Black Static Horror Magazine #1 Read online

  I began to dream again.

  It took me nearly a week. I slept most of the day, taking double doses of the cancer drugs. I did not turn on the TV, scared of what new terrors the substance had unleashed on the world. I visited strange territories during those days. At first I recorded them in a diary, so that during my waking hours I could examine the details and try to find some clue that might stop the effects of the substance. Eventually, this way of anchoring myself to the real world became too draining. During my waking hours, I lived like some kind of zombie. Only in dreams did I find a way to live.

  And then one night, I once more found myself in the underground war hospital in Guernsey. I hurried along the corridors, recognising the same graffiti, the laughter of distant children, the damp on the walls, the frame of an old metal bed, totally corroded, turning to brown dust. I thought—I hoped—that by meeting with the old man, I could at least discuss the substance and the effects it was having on the world I had left behind. I passed the morgue, with its military stencil on the wall outside, and walked towards the room where I had met him.

  Bax was waiting inside.

  He was smoking a cigarette as he leant against the rancid wall. He smiled at me as I walked through the door. I was reminded, suddenly, of Harry Lime, and the surprise I felt at seeing him again was tempered by this image.

  "Bax,” I said. “You're here."

  "Not really,” he said, which seemed typical of him somehow. He smiled. “What I want you to know, first of all,” he said, “is that everything will be all right on the other side. This might make things easier. Everything is just as you left it that night."

  I nodded. I knew really what he was about to tell me. It did not come as much of a surprise. He explained to me how, the morning after I had taken the double dose of cancer drugs, he came into my room to find that I had disappeared. It was obvious what had happened.

  "In many ways, I envy you,” Bax said. “Over the past few weeks, I have had a line from Conrad in my head. ‘This must be life since it is so much like a dream.’ You are living life as pure hallucination, or rather a hallucination within a hallucination. An undream. It's incredible."

  I sat down on the floor. I felt suddenly exhausted. “And you? What is happening?"

  "After you disappeared, I got in touch with your contact in the pharmaceutical company. We've been discussing the research together. I'm thinking of approaching the military with this. Imagine, an army of trained undreamers, capable of undreaming leaders and rogue states, of undreaming events.” He frowned. “That's not much consolation, is it?"

  "No. Not much.” I paused. “How long have I been gone?"

  "Nearly two months. It's a shock I know, but you need to think of yourself as a pioneer. Unfortunately, pioneers are often lonely.” He smiled again. “I suppose there's an irony of physical proof about all of this."

  I stared at him. “Oh yes. Really. It is quite magnificent."

  Bax nodded. He smoked his cigarette thoughtfully. I noticed that it didn't recede at all, although he tapped ash regularly. “What do you want to do?"

  "I'm not sure."

  "I have a suggestion. That we can meet here, means, to me at least, that you aren't totally lost."

  "You mean there's a way I might be able to wake up."

  He shook his head. “No. Sorry. I don't think that's possible. I think it has gone too far."

  "So what do you suggest?"

  "Perhaps the shared geography of Acton is the key. Perhaps, together, by dreaming of its terrain, we can find some way to put an end to your undream."

  "Is that the only way?"

  Bax dropped the half-burned cigarette to the floor. From outside in the underground hospital, the laughter of children echoed along the corridors. Bax said, “Tomorrow night, I will dream of the road down from the tube station in Acton, which crosses the rail tracks. In your undream, dream this dream also. Walk up these tracks while I dream the dream of a train. Don't flinch, and keep walking. The psychic shock might do the rest."

  Bax offered his hand. I took it in mine. He walked out of the room, and I was left alone.

  That was three months ago. Now, I walk the emptiness of Acton, although it does not seem to help. Whenever I try to find the area Bax described, the road always seems to curve away, and I find myself on the high street once more, or by the supermarket, or in front of the house I once shared with Bax. I hear the trains but never see them. I walk around, a dreamer in an undream. One day I hope to find the rail tracks, and this way I will wake.

  Copyright © 2007 Daniel Bennett

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  BLOOD SPECTRUM—Tony Lee

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  Tony is editor of Premonitions magazine (available from pigasuspress.co.uk), and The Zone website at zone-sf.com, and is also a columnist for Black Static's sister magazine Interzone. He lives on the Isle of Wight.

