PseudoPod

• Author : Christopher Shultz
• Narrators : Scott Campbell and Susan Gage
• Host : Alasdair Stuart
• Audio Producer : Marty Perrett
• Discuss on Forums

PseudoPod 578: Alarm Will Sound is a PseudoPod original.

As mentioned by Alasdair:

Art Bell-The Frantic Caller

https://youtu.be/ee3bld4lTG0 The Peoria Plague

https://archive.org/details/ThePeoriaPlague

Uncanny County-The Boy Who Cried Martian

http://uncannycounty.com/episodes/page14/

The Hugo Awards have these things they call nominations tallys but they are commonly referred to as The Long Lists. These include the top fifteen nominees, and show who just missed making the finals. For example, Escape Pod, PodCastle, and Mothership Zeta all made the long list last year for Semiprozine.

One of the great values of these long lists is that it allows readers even more excellent works to add to their “to read” pile. David Steffen has worked to make mining those lists significantly more convenient for you. For the third year in a row, David has published a volume of The Long List Anthology. In this most recent version are included works from names familiar to fans of Escape Artists. Lavie Tidhar, Ursula Vernon, Caroline M. Yoachim, and Ken Liu, among a host of amazing others.

Want to know what sort of story makes it to this anthology? Go listen to episode 607 of Escape Pod and catch Red in Tooth and Cog by Cat Rambo. Been procrastinating picking up Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw or Run Time by Escape Pod’s S.B. Divya? This anthology will assuage your guilt. You can find The Long List Anthology Volume 3 at all the usual purveyors of books. If you’re already the proud owner of this book, become a subscribing supporter of Diabolical Plots which is also edited by David Steffen. Subscribing there puts you in line early for not only the ebooks of the original stories published in Diabolical Plots, but also gets you in line early for The Long List Anthology Volume 4. Go support this fantastically creative human being.

Alarm Will Sound by Christopher Shultz

And we’re back. This is hour two of Talk it Out. I’m your host, Gabrielle Esposito. If you’re just tuning in, in our first hour on the air we talked at length with Mary from Poughkeepsie, New York, who has been having suicidal thoughts. She was able to talk through a lot of what’s been bothering her, and I think overall we left things in a good place.

Now of course, if this is your first time listening to the show, I want to reiterate that I am not a licensed therapist, nor do I behave like one. What we provide on this show is an avenue for people just to talk. I listen, and the rest of you, the audience, listen too, and we share messages of positivity and encouragement from you listeners, which you can send via email or post to our Facebook page. I always recommend that anyone experiencing things like suicidal thoughts, like Mary, or any other psychological issue, to seek out counseling. Now, Mary definitely wanted help, and we gave her several numbers of therapists in her area to call. My producer Michelle just told me that Mary was okay with a callback live on the air next week, so for those of you concerned for her well-being, be sure to listen in.

Okay, it looks like we have a handful of callers waiting in the queue, so let’s answer the next one in line. We have Charles on the line, from a small town in Oklahoma. Charles, welcome to Talk it Out.

Hi, Gabrielle.

Charles, how can we help you today?

Um. I’m calling from Scissortail, Oklahoma. If you haven’t heard of it, that’s okay, but I’m hoping after tonight, everyone will know the name. Scissortail, remember. Oklahoma.

Okay, no problem. Scissortail.

Thank you. See, this deals with what I believe to be…some kind of force or entity or intelligent being, attempting to make contact in some fashion with my town. Maybe, even, attempting to take over my town. Now, I know that sounds crazy, but please just hear me out. Please don’t hang up.

I promise not to hang up on you, Charles. I do believe that you believe this is happening.

This is all actually happening. I’ll swear on a stack of Bibles as tall as Everest if you ask me to. Just let me explain…

Please, Charles, go ahead.

Okay. This all started with what we assumed at the time to be an unknown graffiti artist everyone called Alarm Will Sound. None of us knew if that was the artist’s name, but that’s what he or she spray-painted in big red block letters all over the place, just those three words, Alarm Will Sound. You know, like on emergency exit doors. The lettering was always crude, like the artist had a shaky hand.

That’s a very cryptic phrase. Do you know what it means?

I…I don’t. No. The wife and I and our friends are about as far removed from the modern art scene as you can get. Which isn’t to say we’re uneducated, we know about the big famous painters, your Picassos and Van Goghs and whatnot, and we knew about Banksy because we watched that movie about him on Netflix. But, you know, we didn’t know the who’s who anymore, locally or internationally.

What I’m trying to get across here is this: we were only aware of Alarm Will Sound because he or she—or it—was EVERYWHERE. Sometimes it seemed like he or she—I’m going with “she” on this one, I don’t know why, that’s just…it’s fitting. I don’t know.

Whatever is easiest for you, Charles.

Thank you. What was I saying? Yes…She was everywhere, all at once. And she was fast. You’d see the tag in a few places one day, and then the next, she’d’ve hit fifty other places over night. Now, that’s not so strange, I suppose, but looking back I know there was a kind of…I don’t know, um…mutual eeriness we all felt about it, but nobody really wanted to acknowledge it.

It wasn’t too long, though, that things started getting weird. Scary.

Case in point: I’m on the phone with Glenna—that’s my wife—she was at the grocery store, and we were talking about Alarm Will Sound, about how fast she is, and she stops mid-sentence, and there’s a pause. And I say, what is it? And she tells me she was looking at the side wall of the building where she’d parked, and she looked away for a split second, and when she looked back up, there was the tag, right there in front of her, ALARM WILL SOUND. She swears it wasn’t there not two seconds before. It just appeared out of nowhere.

