker could have done this. It was too much of a betrayal.
“Did you let him out during the night? I didn’t.”
David looked up into the canyon, squinting. “Coyotes, then, come down out of the hills.”
“Maybe we need to talk about that fence again,” Megan said, expecting another argument. For some reason David had always liked the notion that their property was somehow “borderless”.
To her surprise, he agreed. “Maybe.”
Behind them, Barker pushed his nose up against the glass and howled.
###
Megan was at work, peering at the Avid’s screen, cutting the trailer for a new blockbuster action film when she felt something brush her ankle. She looked down to see Flatbed, the office cat, rubbing silver sides against her legs.
“Hey, Flats,” she said, picking the cat up, glad for a break from the tedium of cinematic explosions and gunshots. She set Flatbed down in her lap and stroked the cat’s back, producing a deep, satisfied purr and wincing as claws dug into her thigh.
“You sure have a way with her. Hard to believe she was once the neighborhood feral terror.”
Megan looked up to see Tommy, the editor from the next cubicle, lounging in the doorway, coffee cup in hand. Smiling, Megan hefted Flatbed up, giving her a playful shake. “She’s still a fearsome predator. She’s nice to me because she knows I respect her.”
“Yeah, well, the treats don’t exactly hurt, either.”
Megan laughed and lowered the cat. “You give her treats, and she won’t let you pick her up.”
Tommy gazed down impassively as Flatbed nosed around the floor; Megan knew he was one of those people who were never really comfortable around pets. “You’re right. I’ve said it before – you’re in the wrong profession. You should be the cat whisperer or something, not trying to find gold in these pile-of-shit movies.”
“Yeah, but the pay’s good.”
“That it is.” Tommy toasted her with his cup, and then jumped as Flatbed suddenly fixed on him, arched her back and hissed.
“Whoa…what the hell…okay, I’m going.” Tommy held up his hands in a placating gesture and left. As soon as he did, Flatbed’s posture dropped back down to normal, and she returned to winding around Megan’s ankle.
The possibility that she really didn’t understand the cat at all sent a small shiver through Megan.
###
“Hey, did you see this?”
Megan was on the couch, trying to go over e-mail on a laptop despite Barker’s weight on her lap, as David drew her attention to the television. The news was running a story about a mountain lion, complete with footage of the magnificent creature bounding along a busy urban street past astonished pedestrians and swerving cars.
“It just showed up in Beverly Hills today. Ran right down the middle of Rodeo, can you believe it?”
On the screen, cops and sheriffs with rifles were trying to block off the big cat’s escape.
“Where’d it come from?”
Shrugging, David answered, “Nobody knows. The hills, I guess.”
The video showed a sheriff taking aim and firing. Megan felt her stomach clench as the lion was hit; it staggered as crimson blossomed on its tawny pelt, and the gunman shot it again. It fell over, and the picture zoomed in for a close-up as the mountain lion twitched and then went still.
“God,” Megan said, “did they really have to kill it? It was probably just scared and lost.”
“Apparently it wasn’t too ‘scared and lost’ to maul a little girl yesterday.”
Megan caressed Barker’s warm head, and the couch vibrated as the dog’s huge tail began to thump against the cushions. “Yeah, but…couldn’t they have just tranquilized it or something, knocked it out and taken it back to the wilds?”
Irritated, David tapped the remote and turned the television off. “’The wilds’? We live in the middle of Los Angeles. Just where are they going to take a crazed mountain lion so it won’t attack more people?”
Megan didn’t answer.
###
Two days later, on a California-warm November morning, Megan was in the backyard, swimming. She completed a lap, turned – and froze.
There was a massive bird sitting on the small wooden picket fence that separated her vegetable garden from the rest of the yard, just a few feet past the far end of the pool. Megan had once glimpsed a heron inexplicably perched by the side of a freeway near Encino, but otherwise this was the biggest bird she’d ever seen outside of the Animal Channel; it must have been three feet tall, with claws only slightly smaller than her own hands.
She guessed it was a hawk. And it was watching her.
She reached out to grab the side of the pool to steady herself, forgetting to even swim. She was terrified to leave the pool; she tried to recall anything she could about predatory birds, and realized she knew virtually nothing. Did they ever attack people? Would it avoid her if she stayed in the water…or did that just make her a more enticing target?