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  SIX DEMON BAG

  A key ingredient of any commercial genre movie is a desirable starlet, whether she's the ‘last girl standing’ (when the villain is eventually despatched), or destined to expire horribly so our hero can avenge her. Buffy's Sarah Michelle Gellar seems unhappily typecast nowadays, following Scooby Doo flicks and The Grudge remakes with Asif Kapadia's terribly ordinary The Return, about go-getting independent 25-year-old Joanna, a haulage company's top sales rep, haunted by repressed memories of a childhood trauma, stuck in a recurring nightmare of apparent self-harm and Texan town secrets, and hardly supported by estranged father Ed (Sam Shepard) against the mystifying barrage of violent flashbacks. While swapping out her trademark shiny blondeness for a ‘serious actress’ brunette style helps Gellar shoulder the grim dramas endured by her depressive character, she's obviously still just the same plucky Hollywood chick underneath. Her not smiling much here is unlikely to make a difference to future casting agents.

  Thora Birch (The Hole, Ghost World) has nothing much to smile about in Ray Gower's Dark Corners, even though she plays two distinct characters—one blonde, one brunette. Fair-haired Susan is a happily married wannabe mum, with a bright and cheerful middle-class lifestyle, but she's anxious about the fertility treatments that she and supportive husband Dave have opted for. Susan's world falls apart due to chronic bad dreams about dark-haired Karen, alone in a grungy slum every night, working as a mortician's assistant by day.

  Both women encounter a weird hypnotist, are stunned by the murders of colleagues, and troubled by shared visions of a serial killer, but Karen's apparently homemade hell drags Susan down into utter madness. This creepy puzzler expertly weaves Asian horror influences into the shadows of a Lynchian post-industrial realm, complemented by the surrealist high notes of Argento's operatic shockers. Here, the blackened fingernails are a telltale clue, and a vomited key (oh, when did she swallow that?) opens a buried strongbox of clarifying evidence, yet appearances remain deceptive in the story's headlong rush to judgement. Its unremitting strangeness, contrasting set décor, and foreboding-but-funny zombie scenes all merit fans’ interest.

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  Karla stars another blonde, Laura Prepon (October Road), but this time her character is definitely complicit in villainy. Directed with psychotic intensity by Joel Bender (Vampire Cop, Jennifer Is Dead), this crime drama is based on a true story of a killer's muse; as the coldly manipulative Karla helps fiancé Paul (Misha Collins) to drug and rape her own little sister Tammy. When Tammy dies from an overdose, Paul uses home video of the assault to secure his emotional dominance over Karla, forcing her to help satisfy his lust for virgins, and so the ‘Barbie & Ken of serial killers’ kidnap three young girls for sexual abuse and murder. Although her lover rapes and kills, Karla happily marries him, despite being a victim of his abusive temper, her own passive/aggressive manner results in a
seemingly obedient Karla remaining with the wife beater. Told in flashbacks as Karla willingly undergoes psychiatric evaluation hoping for parole from her twelve-year prison sentence, the portrait of a chillingly unsympathetic psycho emerges. One that's even more peculiarly disturbing, in many ways to the credit of actress Prepon, because so much of the film's potentially titillating, objectionable sex and violence occurs just off-screen.

