Shrieks and Shivers from the Horror Zine Read online

  Praise for Shrieks and Shivers from

  The Horror Zine

  “The Horror Zine is the true home of today’s visceral, organic horror, and the stories in SHRIEKS AND SHIVERS reflect the courage and imagination with which Jeani Rector has sustained this genre for the past six years. Be prepared to encounter the grue in gruesome, not only brought to you by some very experienced butchers but by some fearless and inspired new dabblers in blood, entrails and other things too horrifying to mention.”

  – Graham Masterton, author of Plague of the Manitou

  “A potent witch’s brew of horror veterans spiced with succulent new blood.”

  – Scott Nicholson, author of The Red Church

  “The stories in SHRIEKS AND SHIVERS is like a sampling from the weird, visceral darkness of the collective mind. Some of the authors are old friends, reliably creepy friends who deliver exactly what you want. What might surprise the reader is the number of new writers to devour. And there are angles on the human condition from which you never thought to look—and perhaps should not have. Endlessly creative takes on zombies, paranoia, and the monsters within. You’ll read this collection long into the night. You might want to fall asleep with the lights on.”

  – Susie Moloney, author of The Thirteen

  “Jeani Rector has the experience to know horror inside and out. She picks only the best of today’s writers for her anthologies. I can easily see some of her hand-picked talent carrying horror into the next decade.”

  – D. W. Jones, Editor, Blood Moon Rising Magazine

  “A perfect storm of a horror anthology—dread thundering through the stories, lightning flashes of terror, a hurricane of visceral thrills.”

  – Simon Clark, author of The Night of the Triffids

  “Jeani Rector and the Horror Zine have compiled another classic anthology of unsettling and stomach-churning tales in the tradition of Pan Books or Weird Tales (before they were both crap!), and introduced us to a motley band of new horror talent, some of whom will no doubt become household names in the genre in time. This unrepentant volume reminds us why the small press is such a force in dark literature.”

  – Djibril al-Ayad, Editor, The Future Fire Magazine

  “There are some really good short stories in this collection. Some eerie. Some disturbing. Some I wish were true: I’d probably find the freak tent to see Hercules in a tank of honey.”

  – Cetywa Powell, Editor/Publisher, Underground Voices Magazine

  Shrieks and Shivers

  from the Horror Zine

  Edited by Jeani Rector

  Anthology copyright © 2015 Jeani Rector & The Horror Zine

  Individual stories copyright © 2015 their respective authors

  Cover image © Martin de Diego Sádaba | www.martindediego.com

  All rights reserved.

  Post Mortem Press - Cincinnati, OH

  www.postmortem-press.com

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  eBook ISBN: 978-1311176356

  The Horror Zine is an ezine, spotlighting the works of talented people, and displaying their deliciously dark delights for the world to enjoy.

  Visit The Horror Zine at

  www.thehorrorzine.com

  Staff:

  Jeani Rector, Editor

  Dean H. Wild, Assistant Editor

  Christian A. Larsen, Media Director

  Bruce Memblatt, Kindle Coordinator

  Bat art created by Riaan Marais

  Contents

  FOREWORD Bentley Little

  A WORD ABOUT ZOMBIES John Russo

  TAPEWORM Martin Rose

  OLD HAUNTS Nathan Robinson

  I’LL BE WATCHING William F. Nolan

  NAILS IN YOUR COFFIN Rachel Coles

  PETE’S BIG BREAK Joe McKinney

  THEM James Marlow

  STASH HOUSE Shaun Meeks

  THE SAMPLE Ray Garton

  HARD RAIN Bruce Memblatt

  SQUATTERS Elizabeth Massie

  I STILL LIVE Wayne C. Rogers

  CENTER STAGE SIDESHOW Christian A. Larsen

  STALKER Tim Jeffreys

  FOR SHE IS FEARFULLY AND WONDERFULLY MADE

  Tim Waggoner

  RAMPART Amy Grech

  SOMNIPHOBIA P.D. Cacek

  FUNERAL MEATS Kristem Houghton

  TRANSPOSITION Jason V. Brock

  THE LAST BOTTLE Dean H. Wild

  THE WOODS Nicholas Paschall

  THE HOTEL SAN DIGOT Joseph Rubas

  DADDY’S GIRL Lisa Morton

  BLURRED Matthew Nichols

  THE HOUSE Jonathan Chapman

  THE NEST Cory Cone

  REFLECTOR EYES Garrett Rowlan

  WHAT HAPPENED IN VEGAS Rena Mason

  PRIVATE FRANKS Gary Robbe

  ONE LAST TWEET Eric J. Guignard

  BECAUSE WHAT IS MINE IS MINE Tom Piccirilli

  CHICKEN Geoff Nelder

  FOREWORD

  Bentley Little

  I HAVEN’T READ ANY OF THE STORIES IN THIS ANTHOLOGY. I don’t even know the names of the authors contributing to this volume.

  I don’t need to.

  All I need to know is that Jeani Rector is the editor.