She suddenly heard Barker’s paws skittering on concrete, his deep voice ringing out as he bounded around the side of the house, having obviously seen the intruder. Megan had a flash of the bird digging those inch-long talons into the dog’s head, and she forgot her fears instantly. “Barker, no -!” she screamed, pulling herself up onto the concrete, trying to get her feet under her.
She was too late. Barker was a dozen feet from the bird. His powerful rear legs corded for a leap, he was nearly on the hawk – and it leapt from the fence into the air with a piercing shriek. It soared instantly beyond Barker’s leap, and was lost from sight over the edge of the canyon in seconds.
Megan’s heart was hammering as she went to her furiously barking dog. “It’s okay, it’s gone, Barker, it’s gone –”
She reached out to the dog, and as he felt her touch his barking became a frustrated whine. She glanced over at the top of the fence, and saw fresh scratches in the wood where the bird had been.
“Well,” Megan murmured to herself and to Barker, “I guess we know what killed the possum, at least.”
###
“A hawk, huh?”
David stared out the window in the side kitchen door, and Megan knew he wasn’t listening to her. He’d been putting away the dinner dishes when something had distracted him.
“David, what are you looking at?”
His eyes suddenly went wide. “Holy shit! Check this out!” He waved her over without turning away from the scene outside.
Megan rose to join him, looked out, and gasped.
There were two coyotes in the small walkway that ran along the side of the house; they were sinewy and strong, only slightly smaller than Barker. They nosed through the trashcans just outside the door, apparently unconcerned with the possibility of discovery.
Whispering, Megan said, “I’ve never seen them in our backyard like that.”
“Me, neither,” David said, then laughed. “Look at them. They’re brazen little fuckers, I’ll say that.” He suddenly rapped on the glass of the window.
The two coyotes turned to look, their eyes going from gold to glittering white as the light caught the pupils. They stared at Megan and David as if daring them to force a confrontation.
“Where’s Barker?” Megan asked.
“Asleep in the bedroom.”
David reached for the doorknob.
“What are you doing –?!” Megan hissed.
“I don’t want these assholes to knock over the trash and wake up the whole neighborhood.”
“Don’t –”
But the door was already ajar. Megan placed a warning hand on his arm and he at least moved cautiously, opening the door only enough to look out.
One of the coyotes snarled. David flinched and jerked his head back. The coyote jumped.
David slammed the door shut, and Megan cried out in alarm at the sound of the coyote’s body hitting the door from the other side. David put his weight against the door, making sure it was closed all the way, and then he threw the deadbolt lock and stepped back.
Outside, both animals snarled and yipped and howled, scratching and pounding at the door. “Go the fuck away!” David screamed, as Megan clutched at him in terror. Barker joined them, venting his own rage.
It went on for perhaps another six, seven seconds; then they heard the coyote sounds moving off, away from their house and back towards the canyon, finally vanishing into the distance.
David and Megan waited, tense, until they knew the coyotes were gone, then they exhaled and turned to each other in disbelief.
“What the fuck was that?!” David asked.
Megan collapsed into one of the kitchen chairs, her knees suddenly nerveless. “I don’t know. What the fuck is any of it?”
Barker raced excitedly from room to room, and Megan was thankful the dog hadn’t been outside. He was young and sturdy, but somehow she doubted he would stand much chance in a fight with two ferocious and hungry scavengers. She hoped she’d never have to test that.
###
The next day, Tommy came into her cubicle. “I saw something really weird last night,” he said, sipping from his ever-present coffee, “a whole family of raccoons was just walking down the middle of my street. I mean, I live in the middle of the valley, nothing but houses and apartment buildings for miles – where’d these raccoons come from?”
Megan shook her head. “I don’t know, but during the last week I’ve seen coyotes and a huge fucking hawk in my backyard.”
“Everybody I know has seen animals lately. Where the hell are they suddenly coming from?”
“I don’t think they’re ‘coming from’ anywhere,” Megan answered. “They’ve been here all along.”
Tommy sneered. “Oh, how very metaphysical of you, Doctor Doolittle. Yes, yes, they’re the real owners, we’re the unruly tenants, and they’ve finally served the eviction notice, is that it?”
“You laugh, but…” Megan didn’t bother to finish. Instead, she turned away from Tommy, hoping to lose herself in the mindless action film.
Instead, she abruptly realized that she hadn’t seen Flatbed since yesterday.
