Shock Totem 9 Read online

  PUBLISHER/EDITOR

  K. Allen Wood

  CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

  John Boden

  Catherine Grant

  Barry Lee Dejasu

  Zachary C. Parker

  COPY EDITOR

  Sarah Wood

  LAYOUT/DESIGN

  K. Allen Wood

  COVER DESIGN

  Mikio Murakami

  Established in 2009

  www.shocktotem.com

  Digital Edition Copyright © 2014 by Shock Totem Publications, LLC.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of Shock Totem Publications, LLC, except where permitted by law.

  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 #9!

  I could begin this intro by writing the exact same thing I wrote last time, where I discussed the difficulties of getting things done with a newborn in the house, only this time I’d add one thing: It gets worse! Our little boy is walking now. I thought it was hard typing while holding a baby; it’s impossible while chasing a baby.

  But enough about me...

  Our ninth issue is quite a thing. Stephen Graham Jones, anyone? Come on! Not only do we have a brand new tale by this modern master of words, you’ll also find an interview with him, and a review of his latest collection, After the People Lights Have Gone Off.

  Leading the charge, however, is Kathryn Ohnaka’s “Buddy,” a twisting, slithering serpent of a tale. The words are pure poetry, with fangs. “Saturday,” by Evan Dicken, follows, creeping and crawling and filled with Things that whisper of doom. Similar whisperings can be heard in Bracken MacLeod’s “Thirteen Views of the Suicide Woods” and most of you will know the voices.

  Tim Lieder’s darkly rhythmic “Hey Man” will get you toe-tapping and “in the mood.” With a touch of SF, Emma Osborne’s “The Box Wife” is sure to leave you uncomfortable. The box wife is one and many, but you’ll recognize all.

  Stephen King once called Jack Ketchum “the scariest guy in America.” What scares the scariest guy in America? Karen Runge. And you’ll know why after reading “Good Help.”

  In all of our issues we have published very few poems, just five prior to this issue. On the rare occasion when we do accept a poem it’s because we think it stands superior to most. “Anteroom,” by Peter Gutiérrez, is one such piece.

  Closing out the fiction in this issue is S.R. Mastrantone’s “Alan Roscoe’s Change of Heart,” a tale that chips away at a well-mined vein—the near-death experience—but manages to produce an untouched gem.

  In addition to the previously-mentioned conversation with Stephen Graham Jones, F. Paul Wilson is interviewed. The seventh installment of our music-meets-horror serial, “Bloodstains & Blue Suede Shoes,” tackles the 80s. Longtime contributor Simon Marshall-Jones was unable to participate this go-round, so Bracken MacLeod graciously stepped in and he did a stellar job. (Thank you, sir!) Catherine Grant provides the editorial, a scary piece that hits close to home.

  And that about does it, I think. There is more to be found in this issue, but that’s the juicy stuff.

  Onward to issue #10!

  Stay well, folks...

  K. Allen Wood

  September 6, 2014

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Notes from the Editor’s Desk

  Unacceptable Content

  An Editorial

  by Catherine Grant

  Buddy

  by Kathryn Ohnaka

  Saturday

  by Evan Dicken

  Morning Books and Evening Books

  A Conversation with F. Paul Wilson

  by Barry Lee Dejasu

  Thirteen Views of the Suicide Woods

  by Bracken MacLeod

  Anteroom

  by Peter Gutiérrez

  Strange Goods and Other Oddities

  Hey Man

  by Tim Lieder

  The Nightmare Rolls On

  A Conversation with Stephen Graham Jones

  by Zachary C. Parker

  You Are Here

  by Stephen Graham Jones

  The Box Wife

  by Emma Osborne

  Bloodstains & Blue Suede Shoes, Part 7

  by John Boden and Bracken MacLeod

  Good Help

  by Karen Runge

  Alan Roscoe’s Change of Heart

  by S.R. Mastrantone

  Howling Through the Keyhole

  UNACCEPTABLE CONTENT

  An Editorial

  by Catherine Grant

  I want to confess to Shock Totem readers—I am embarrassed in front of certain company to admit that I’m a horror writer. Nevertheless, I do not hide it. In fact, I’ve grown comfortable basically advertising it. I rock several pieces of apparel and jewelry with skulls on them, and I regularly share with co-workers that I am in love with all things macabre. There is one guy at my job that picks on me a bit, and when my mother saw my first skull shirt she raised one eyebrow and asked if I was “okay.” I know she prays nightly that I will become interested in more wholesome media. Not exactly heavy persecution there, but nevertheless the lack of full acceptance makes me a little uncomfortable.

  Despite needing to grow some thicker skin about smirks or ignorant remarks about my interests, I’ve never been afraid that I would experience true discrimination because of my choice to be a writer of horror. However, today I read something that gave me pause about what I share at work or who reads my stories. Connecticut Middle School Principal Mark Foley and guidance counselor Alan Vnuk were both put on administrative leave after their respective district superintendents found out that they owned a production company that created a few provocative (and many non-provocative) horror films.