  Werewolves, vampires and zombies abound in current subgenre variants like romantic mystery Blood & Chocolate, vampire actioner Underworld: Evolution, and sci-fi horror Resident Evil 2: Apocalypse. Not to be confused with Tom Shell's comedy-thriller of the same title, The Thirst by Jeremy Kasten is about a couple of ex-junkies, Maxx and Lisa (Matt Keeslar, Clare Kramer), who are turned into vampires so they can join a violent clan led by crazy Darius (Jeremy Sisto). Dying of cancer, Lisa is presented with a fascinating moral dilemma when Mariel (Serena Scott Thomas) lures her toward immortality where bloodsucking and UV-sensitivity might be the only drawbacks. Wild guy Lenny (Adam Baldwin) and haughtily eccentric Duke of Earl (Neil Jackson) seem overly fond of re-enacting the bar-room slaughter from Bigelow's Near Dark, but for Lisa and Maxx, at least, there's as much vampire romance here as torn flesh and arterial spray. Although the poignant dénouement echoes the tragic end of Blade II, plenty of good humour and cleverly inventive character material makes this worthwhile viewing. First-time director Patrick Dinhut's TV movie Dead And Deader tasks US Army Lieutenant Bobby Quinn (Dean Cain, Lois & Clark) with afterlife survival when he's KIA and infected by a zombie-virus from Cambodia. Despite a slavering dependence on fresh meat, Quinn retains his mental faculties and sets out to destroy his Special Forces team, numerous other undead soldiers and civilians while the contagion spreads rapidly. Genre notables John Billingsley (Enterprise), Armin Shimerman (Star Trek: DS9) and Dean Haglund (Lone Gunmen), are among the first batch of unlucky casualties, and Quinn gets two sidekicks, army cook Judson (Guy Torry) and film geek Holly (Susan Ward)—whose critical assessment of Romero's Dawn Of The Dead is a droll highlight of this wittily scripted comedy-horror thriller. The cancer-riddled scientist, desperate for eternal life, chimes with the concept behind The Thirst, but here seriousness is neglected in favour of irreverence, as Quinn's repeated arrests by police, prompt kung fu escapes and defiant vigilante scenes are stacked wall-to-wall in a rumble of shotgun and exploding head action, valiantly redecorating sets with dripping crimson. The balance of light and dark, suspense and slapstick, is deftly achieved. In the mischievous epilogue, our TV heroes casually ponder their options for a regular series.

  Americanised remakes of Japanese chillers rarely match the impact of their originals, so it's a pleasant surprise to discover Walter Salles’ Dark Water is far better in many respects than Hideo Nakata's drama (aka: Honogurai mizu no soko kara). Jennifer Connelly is extraordinary as single mother Dahlia, struggling to avoid a custody battle for her young daughter Ceci (eight-year-old Ariel Gade, from sci-fi TV series Invasion), and moving into a rundown apartment on New York's Roosevelt Island, while fighting personal demons inextricably tied to her own childhood sorrows. Confronted with apathy, professional incompetence or hostility at each turn of events, Dahlia slowly loses emotional strength when her low-rent home is plagued with horrendous plumbing faults, possible vandalism, and seemingly haunted by the ghost of lost neighbour, Natasha, who becomes Ceci's invisible ‘friend'. Dahlia crumples magnificently under the pressures of her workaday urban life, but she emerges from the drowning pool of Salles’ expertly crafted psychological thriller as a superb heroine, willing to pay the ultimate price to keep her innocent daughter from any harm. On Dahlia's side here, against slippery estate agent Murray (John C. Reilly is entertainingly believable), there's lawyer Jeff Platzer (a virtually unrecognisable Tim Roth, creating a lonely yet sympathetic character), while the great Pete Postlethwaite delivers a memorable turn as Veeck, the building superintendent, whose intentions remain ambiguous to the end, despite his initially suspicious behaviour.

  As screenwriter Rafael Yglesias admits, when interviewed for the DVD extras, his revision of Dark Water owes more to the surreal melodrama of Polanski's Repulsion than its eastern sources. That, however, merely broadens the appeal to genre fans of this remarkable US movie. The copycat flipside of Hollywood remaking commercially viable foreign pictures is when today's wannabe genre maestros pay homage to the works of past auteurs. Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later bridged Day of the Triffids and Romero's The Crazies splatter. As with the ‘rage’ virus central to Boyle's drama, every successful recycling of a winning formula gets its knock-off violent sci-fi thriller plot stretched to sequel, and so we come to 28 Weeks Later by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, director of Spain's enigmatic Intacto. Robert Carlyle (Ravenous, The 51st State, so no stranger to action or horror) and Catherine McCormack (A Sound of Thunder, Shadow of the Vampire) are the star names acting up a storm here, but there's also Rose Byrne, fresh from Boyle's sci-fi Sunshine, in service for this follow-up's gloomily documentary-style second outbreak of peculiarly British hell.