  Five years ago, I had no idea who Jeani Rector was. But she wrote me a letter out of the blue, informing me that she was the editor of an online magazine called The Horror Zine and asking if I would be willing to contribute a story to an anthology she was putting together. I had no internet access (still don’t) so I’d never seen her ezine, and I wrote back and told her that I don’t contribute to electronic publications. She assured me this was going to be a real anthology, an honest-to-God book, printed on paper.

  I pawned off a story on her that I hadn’t bothered to submit anywhere else, something I’d written in order to test out my new computer. The small press world is volatile, and I’m not sure I ever expected my story to see print. But, unlike many editors, Jeani kept me completely informed as to the status of the anthology, and, much more quickly than I would have thought possible, I received a copy of it in the mail.

  I was immediately impressed. The cover art was terrific. And the contents were equally impressive. There were a few pieces by name authors such as Graham Masterton and Joe Lansdale, but the vast majority was by authors new to me—and they were good.

  Over the next few years, The Horror Zine anthologies kept coming, all of a remarkably consistent quality for a small press publication. At a time when even longtime practitioners of horror were shying away from the label, calling themselves writers of suspense or dark fantasy or dark mysteries, The Horror Zine gave me hope. It was there in the title. And it was there in the stories. This was the real deal.

  I was reminded, in a way, of David Silva’s seminal magazine The Horror Show, which in the 1980s published the early work of an entire generation of authors. These authors that Jeani was publishing, I realized, were the new generation. This was the future of horror.

  And it seemed to be in very good hands.

  So here we are.

  Jeani has said that this could be her last anthology. I hope not. But if it is, she can look back with pride on a job well done. Luring readers in with names like Ed Gorman, Ramsey Campbell, Scott Nicholson and Elizabeth Massie, she introduced to the world a whole host of up-and-coming talent, writers who will
take the torch from those veterans and use it to illuminate their conception of the darkness.

  And if it really is the last anthology, you hold in your hands a collector’s item, the early works of the Stephen Kings, Peter Straubs and Clive Barkers of this century. Keep it if you want something that will increase in value; pass it on if you want to spread The Word, but know as you read that it doesn’t get any better than this.

  A WORD ABOUT ZOMBIES

  Slow Zombies, Fast Zombies, and Zombies that Play Trombones

  John Russo

  THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY GET INTO ARGUMENTS over fast zombies versus slow zombies and the artistic merits of each. Many fans come up to me at conventions or during my workshops or personal appearances and ask which kind I prefer. They want me to take sides. Since I was a co-creator of Night of the Living Dead and Return of the Living Dead, and since I have also written novels and comic books dealing with flesh-eating zombies, such as Living Things, Spawn of the Dead, and Escape of the Living Dead, they feel it would validate them if I came down on the side of one or the other. But I don’t feel compelled to do so.

  I am not a purist. I believe in whatever works. In other words, if you want to have fast zombies in your novel or screenplay, come up with a concept or a methodology that makes it seem reasonable.

  The zombies in Return of the Living Dead (ROLD) were, as far as I know, the first ones to crave warm human brains. They also talked, whereas the ones in Night of the Living Dead (NOLD) could not. The ROLD zombies were fast-moving when they needed to be. And they had a special appetite for cops. These were all ideas that Dan O’Bannon implemented when he re-wrote the original script, which was straight horror in the vein of NOLD. But even though many of Dan’s concepts were drastic departures from what had gone before, he made it all work. And it worked big time! ROLD is still going strong, spawning about a dozen sequels which I have not seen, but I have been told that most of them aren’t very good. I liked Part I and Part II a whole lot, but they are the only two I have seen.

  To backtrack a little, when it came time for me to play the Tire-Iron Zombie in Night of the Living Dead, I reasoned that I’d have to portray a human being who was dead—but only partially dead—because my brain was still partially functioning, or else I would not have been able to go after live meat. I reasoned that such a creature would likely have some degree of rigor mortis, and so I ought to move slowly, painfully and stiffly.

  Fans sometimes ask if I made my eyes flutter on purpose (after I got stabbed in the head with the tire iron). Or was that a mistake? No, I thought it out and did it on purpose. I thought it out for a while, and remembered how I had once crushed a cockroach in a cheap, dirty hotel room, and the damn thing was still moving and wiggling its antennae even after I plastered it to a wall. So I figured my eyes might still be moving—which would be creepy and scary when Judy O’Dea was staring down at me, horrified.

  Everything we did in NOLD was carefully considered and often debated. In my original script, “Johnny” does not come back and drag “Barbara” out of the farmhouse and to her doom. When George and I thought of doing that—because of the obvious shock value—we worried that our audience would not find it logical. We didn’t want to make a false step and blow their belief in our story. In other words, if Johnny came back, would people buy it? Or would they say: “Nonsense. He’s dead, he’s finished, he can’t come back; his head was smashed against that tombstone.”

  In the end, we took the chance, and it paid off. Our reasoning was that the bash against the tombstone might not have completely destroyed Johnny’s brain. Obviously, the audience bought it. And Russ Streiner’s portrayal of the character has become one of the icons of American Horror.