  They owned, under pseudonyms to separate it from their careers as educators, a production company named Moongoyle Entertainment that made low-budget horror movies, some of them rather sexy. One of those horror movies, called Slicing Beauty, had full-frontal nudity. The motto of the entertainment company is “Fresh blood, hot babes, cool flicks.” This is what it takes for two educators in the Northeast to get put on administrative leave and investigated.

  There is absolutely nothing that I’ve mentioned above that is illegal. In interviews with the Hartford Courant, Foley mentions that he and Vnuk hadn’t really been involved in the production company for years, that other investors had begun to take over, and he and Vnuk were trying to step away. Even the superintendent who has put Foley and Vnuk on suspension admits that there’s no proof of any wrongdoing, and that none of the students were at “risk” (of what, I’m not quite sure), but nevertheless, he’s “concerned about his [Foley’s] judgment.”

  My immediate reaction was: Fuck that guy! And then it hit me that these two men are facing the possibility of never being able to set foot in a school ever again, their careers effectively over for being content creators of horror—just like me. I’ve kept an eye on the media coverage, and it is some of the most irresponsible journalism I’ve ever seen. There are plenty of idiots in the community who are stoking the fire and giving the media sound bites like, “If he found doing those movies was perfectly acceptable, why were they made under a pseudonym?” Wow, lady, maybe becaus
e of ignorant people like you who are prone to snap judgments. Maybe because somehow even with the proliferation of horror entertainment in the media, there is still a prejudice against it. I had to stop watching the television coverage, and even on the Internet there was no common sense to be had from the reporters that are spinning the story to make these two men look like sexual deviants without ever actually saying it.

  Here’s a crazy bit of trivia. Stephen King was an educator. He wrote Carrie and dozens of short stories, many of those for men’s magazines, like Playboy and Cavalier, while working as a teacher. He did not write under a pseudonym to protect his career. Imagine back in the 70s if some screeching housewife had come storming into his school waiving a copy of a magazine with Miss October on the front and Steve King’s story within its pages, demanding that the teacher who was influencing her impressionable fair-haired child be fired for publishing “inappropriate content” alongside women wearing no clothing. Maybe this scenario did happen, who knows, but I was under the impression that American society has become more tolerant since then. Apparently we’ve only regressed.

  Wait, that’s right, Stephen King published before the glorious age of the Internet, where everything someone does is cataloged, followed, “liked,” and referenced by media, employers, the government and corporations at top speed, only stopping to catch the next sound bite, viral video or 4chan controversy. Nobody has secrets, and everyone’s interests and personal lives are open to scrutiny. Remember that next time you take a copy of Shock Totem to work to read during your lunch break. Reading something that is “inappropriate content” might not get you fired, but don’t you dare think about being a content producer of that smut. That’s how I feel as a horror writer after reading the media coverage of this witch hunt.

  At the time of this writing, both Foley and Vnuk are on administrative leave pending investigations, which have not concluded. From the tone of the letters from their respective superintendents, I expect that they’ll most likely be fired. I reached out to Thomas Edward Seymour, former Connecticut resident and director and writer of the Bikini Bloodbath movies. I asked him how he feels about this controversy. “The hypocrisy of the whole situation is overwhelming. I’m sure the same people who are scrutinizing these educators are letting their kids play Grand Theft Auto and watch horror films on Halloween.”

  Moongoyle Entertainment has deleted its website and Facebook page, which is a shame, since B-movies like the ones produced by Moongoyle do encourage fledgling filmmakers and give aspiring actors and actresses a place to refine their craft. Seymour mentioned that many directors like James Gunn, who just directed Guardians of the Galaxy, were influenced by B-movies. Ever seen Slither? Imagine if people like Stephen King and Gunn were told that they had to stop creating what they love because it was “inappropriate content.”

  Foley and Vnuk are educators, though, and from what I can see from the statements made by parents and town residents, that puts them both on a pedestal as role models. Their personal lives are now the property of the school district and open to the moral judgment of the community. Therein lies the real terror in this entire ordeal, that despite all the precautions both Foley and Vnuk set up to separate their lives as educators from their very legal personal interests, in the end it didn’t matter and they will pay a price that is far too high in relation to the “crime.”

  Foley’s interview with the Hartford Courant sounds painfully apologetic for actions that need no apology. As a horror fan, reading the articles where he’s trying to explain himself leaves me with a sick feeling in my stomach. I wonder if I’ll ever be in that same place, begging forgiveness for something I love—horror, dark fiction, and the worlds I’ve created with words—because some find it to be “unacceptable.”

  I hope not.

  BUDDY

  by Kathryn Ohnaka

  Tomatoes and rust. Water pooled in the walls, thickening the air with must. The juice spilled over the edge of the rim, staining the paper on the jar, making the word Tamato run and the edges of the label curl. That’s how you spell tomato, I know. I taught myself. I peel it up, looking at the glue underneath, leaving an orange, fuzzy mush on the glass. There are big red rust stains on the floor, so it doesn’t really matter if I spill. The tomato is thick and ropy against my hand, and I lick it off, and the seeds squirt out. Pale and yellow and thin, like bug eggs.