###
That night, Megan drove through neighborhoods that lay dark and powerless; accidents clogged intersections, flashlight beams strobed inside houses. When she turned onto her own street, she was relieved to see functioning streetlights and homes lit by the phosphorescent blue of screens, but something was still wrong: Her car was being paced, by barely glimpsed shapes.
As she drove deeper into the canyon, she saw shadows, the glints of eyes, black winged silhouettes against the sky. She rounded one curve and her headlights picked out a rattler, coiled in the middle of the road, fangs bared and tail buzzing. She drove right up to it, but the snake didn’t move; instead, its slit-eyes locked onto hers, its jaws hung open, fangs extended.
Megan shivered, then drove carefully forward, trying to center the snake beneath the car so she wouldn’t actually roll over it. She glanced back in her rearview mirror, but couldn’t tell if the snake was moving or not. In fact, she couldn’t see it at all.
She reached her own driveway, parked, glanced around, listened, but sensed nothing. She got out, hurried the short distance to her front door, unlocked it and went in. As she closed the door, she thought she heard something behind her; she tried to look through the heavy etched glass pane set into the door, but she couldn’t make anything out.
“Megs…?”
She jumped and realized it was only David behind her. “I think something followed me,” she said, halfhearted, no longer certain.
“Check this out.”
David led her into the living room, where a television news station was running a report on the unprecedented number of animal attacks being reported from Southern California. A total of ninety-three people had died over the last three days from snakebites, sharks, and rabid or infectious animals. Hospitals, already understaffed and overworked in the metropolitan area, were struggling to keep up with hundreds of incoming cases.
Authorities were urging people – especially those in the canyon areas – to stay indoors until “the situation is brought under control.”
“A few dogcatchers aren’t going to fix this,” Megan said.
David nodded. “It’s like the coyotes…”
She didn’t fully understand what was happening any more than the so-called experts on television who babbled on about “shrinking ecosystems” and “competition among species” and “possible reactions to toxic environments”, but she thought this might be the beginning of something that had been brewing for decades, even centuries. A retaliation. A vendetta.
A war.
If that was the case…she wasn’t even sure which side she was on. Megan had often preferred the company of animals to men. She understood and fulfilled their simpler needs, and enjoyed the unconditional love they gave her in return. She’d been a vegetarian for the last six years, and had done volunteer work for a local animal shelter; she’d even briefly flirted with converting to Buddhism. She and David had been enduring the rocky second year of their marriage when she’d found Barker in the Valley animal shelter and David had agreed to the adoption; she secretly thought the dog had saved their marriage. She’d loved this house the first day they’d looked at it because a deer had wandered into the yard while the real estate agent had tried to shoo the gorgeous stag from eating the plants. The house had been expensive, but she and David were both financially solid, working in the town’s ubiquitous film industry, and the house had suited David as well.
Now she wondered if Tommy had somehow been right, that maybe they didn’t own anything at all.
Or maybe it wouldn’t be theirs for much longer.
###
She awoke the next morning, looked at her clock, and realized they’d lost their power sometime during the night.
She groaned, rolled over in bed, and saw that David was already up. From somewhere in the house she heard Barker whining loudly…and something growling.
Her stomach knotted in dread, she pulled on sweatpants and made her way out to the living room, feeling a brief moment of relief when she saw David; but the fear returned when she saw the two coyotes at the rear sliding doors. They were pawing at the glass, lips pulled back from their heavy teeth, foam dripping. Their eyes were fixed on David, who was doing something with a broom handle. Megan realized that Barker had been locked in the kitchen pantry, and was crying loudly for release.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
David looked up, and now she could make out his work: He was duct-taping a butcher knife to the end of a broom handle.
“You should go back to the bedroom,” he told her.
Megan gaped briefly, as she realized what he meant to do. “David, you can’t –”
He cut her off. “These fuckers are all around the house. There’s something out front, I can’t even tell what it is, but it’s big. We can’t leave our own fucking house, Megan. Now I know how you feel, that you love the Humane Society and the World Wildlife Fund and all that shit, but if you think I’m going to let a bunch of animals lay siege to us in our own home, you’re wrong.”
He finished taping the knife, tore the tape with his teeth, tossed the roll aside.
Megan wiped at tears that had suddenly appeared, and offered a final plea. “There must be something else we can do, somebody we can call for help –”
“Cell phone suddenly says there’s no network available. Now if you don’t want to watch this, go in the other room.”
But she didn’t.
