Black Static Horror Magazine #2 Read online

  * * *

  TTA Press

  www.ttapress.com

  Copyright ©

  First published in 2007

  * * *

  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

  * * *

  * * * *

  * * * *

  * * * *

  BLACK STATIC

  HORROR

  ISSUE 2

  NOV—DEC 2007

  * * * *

  PUBLICATION DATE December 2007 DESIGN/ARTWORK David Gentry DESIGN/TYPECASTING/EDITING Andy Cox ISSN 1753-0709 PUBLISHED BIMONTHLY BY TTA Press, 5 Martins Lane, Witcham, Ely, Cambs CB6 2LB, UK COPYRIGHT © 2007 Black Static and its contributors EMAIL [email protected] WEBSITE ttapress.com FORUM ttapress.com/forum SUBSCRIPTIONS The number on your mailing label refers to the final issue of your subscription. If it's due for renewal you'll see a massive great reminder on the centre pages pullout. Ignore this at your peril. Fill out and post the form (with money!) or renew securely via the TTA website.

  * * * *

  * * * *

  * * * *

  CONTENTS

  WHITE NOISE—Andy Cox

  IN THE HOLE—Lisa Tuttle & Steven Utley

  NIGHT'S PLUTONIAN SHORE—Mike O'Driscoll

  THE SERPENT & THE HATCHET GANG—F. Brett Cox

  CASE NOTES—Peter Tennant

  INTERFERENCE—Christopher Fowler

  MUST SEE TO APPRECIATE—Scott Nicholson

  UNKNOWN—Steve Rasnic Tem

  BLOOD SPECTRUM—Tony Lee

  IN THE SHAPE OF A DRAGON—Mélanie Fazi

  JAPAN'S DARK LANTERNS—John Paul Catton

  ASH-MOUTH—Lynda E. Rucker

  ELECTRIC DARKNESS—Stephen Volk

  HOLDING PATTERN—Andrew Humphrey

  CONTENTS

  IN THE HOLE—Lisa Tuttle & Steven Utley

  NIGHT'S PLUTONIAN SHORE—Mike O'Driscoll

  THE SERPENT & THE HATCHET GANG—F. Brett Cox

  CASE NOTES—Peter Tennant

  INTERFERENCE—Christopher Fowler

  MUST SEE TO APPRECIATE—Scott Nicholson

  UNKNOWN—Steve Rasnic Tem

  BLOOD SPECTRUM—Tony Lee

  IN THE SHAPE OF A DRAGON—Mélanie Fazi

  JAPANS DARK LANTERN—John Paul Catton

  ASH-MOUTH—Lynda E. Rucker

  ELECTRIC DARKNESS—Stephen Volk

  HOLDING PATTERN—Andrew Humphrey

  * * * *

  WHITE NOISE

  * * * *

  * * * *

  DELIVERY NOTE

  You will have seen the brief note I managed to include while preparing the files for the second printing of the first issue. What I didn't know then was that the printers would mistakenly print the original files again and that the issue would therefore need a third printing, causing another week's delay. And then, wouldn't you just know it, the issue ran straight into a series of UK postal strikes. More significant than that, though, is the shoddy service we've been receiving from DHL Global Mail (for Interzone as well as Black Static) which means that subscribers overseas are having to wait forty days, sometimes even longer, to receive issues instead of the ten days the service we pay for promises. This issue, I am assured, should have arrived everywhere within six days of collection. If you haven't done so already please register for the forum (ttapress.com/forum) and let us know if it did!

  * * * *

  PAPER

  It seems right to us the only colour used in Black Static is black. But we're not sure black looks as good on the matt art paper as colour does, especially when the ink coverage is such that we have the pages ‘sealed’ to prevent the ink smearing all over your fingers. So we're trying something different, something that might suit the magazine better. Don't think for a moment that it's cheaper! Please let us know via the forum what you think.

  * * * *

  UPCOMING

  We are very proud to announce the return of Alexander Glass, once a very prolific and extremely popular contributor to both The Third Alternative and Interzone, who will be in issue three with a brand new story called ‘The Pit'.