  While quarantined on the Isle of Dogs, two London kids escape from the occupying US troops, and discover their mother is actually still alive. With one family sharing potential for immunity to rage, it's not long before intelligence and caution are flushed away in a welter of security lapses, fight or flight responses, and attacks by the infected escalating rapidly into an untenable military situation.

  In contrast to whiz bang CGI of dismemberment by helicopter, and a visually climactic docklands firebombing, this features hand-held camerawork in a guerrilla style of filmmaking, with close-up mauls and intensely chaotic bloodlust, which enhance the scenario's ever-present claustrophobia. With genetically remarkable, and therefore vitally important, youngsters caught in a veritable war zone, the heart of this storyline suggests a thematic link to Children Of Men, but plot comparisons are hardly warranted, and other concerns of both the movies and their makers are almost mutually exclusive. Documentary realism is often cast aside here, in favour of pulp poetry and supernatural coincidence, somewhat leavened by exhilarating scenes of unashamed homage, as all the hopes of a tragically dwindling number of survivors gradually slip away. The cross-channel epilogue is very predictable. A lack of surprises and unforeseeable plot twists is the biggest failing of genre horror.

  Not half as intriguing as the Texas Chain Saw Massacre remake, The Butcher, the feature debut of director Edward Gorsuch, recycles familiar US rural horrors, as a vanload of stranded bickering students encounter a reclusive, violent, scarred farmer with a seeming penchant for rape, abortion, murder and incineration of corpse evidence (apart from bottled trophies). Wrong Turn has already been there, got the T-shirt, and handled its own medley of chills, thrills and spills with greater skill. Much-harassed Rachel (Catherine Wreford) is presented as strongly independent during the first batch of mishaps and crises but falls apart emotionally, long before the closing escapades. Posing, with midriff bared, she's more of a screensaver than an attractive heroine, and still needs rescuing by the young hero, who's insecure but rises to the inevitable challenge of the bone pit. What makes this flick a failure though, isn't its witless scripting, shallow characters or mediocre performances; it's the complete lack of genuine scares, or suitably unpleasant gore quotient. At a time when even major disappointments like The Dark can generate a modicum of spooky atmosphere, Evil Aliens offers lashings of deliriously twisted fun, and the wholly underrated Reeker effortlessly taps into a range of overworked road-trip and paranoia tropes with hugely impressive results, there is simply no excuse for such boring horror films and no reason to forgive their apparently talentless makers, either.

  Copyright © 2007 Tony Lee

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  VOTARY—M.K. Hobson

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  Mary's stories have appeared in SCI FICTION, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, and dozens of other fine publications. Her website is demimonde.co
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  Votary's father was very fat.

  He lived in the furthest back part of the basement, in moist darkness gathered behind black-painted windows. He watched an antique console television all day and all night. He peed in mason jars that Votary's mother would take and empty in the toilet, pouring urine into the smooth ceramic bowl in a thin whiskey-colored stream.

  He was very fat. His body took up all of the old blue couch, spilling out sideways and over the front. His arms stuck out almost straight, supported by fungus-folded billows of cushiony flesh; his head was like the tiny hard eruption of a huge inflamed boil. He could not wear clothes. When it was cold, or when the basement was damp and water dripped down the walls, mother draped a white king-sized sheet around him. Other times he just sat, white and naked and hairless, his skin striped with shiny pink stretch-marks that made him look as if he'd been whipped, his modesty protected by the puffy half-moon pad of fat that waterfalled down over his knees.

  Votary could hide behind parts of him that were outside his field of vision. She could crouch in the misty, musky darkness by his ankles and he would not know she was there, and she could listen to him talking to himself, chewing over the words he heard on the television. He didn't speak very loud. His voice was hardly distinguishable from the eructations of his vast body; a soft, squishy belch or a deeply muffled fart or the ripple of some huge organ shifting itself deep inside of him could sound exactly the same as a word or a sentence. But Votary always understood what he said.

  Sometimes he would get excited, too excited, and the words would become short, like bullets, fragmentary pieces of a slowly-exploding consciousness.