She stayed, paralyzed, as David took a solid grip on his makeshift spear, unlocked the door, and slid it back a few inches. The coyotes immediately jostled for position, leaping to the opening, ready to thrust their snouts in, snapping at flesh –
David thrust out with the blade. He caught one of the coyotes in the face. It yelped, but didn’t dance back. It bit at the blade, and David continued to stab, moving the handle back and forth, screaming the whole time, his screams mixing with those of the coyotes, blood flinging against metal and glass and skin. One of the animals suddenly had a crimson mess where an eye had been, and it was limping.
They withdrew.
David shouted victoriously, but his triumph turned to frustration when he saw that the predators weren’t leaving, they were simply retreating a few feet to clean their wounds. In between salving licks they glared and snarled at David, their meaning clear.
“Fuck!” David called out.
Megan ran from the room, just making the bathroom before she vomited. Then, already exhausted from this day, she went back to bed, wondering if she’d ever be able to speak to her husband again.
She stayed in bed throughout the day and the night, trying to block out the howls and cries coming from outside, curled into the most primitive position beneath the covers. She got up twice, to feed Barker; the dog was almost too excited to eat, running frantically from room to room. She tried to avoid encountering David, dreaded even seeing him.
A day passed before hunger and thirst overpowered her fear. The house was still without power, and she was alone, neither David nor Barker with her in the bedroom. She splashed water on her face and was halfway down the hall to the living room before she realized:
The house was completely quiet. No snarls, barks, screeches, nails on glass or wood.
Had they gone?
She walked into the living room, and instantly saw David’s bare feet on the floor, sticking out from behind a table. She rushed to his side and saw that he was having some sort of seizure. His limbs moved spasmodically, his head knocked the floor, and there was a large place on one arm swelling and blackening. His clumsily-made weapon lay nearby, where he’d apparently dropped it. Blood still stained its blade.
Her anger at him was instantly replaced by terror. She dropped to her knees beside him and placed her hands on his head, trying to steady him.
“David…David…”
His movements ceased. At first she thought she’d succeeded in calming him, in stopping the seizure; then she saw he was completely still, skin pale, eyes rolled back, lips flecked with foam.
Megan stared in disbelief for a moment. “No, no, David, don’t – don’t do this, please, oh God no –”
Suddenly Megan jerked her hands away as something with eight legs crawled up over David’s shoulder onto his neck. The spider was large, the size of a quarter, and there was a violin shape on its back.
Brown recluse. David had been bitten by a brown recluse, and had suffered an allergic reaction. The scene suddenly played out in Megan’s mind: David, fueled by rage, preparing to fight off the enemy, unaware that his home had already been invaded by far deadlier foes.
Megan screamed, saw the spider scuttling across the floor and instinctively grabbed the nearest large item – a book – to hurl at the spider. She cried in satisfaction as the missile hit its target, instantly ending the spider’s life.
Just as it had ended David’s.
Her compassion had vanished, replaced only by a grim, mad desire for vengeance. David’s death mandated that. He’d been right all along – they could only be reasoned with at the edge of a knife. She started to reach for his spear –
- and froze when she saw the open glass doors.
With no sign of the coyotes outside.
They came out of the kitchen, then, and she knew they’d been watching, waiting. One was missing an eye and limping, its tawny pelt covered with drying blood. They converged on her, lips curled back from bone-white teeth, saliva dripping ropes off their lips, advancing. She looked into the golden eyes of the nearest one, and was paralyzed by the cold, inhuman intelligence she saw there.
She knew they would win the war after all.
She began to back away, down the hallway, hoping to reach the bedroom, close the door, at least hold them out for a while –
There was the sound of more paws behind her. She risked a glance back and saw Barker padding down the hall. Tears of relief, of her bond with the dog, ran down her cheeks at the sight of him. This was no cruel predator but her dog, her boon companion, her protector. Already the coyotes were backing away, and she felt a savage joy at the idea of Barker tearing into their midst, offering his own life to protect hers.
“Barker…”
The big dog stopped, his lips sliding back, a low growl forming in his throat.
“Thank God –”
But her gratitude broke off when she realized Barker wasn’t looking at the coyotes. He was looking at her.
Then he lunged.
END
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September: I'll be signing copies of Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances for Dark Delicacies. Sorry, the signing will not be open to the public, but you can pre-order a copy here.
September 14: I'll be part of the online Galactic Terrors reading series. Follow me on Facebook for more details!
May 20-23, 2021: I'll be a Guest of Honor at StokerCon in Denver, Colorado.
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