  That issue will be out in February, the plan being to publish this bimonthly magazine in alternate months to Interzone.

  Dave Gentry is hard at work on the art, with each issue (as you've no doubt noticed!) based loosely on a new theme.

  We have more excellent stories coming up from Carole Johnstone, Tony Richards, Trent Hergenrader, Barry Fishler, Will McIntosh, Cody Goodfellow, Ian R. Faulkner, Matthew Holness and others. And we'll be introducing some new regular columnists as we go along, with a view to ultimately

  * * * *

  THE FIX

  In this issue's Case Notes, Peter Tennant concentrates on short stories, reviewing two contrasting anthologies and some collections by ‘young gun’ British Horror writers. This would be a good time to mention that with the help of new managing editor Eugie Foster we've recently relaunched The Fix as an online venue. It's continually updated with in depth reviews of short stories wherever they may be found, plus all sorts of features such as James Van Pelt on the writing life, interviews, regular columns on audio fiction, short films and more. It's free, and it's here: thefix-online.com.

  * * * *

  WHITE NOISE

  We're going to use these pages slightly differently from the next issue, and it should mean an improvement. Competitions will still be listed here though, and we hope to run a lot more of those.

  * * * *

  * * * *

  * * * *

  WIN A PERFECT CREATURE

  We have five copies of this region 2 DVD (reviewed by Tony Lee in this issue's Blood Spectrum) to give away to Black Static subscribers.

  "Imagine a world where vampires and humans live peacefully alongside each other and where the thirsty bloodsuckers are the next step in human evolution. 1960s Nuovo Zelandia is just such a place. For 300 years, vampires and humankind have lived in harmony. Until now. This delicate balance suddenly looks set to be destroyed as one of the vampires has started to do what no other vampire has done before—to hunt down and prey upon human beings. If the news gets out, the fragile bond that exists between the two races will be shattered forever.

  "Dougray Scott (Mission Impossible 2, Enigma, Ripley's Game) stars as Silus, who is sent out to catch the renegade vampire, Edgar. Joining forces with a human police captain played by Saffron Burrows (Enigma, Troy), Silus must track Edgar down quickly, as he is becoming increasingly dangerous and insane. But as they soon discover, Edgar harbours dark secrets.

  "Perfect Creature is the second feature by writer/director Glenn Standring whose debut became one of New Zealand's most successful film exports."

  To win a copy answer this simple question: What is the title of writer/director Glenn Standring's horror film of the year 2000?

  Email or post your answer, making sure to include your postal address. Winners will be drawn from a hat, notified and prizes mailed on December 15.

  NB: this competition is open to current subscribers only.

  Copyright © 2007 Andy Cox

  IN THE HOLE—Lisa Tuttle & Steven Utley

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Lisa has been writing professionally since selling a short story back in 1971. She believes that ‘In the Hole’ is the 99th short story she's sold to date. Her most recent novels, The Mysteries and The Sil
ver Bough, are available from Bantam Spectra in the US. Lisa was born and raised in Texas, has also lived in New York and London, but for the past seventeen years she has been settled in a remote and rural part of Scotland with her family. She is currently working on a new novel.

  * * * *

  Steven is the internationally unknown author of the story collections Ghost Seas (published in Australia, 1997), The Beasts of Love (USA, 2005), and Where or When (UK, 2006). For some reason he lives in Tennessee.

  * * * *

  Sitting up high in the back of the bus, resting his forehead against the cold window, Heath gazed out at the misty landscape and tried to make sense of what he saw. Although he had grown up in this country, it had become alien to him.

  There had been rainstorms the night before, and now the late afternoon sunlight filtered through drooping, perspiring greenery and glistened on the boggy ground and the swollen streams. That seemed normal, and yet here and there he also glimpsed a landscape in agony—stands of blighted, shattered trees and the blackened ruins of farm buildings; the swollen carcasses of dead animals; piles of what might have been bodies, or just discarded clothing; burnt-out cars abandoned at roadsides, even something that looked like the wreckage of an airplane scattered over a hillside—all evidence that he traveled through a war zone. But the war was over, or so somebody, or almost everybody, insisted, and, anyway, the war, Heath's war, had been a localized conflict on the other side of the world. How could it have reached this far into his peaceful homeland?

