There was comfort in the knowledge that
There would be no knowledge.
No aerobics or treachery or miracle bras or credit cards.
No longer would her life be measured by feeble increments.
The trickling water was the voice of the wood,
Singing, “Daughter, it is time! Come home and be reclaimed!”
The train stops.
The town’s human name is gibberish,
But she feels the holy pull
Of her ancestral home in her feet.
She leaves her cane behind
And runs back into her forest.
Once nestled in the tree line,
She strips off her clothes and laughs
Dry, throaty laughter at her body, this sack of salty meat,
Which men had charmed to fondle and probe.
She enters the crater, the womb she fled after twenty rings,
And faces the way she came.
The reclamation surges, exacting pain
As the price of not carrying one of their seeds.
She quickly pulls loose earth into the hole,
Up and over what was once her womanhood.
Her toes anchor her to the trickling water.
She reaches for father, the fire god in the sky,
And her back goes stiff and her arms go stiff,
And the bark starts breaking through
And absorbing her skin,
And her brief journey as flesh and bone
Starts passing before her dying eyes.
Less than an acre behind her,
A chain saw starts buzzing.
Her nerves send one last message of agony
As she strains and turns her head
While another saw starts up
In a small clearing that was never there before.
The trickling waters sing no worries,
But the remnants of her brain drown in the undertow,
In the horror of seeing all those stumps, all those men with saws,
Of reading the gravestone, the last words she would ever understand,
The sign which read, “Coming Soon! Shady Oaks Retirement Community.”
And knowing they had yet to clear enough land.
Then the reclamation was complete.
There was no knowledge,
No questioning the immorality,
No thought of being reclaimed.
Flesh and bone concepts escaped her, words followed.
Her mind was full of water trickling beneath the soil,
Pure and cold and never seeing light.
Copyright © 2000 Michael Chant
Michael Chant writes fiction, poetry, and reviews of books, music, and film. He is happily married, residing in southern New Jersey, and is currently employed as a scheduling reporter for TV Guide. His work has appeared in Twilight Showcase, Quantum Muse, Electric Wine, The Chiaroscuro, and GC Magazine.
On Mars
By David Salisbury
8/20/01
There isn’t really death on Mars, more
of a cessation, a reduction to absolute
zero. The recombination of your elements
into new patterns that sustain these
bubbling parasite domes that scratch the face
of the red cold planet in fungal clusters.
There isn’t really life on Mars, rather
existence, continuance along infinite lines
on the island suspended in black cold.
Outside the red dust moves as a sleeper
disturbed by uncomfortable dreams or trying
forever to reach an unscratchable itch.
There isn’t really time on Mars, only
the ticking of sand in clocks that dribble
dust on sundials. You can see the time
pass second on second in peoples eyes
as imperceptibly they shrink and their light dies.
The shadows draw over in terrible lines.
There is nothing on Mars to be or
do. No rotund aliens in dust brick houses.
No monoliths inscribed with ancient rites
No relief from the unbearable thin light.
Nothing to explore. Nothing to conquer.
Nothing but waiting and watching the dust fall.
Copyright © 2001 David Salisbury
David Salisbury was born in Dunedin New Zealand 4th April 1979. He moved about during childhood due to his parents’ work, and lived in Israel before moving to Britain when he was 16. He has just completed a degree in Mathematics at Southampton University.
Terror for the Thoughtful Reader: The Best of Cemetery Dance, edited by Richard Chizmar
Reviewed by Amy O’Loughlin
8/6/01
The Best of Cemetery Dance is massive in length and diverse in scope. Culled from more than 200 short stories published in Cemetery Dance, the award-winning dark suspense and horror magazine, this 786-page anthology features an astonishing variety of crime narratives, horror tales, near-sci-fi adventures, suspense stories, and mysteries. The biggest names in the dark fiction genre appear in The Best of Cemetery Dance—Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Poppy Z. Brite, Joe R. Lansdale, and an interview with Dean Koontz—but a talented grouping of lesser-known novelists and first-time writers contribute surpassingly impressive tales of terror and blood and gore.