  I eat all of them, and then I drink the thick juice at the bottom and lick a long smear of it off my arm. A brief flash of cool air on my wet skin, and then it’s gone. I put the jar back on the shelf and go upstairs. There’s a blue-striped bowl on the table with a spoon in it, with cereal that sucked up all the milk and it’s all puffy and soft now. I stir it and watch all the little pieces fall apart. Buddy didn’t eat his either.

  “I don’t like it,” I say.

  “I don’t like it either,” he says. I want to hug him, but I don’t because his hands are like leather. I put the bowls on the floor and the cats come and lick up the rest with their quick little tongues. They don’t mind how the milk smells.

  I get my gloves and pull a hat down over my ears. It smells like sweat and dirt. My jacket smells like that, too, plus cat pee. But the wind is cold and it makes the smell go away when I walk outside. It makes the trees whisper. I walk down the hill and get a stick, and I run through the trees waving it around, yelling to hear the sound of my voice and make the whispers go away. My feet crunch through old leaves and pine needles. I flip rocks and look for bugs, stepping on those I find and crushing their shells under my heels. I yell and yell, not really words, just a long string of sound that echoes around. Trees whisper.

  “Stop the noise, or you’ll wake up the monsters,” Buddy whispers.

  “Ooo,” I whisper, and I crouch down, feeling him behind me, whispering in my ear. He’s probably right. That’s what makes the trees bend and sway, not wind but ghosts, those are the voices I hear. They push the trees and make them tap my windows at night, wanting to get in. He’s right, we shouldn’t wake the monsters.

  I sit down in the dirt and I draw with my stick. I make a picture of Buddy and me. We have swords and all around us are the ghosts. But they can’t get us because I protect Buddy. He’s little. I write a B for him and a D for me and kick over another rock, which rolls over the picture and makes a line through the drawing, and I scrub it out with my foot. “Come on, let’s go hunting!”

  And I’m off again, running and waving and hitting the trees and bushes with my stick. I’m the strongest man in the world! The ghosts won’t get us now, and I run down through the ravine and up the side of the hill. I throw rocks at an old shed. I jump in the little creek and make a big splash. It will freeze soon. “Never get me, never get me!” I chant, over and over, swinging the stick, and Buddy calls it after me. The wind gets stronger and the branches of the trees clack together and the whispers turn to cries and we run. My chest is full of ice and I breathe smoke and then I’m home. The ghosts are outside now.

  We sit on the couch for a long time. We talk. I go in the kitchen and get Buddy some juice, and he sits at the table for it, and it spills because he’s not good at drinking it. Then we’re in the living room again.

  It gets dark and she comes home with a box. She buys the jars from the old lady in town who makes the tamato and the peeches and the sawse. They’re in a big box and that’s what we eat.

  My mother has big feet and a big flowered dress with armpit stains that look hard. “Who are you talking to?”

  “Buddy. He’s got a new jacket and a knife and he’s in Hell.”

  “Your brother is not in Hell. He’s in the kitchen.”

  “Oh.”

  She gives me the jar of peaches and she leaves, and I put my hand in and pull them out, stuffing them in my mouth. Sweet and good. The trees tap on the windows, wanting to come in. Mother sits in a chair in the corner of the living room and looks at nothing, so I talk to Buddy. She doesn’t talk to us. I’m getting tired.

  It’s ve
ry dark and she says, “Go to bed.” And I do. Buddy’s with me, sitting on the edge of the bed, with the new knife he got for his birthday.

  I lie down. The cats are crawling on my feet. There’s a big crack in the ceiling over the bed, and it makes a lightning zigzag. I hold my finger up and trace it in the dark. Over and over. And then it splits open, a little at a time, and the whispers grow and hiss. There are fingertips coming out, pulling the crack apart, and then a tongue that licks the edges.

  I go down to the kitchen and get the matches out of the drawer. “Go get it,” says Buddy. “Make it go away.” Even though he has the knife he’s afraid, his voice shaking. I go back up the stairs and light the match, twirling it, watching the flame go purple to yellow, and I set it on the bed. It makes a big, warm light, and we sit on the floor and watch it burn. It makes my hands warm. I forget about the fingers because the light is so beautiful, and then there’s a scream and a hand on my neck, and then the fire’s gone and everything is wet. And then I’m in the basement again. I eat more tomatoes and I close my eyes and see that fire over and over, dancing under my eyes.

  I wake up looking at the rust stains on the floor. Buddy says he’s hungry, so I get up and go upstairs. Mother bought some milk, but the cereal is gone. I get another can of peaches, but he doesn’t want any, so I eat them. The cats are staring at me and I hate them. I throw the jar and it breaks and they run.

  I look at Buddy, sitting there with his mouth open and his eyes so big. And then we get our jackets to go play.

  I run through the stream, even though it’s colder and colder but I want to make a big splash. I break branches from trees and throw rocks and rip dead grass out of the ground. It makes me shiver and laugh when things break. I find a few more beetles and we pull off their legs and I imagine pulling legs off other things and Buddy says it’s okay, it’s good to feel like that, they don’t really feel it anyway.