  He thought then about the conversation he had had with the stranger beside him, who got off at the last stop save one. I'm looking for work, the stranger told him, have been for months now, but there's nothing a man can make his living from—life's tough these days, on account of the war. At first Heath thought he meant that the cost of sustaining a war abroad had crippled the domestic economy, but as he put together other, overheard snatches of talk with the details of the ruined landscape before him, he found himself forced to another conclusion. During his long years of captivity, he decided, when he had known nothing of the world outside, the war must have mutated and spread like a disease until no part of the globe was free of it. Like a monstrous incurable inescapable plague, it had become a reality for everybody, but nobody wanted, nobody dared to talk about it. Thus he found himself wondering, Who are we fighting now? Who is the enemy? Who are we?

  Still, somebody had told him: “Your war's over, soldier, you're going home,” and, yes, here he was, going home.

  He originally dreamed of going home on the train, of arriving for the first time at the railroad station that had loomed so large in his boyhood fantasies of escape. He had spent what seemed in memory an inordinate amount of time hanging around the platform, gazing yearningly down the tracks, envying the grown-ups who had the money and the freedom to buy tickets to go somewhere else, and promising himself that some day he, too, would climb aboard and be gone.

  The train no longer went through his town, however, nor anywhere near it. Not for many years had there been an operative line so far out, not for many, many years—and when Heath, shocked, had tried to argue with the woman in the travel agency, she clattered the keys of her computer keyboard and came up with a date that stopped his mouth: the last trains had come through during the year he started high school, they had been long gone even by the time he left to enlist—how could he have forgotten? He had left town on a bus, because there were no longer any trains.

  And now he returned by bus. He disliked it. The bus smelled of other people, of unwashed clothes impregnated with sweat and cigarette smoke, of sickening food, tuna fish sandwiches and bananas and apples and potato chips, and coffee turned sour on breath. Bags rustled, people chomped their food noisily and talked, the air conditioner struggled weakly to cope with their exhalations and body heat. Some previous occupant of Heath's hard, lumpy seat had slashed it, and someone else had mended the rents with strips of rough cloth-backed tape. The bus was a bad fit, almost as bad a fit as the uniform they had given him to wear. Any clothes at all felt wrong, for in the hole his only coverings had been darkness and filth, but the uniform was an abomination, poking, pinching, itching in a dozen places. His captors, the enemy, had worn uniforms, and though he tried, though he knew his uniform was not the same, he sensed no essential difference. He felt as though sewn into the skin of one of the enemy.

  But who were the enemy? Not the people he fought when his war began, not the people who captured him. They were all dead. “Your war's over, soldier, you're going home,” his rescuers said, when they pulled him out of the hole, when they finally made him understand. That could only mean that before one war ended another had begun. He assumed it was somewhere else, far away, and no concern of his, because he was going home.

  Home. He tried to remember where that was, exactly, and what it meant.

  Precisely how long he had been away he did not know. He had asked, and received a reply, but numbers, dates, precise information floated around his head like a cloud of gnats, as impossible to grasp as the incomprehensible names of the countries the enemy controlled. He felt as if he had been away forever, “forever and a day,” words from an old song Cara had liked to sing. How did it go?

  I'll love you though you stay away, forever and a day.

  She had told him on the day he left, though she was furious with him for leaving, that she would wait.

  He knew she meant it, but he knew also that nobody could wait forever. Not really. He had written to her anyway from the hospital, because the people who rescued him—our side, he kept reminding himself—told him, practically ordered him, to get in touch with his family, and though they were not blood-kin and had never married, Cara was the closest thing to family he had left, the only family he really wanted. My war's over, he had written to her, I'm coming home.

  He sent the letter to her father's house, praying the old man still lived and would pass it on to her, wherever she might be, and his prayers were answered. Cara, amazingly, still lived there, in the town where they had both grown up. She had not forgotten. I love you, she wrote, again, as in her very first letter to him. Come back to me as soon as you can.