  When Night of the Living Dead Live—the first officially authorized stage play based on NOLD—had a great run in Toronto, George Romero, Russ Streiner and I did a Q&A. It was hosted at the theater by Chris Alexander, the editor of Fangoria Magazine, and one of the fans in the audience asked us what we thought about the notion of zombies eating brains. George said it made no sense to him because how would they manage to crack open a bone-hard human skull? But I pointed out that nevertheless, millions of people bought into it and the movie was a smash hit that is still producing spinoffs. I said, “I suppose that, in a way, O’Bannon’s brain-eating zombies have crossed over into a realm that is partly supernatural.”

  In Land of the Dead, George Romero has a lead zombie who still partially remembers how, when he was living (and not undead), he used to play a trombone. (I think it was a trombone; I don't clearly remember. But he was a quite memorable zombie.) In many of his movies, George has been exploring the idea that ghouls might eventually be able to learn or perhaps re-learn some of their old habits and pursuits. There is nothing wrong with this notion. In fact, the concept is intriguing.

  There have been quite a few very successful departures or enhancements of our original concept as to the who, what, and why of the flesh-eating breed of zombies. 28 Days Later, The Evil Dead and Shaun of the Dead all brought something new to the party. But the essential elements, the twist that turned zombies into a spectacular horror-movie sub-genre, was when we turned them into ghouls. Flesh-eaters. Undead people after live human flesh. This is how we tapped into a pervasive atavistic fear that is ingrained in us as human beings. Throughout most of our evolution, we have been weak, timid prey for vicious wild beasts. Thus, NOLD combined the fear of death and the fear of dying by being devoured, with the fear of the undead.

  Before we made Night of the Living Dead, zombies weren’t as scary as werewolves or, especially, vampires. Now they are! And because of that I believe that the sub-genre will not die but will go on as long as there are live humans who want to watch movies or read books about The Hungry Dead—which is the title of my newest zombie novel.

  John Russo, written for The Horror Zine

  Copyright 2014

  TAPEWORM

  Martin Rose

  SHE CLOSED HER EYES AND HELD THE GLASS between her hands. She supplied a voice to help the moment pass, to humanize the monstrous; to drive away the shameful desperation lurking behind her fear-grin.

  The worm remained suspended in the glass, watching her with inscrutable and alien eyes.

  What do you intend?

  Rolls of fat shivered between her thighs, on the edges of her arms, and her pendulous breasts trembled, an insulting reminder of what brought her to this place in time. A long shuddering breath.

  “I’m going to consume you,” she whispered.

  Make it quick.

  She forced herself to forget the long swallow; the twitching worm in the gush of warm water. Like a reverse birth, life flowed backward into her and she struggled not to vomit, reminding herself that she would never think or speak of this moment to anyone in her life. Not even to herself.

  It was easy to forget once it was done, because nothing seemed to change.

  She still woke up to her energy drink and three donuts in the morning. She still made her TV dinners in the microwave after work, and still struggled into her size 23 jeans and her triple XL shirts, with oversized scrubs layered on top in the morning.

  Nothing spectacular happened; nothing magical occurred.

  She began to think that this Victorian-era tapeworm weight-cure was nothing more than hocus-pocus.

  *****

  Will you let me in?

  He framed a silhouette outlined by orange street lights through the window. Wet pavement and drizzling rain magnified the glow, and he stood in it like a back-lit angel. Soaked to his skin without a coat. Rain ran into his eyes; gleaming white, thin bands of gray separated where pupil met iris.

  Her large hand held the door open, and the wind rushed in between them. She was overwhelming in her weight, at three hundred pounds well past the realms of obesity and into the morbid, death-wish range. With all the extra cushioning between them, she barely felt the cold wind nipping at her fingers; it was impossible to feel anything.

&nbsp
; I’m waiting, he prompted. When she looked down at her hands, they were a company of writhing snakes. Fat snakes.

  She jerked awake. She struggled to sit up, groping for the headboard for support.

  “Please God, let me take it all back,” she whispered.

  *****

  Gorgeous thin people waved at her from the glossy pages, silently beckoning her into a celebrity club where she would take her place beside them, eating multi-grain crackers and serving salad portions as big as her meaty fist. She longed to belong to that thin world, where people did not shy from her and did not make fat faces when her back was turned. That world refused to find value in her as she was, and so she chased after an impossible standard designed to rob her of every shred of dignity in the pursuit. She did not stop to consider she could be loved as she was: a curvy goddess, a swollen Venus.

  She found comfort in the promise of the worm.

  Betsy sat on the edge of the bed and considered the foul taste of bile, the dim memory of the worm in her throat. She stood up and wobbled towards the scale.

  “I’m counting on you,” she told the creature.

  I know.

  She stepped off the scale and then back on it again, her mouth parting in her large, doughy face. She blinked.

  In the three weeks since had swallowed the worm, nothing seemed to change, but the numbers didn’t lie. She’d lost five pounds. Not a lot, but enough to suggest something was happening. She pressed one hand to her large and jutting belly, but nothing felt different. She still felt fat and gasped and heaved for breath when she went up a flight of stairs. Pushing the five pound loss out of her mind, she continued on to work.