Compiling this collection of 59 stories was a “complicated and troublesome” undertaking, as Richard Chizmar, creator and editor of Cemetery Dance, explains in the book’s Introduction:
It was really tough to choose—there are some writers who had four or five stories in the magazine but didn’t make it into the book, and on the other hand, there are people who had only one story in the magazine and that one story got selected for the book. I just tried to be fair and pick the stories I liked the best. That’s what it came down to—what I liked the most.
It is fitting that The Best of Cemetery Dance reflects Chizmar’s preferences in dark fiction. In 1988, he published his first issue of Cemetery Dance as an underground magazine that presented a blend of horror-related short stories, interviews, news, and reviews. Now, after 13 years of publication, Cemetery Dance is recognized as a preeminent publisher of dark fiction that prompts the imagination and wrangles against reality. Its consistently celebrated content of modern horror mixed with a potent amount of suspense, surprise, and mystery has won numerous awards, including the International Horror Critics Guild Award and the World Fantasy Award. And, since the launch of its hardcover imprint in 1992, Cemetery Dance Publications has become the genre’s leading specialty press publisher.
And now, as Chizmar intones, “[let’s] start the dance … turn down the lights … take my hand.” And readers, be warned: this collection contains eerie tales that will forever haunt the corners of your mind, gruesome stories that will turn your stomach, horror stories with a twist that will leave you sniggering at their topsy-turvy endings, and serial-killer murder-mysteries that will force you to contemplate mankind’s capacity for depravity.
Whether the stories in The Best of Cemetery Dance feature a maniacal dwarf (as in Bentley Little’s “The Mailman”), a boy who takes his revenge on an unwitting Santa Claus because of last year’s disappointing array of Christmas gifts (as in James S. Dorr’s “A Christmas Story”), or a knife-wielding killer-clown (as seen in Gene Michael Higney’s “Comes the Night Wind, Cold and Hungry”), creepiness and page-turning excitement are close at hand. And, most importantly of all, spectacular writing abounds.
“The Winds Within” by Ronald Kelly features some of the compendium’s most artistic writing and plot development. It’s among the anthology’s eleven or so tales that concentrate on truly frightening, grisly serial killers.
The story opens with the killer’s thoughts, and their cryptic detachment piques reader curiosity. Kelly places you directly inside the mind of his killer and, in doing so, showcases his fine writing:
Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, so goes the saying.
Particularly in my case.
During the day, they perform the menial tasks of the normal psyche. But at night, the cold comes. It snakes its way back into my head, coating my brain with ice. My mind is trapped beneath the frigid surface; screaming, demanding relief. It is then that my hands grow uninhibited and become engines of mischief and destruction.
As the hour grows late and the temperature plunges, they take on a life of their own. They move through the frosty darkness like fleshen moths drawn to a flame. Searching for warmth.
And the winds within howl.
And then, the mayhem begins. Lieutenant Ken Lowry and Sergeant Ed Taylor are called to the crime scene of the second “mutilation murder.” They arrive at the rundown Atlanta apartment building where “four-letter graffiti and adolescent depictions of exaggerated genitalia” mar the walls, and the two begin questioning the questionable tenants. You follow the homicide detectives as they piece together the gory clues in their investigation and determine who their murderer is—but not before you behold the macabre and the vile.
The Winds Within includes moments of compassion, despite the wantonness that Kelly attributes to his killer and the story’s debauchery. Surprisingly, the killer manages to suck sympathy out of readers, and Kelly portrays adeptly the extreme circumstances that can occur when a perceived need for physical comfort overrides morality and sanctity.
The anthology also includes fine examples of several other well-worn horror story types: the haunted house tale (Stephen Mark Rainey’s “Silhouette”), the vampire story (Brite’s “A Taste of Blood and Altars”), and the human-turned-beast saga (Edward Lee’s “Almost Never”). Most of the stories, however, are inventive gore-chronicles that plumb the depths of human madness and explore substantial subject matters. Vengeance, the uncertainty of good and evil, and the societal penchant for psychotic, misguided, do-the-right-thing behavior are the most common topics that the authors ponder. These may seem like weighty matters for your average scare-story. And they are. But fiction that comments as well as alarms is what makes The Best of Cemetery Dance appealing, successful, and notable.