  As soon as I can, he thought, and slept slumped in his seat high in the back of the bus, on his way home.

  * * * *

  The bus braked with a noisy exhalation, startling Heath awake. He looked out at the dull concrete and glass box of a small-town bus station, old and dirty. He stared, frowning, at the faded board bearing the name of the town, trying to trace the distant chord the name struck within him. His gaze moved to peeling advertisements for goods he could not imagine that anybody sold, services surely nobody provided. He sat, unmoved and unmoving until the bus driver sang out the name of the stop. Then he stood as though jerked erect by a hook wedged between his ribs and caught in his heart, and pain shot up his left leg, the legacy of a kneecap smashed long ago by a bored, smiling guard. He limped slowly down the aisle and made his way carefully down the steps. He stood for a long time beside the bus, regarding the station's sagging eaves, as the full import sank in. This was Cara's town. This had been his town. This was home. He was home.

  "There's a pay-phone inside if you want a taxi,” the bus driver called down to him, and Heath nodded agreeably, but though he knew he must be a sorry sight with his curved spine and awkward gait, he wanted to walk. If he meant to feel truly at home in this place again, he must start to reclaim it, and the only way he could think to do that was the same way he had done it as a kid, on the ground, mapping it out for himself.

  Things had changed; he saw that right away. Although he knew to expect it, the sight of the abandoned, sagging railroad station made his eyes sting. He picked his way over the rusted rails and found himself skirting the commercial center, once bright and bustling, now almost as decrepit in appearance as the station building. The few cars parked along the street had seen better days, and at least half of the storefront properties stood empty, their dusty windows display
ing for sale or lease signs if they displayed anything at all. The little Mom & Pop grocery store was posted with warnings about security measures; the drugstore he remembered, the bakery, the card and gift shop, had been displaced by a locked-up tattoo parlor, a charity thrift shop, and a gutted shell of fire-blackened cinder blocks. Grass grew through cracks in the pocked and crumbling pavement underfoot. He glimpsed human figures, close by or far away, he could not be quite sure. Some seemed vaguely familiar, but none looked directly at him or spoke as he hobbled past. This did not surprise or offend him. His imprisonment, those eternities spent alone in a concrete box, had aged him. He had lost flesh and teeth, and what remained of his hair had turned white. His skin was ashen from so long without sunlight or decent food. He wondered if even Cara would know him.

  Nevertheless, walking on as quickly as his injured leg allowed, he took hope from the fact that life went on in this town, wounded as it obviously had been. Heath saw no bomb craters, no corpses in the street, no uniformed men clutching guns, looking for an excuse to shoot. His past—not the recent past, not the slow, painful tedium of physiotherapy, not his confinement in the hole, and not the time before the hole when he had been a young soldier, alternately terrified and bored out of his skull, but that time when he and the world had both been young, when he first loved Cara—fell over him like a comforting blanket.

  Cara, he believed, held the key to his life, his survival. Memories of her had kept him alive, kept him from losing his mind in the hole. Squatting on rough concrete in total darkness, he would touch his face, stroke his own body, until his fingers became hers, and he could feel the hard floor beneath him soften into the bed in Cara's light-filled bedroom. Then he would look up into her beautiful face, and, finally, as he saw the pure and utter love shining from her eyes, he had been able, truly, to love her back.

  After a time, either long or short, he could not say exactly, of moving through curiously empty streets, he found himself standing before Cara's house in the part of town once called ‘new': a section of handsome brick boxes built in neatly tended rows when a new factory had opened. The factory soon closed, however, early victim of the wartime economy, some of the houses had never been sold, and the neighborhood, once desirable, had quickly gone downhill; the house next door was an abandoned wreck. But Cara's father, a proud and careful homeowner even in times of tight money, insisted on mowing the grass once a week, planting flowers and shrubs, keeping the gutters cleared and the trim of the house painted a cheerful yellow. Now, when Heath saw the peeling paint, the sagging gutters and flowerbeds full of weeds, he knew the old man must be dead.