Now, I’m a rational person, always have been. I complement Glenna in that way because she’s fanciful. And she complements me, reminds me to not be so buttoned-up all the time, as she puts it. But I default in this case, because I believe that the simplest solution is always the correct one, and in most cases I’m right. So I tell her, love, you probably just didn’t notice it before. The store’s a red brick building, and this artist paints in red, so it probably just blended in and you didn’t actually see it until just now. She concedes to that, and she starts the car and is getting ready to drive away.

Here’s where this particular part of this story gets really strange, because I cannot explain what happened next. I mean, I could—I did explain it away at the time but…

Are you still there, Charles?

I’m here. Yes…Now, I didn’t mention before that at the time of the phone call I was outside doing a little yard work, just some raking, you know. And I consider myself an observant person, overall. Now, I wasn’t looking anywhere in particular while I was raking, you understand. I’m not going to lie and tell you I was staring at the wall of my house the entire time I was talking to Glenna, because I wasn’t. But our house is white, you see, a lot easier to see big red letters across the wall…

I think you know where this is going. I hang up with the wife, look up…And there it is. ALARM WILL SOUND, right there on the wall, right under our bedroom window. Put another stack of Everest-tall Bibles on top of the one we’ve already got, and I’ll swear on those too. I am ninety-nine percent positive those letters were not there the ENTIRE time I was out raking the lawn. No, it was like…I don’t know what it was like. It was like…she knew we were talking about her. The artist, I mean. And it sounds totally crazy. And at the time, I did think it was crazy, because…well, I just couldn’t completely let go of the rational. Not completely. I held onto logic. Even though this…this defied logic.

But I was adamant about a reasonable explanation. I think I read somewhere once that people do that, that we cling to logic and reason and begin making excuses and rationalizations in our heads for the things we can’t comprehend, like a defense mechanism to keep us sane, or something like that. And I think that’s what I did. I created a scenario that made perfect sense.

And Charles, if I may ask—

Please just listen, I think I’m running out of time here—

You have all the time you need—

I don’t. You don’t understand, just listen…

I told myself there were two possibilities: Either I truly hadn’t noticed the graffiti, which meant my powers of observation were beginning to fail—certainly a possibility at my age—or, the artist had done it while I had my back turned to the house. So the writing Glenna saw at the grocery store had been there the whole time, and she just hadn’t noticed it upon first glance. Meanwhile, Alarm Will Sound tagged me while I wasn’t looking, and the timing of the two “events” happening side by side while Glenna and I were on the phone, well…it was just a coincidence.

That is very sound logic, Charles.

It is, but…That’s what I told myself, anyway, and I cursed and I got out the extra bucket of house paint I had in my garage and painted over the message before Glenna got home, because I didn’t want her getting anymore funny ideas about the whole thing.

But see, I couldn’t hold on to my logic and reason for very long. About a week later, Glenna and I went over to Jim and Lisa’s—they’re our friends—for a barbecue. Some of the other couples from the neighborhood were there too. And this one couple, the Brandons we called them not because it was their last name but because they were both named Brandon, told almost an identical story to the one Glenna and I had experienced, only they were both having lunch on a patio at some restaurant or other, sitting at a table facing each other, and in the blink of an eye—that was the term they used, the blink of an eye—they each saw the message “magically” appear on a wall and a telephone post, respectively. They were facing opposite directions, you understand. I mean, looking at each other as they talked, but you know, we notice things out of our peripheral vision. And—again, in the blink of an eye—the same blocky red letters just appear.

And just like Glenna and me, they were talking ABOUT Alarm Will Sound when it happened.

It was like she knew, see? She knew they were talking about her. I don’t know how, I don’t know why. But she knew.

Well, I confessed about the message I saw then, too. Glenna was a little miffed at me for not telling her, but she understood. It was my way, she knew that. And together, we told our tale, our impossible little tale. I don’t know why I was willing to give in, to share this story with my friends, as though we were kids around a campfire. Like I said, I’m always sticking to the rational, and I’m the last person to want to cause any kind of panic in people, but…I don’t know. In the same way I’m telling this to you, Gabrielle, and the rest of the world, it just seemed…appropriate.

We do appreciate you sharing with us—

At the time, it was appropriate, but now, it’s MANDATORY.

I do understand—

No, you don’t. See, when we got home from the barbecue, and Glenna’s all freaked out as it is, guess what we find as we pull into the driveway? ALARM WILL SOUND. In the EXACT same place as the one I painted over. The exact same letters, even down to the same EXACT drip mark coming off the W. It was like the message had bled through the three coats of paint I’d put over it. Glenna was in utter terror over this. I was too, to tell the truth.

Wasn’t long after that, the messages began popping up, well, like I said, everywhere. But everywhere times a thousand, you understand? All over the place. On people’s cars, on the streets, on trees, everyone’s houses. And not just once per surface. I’m talking like an insane person writing on the walls of their padded room, over and over and over, the same thing, ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND. I mean, our house basically looks red at this point.

And this is why this is so important, you see, because our local media, they’re acting like there’s nothing going on. There hasn’t been one single news report, one single newspaper article, no one radio DJ or Internet blogger or anyone has written anything about it. And speaking of bloggers, one of the Brandons, well he decided to start writing about it himself, since no one else would. So he set up a blog, he starts writing, pushing out these awareness pieces, trying to get more people to reach out to him and share their stories, so that maybe we can figure out just what the hell is going on, but every time he publishes one, it just disappears. Do you understand what I’m saying? It just flat out disappears. You can’t find it on the Internet, you search for it on Google and you get no results, you search for ALARM WILL SOUND and you get stuff about emergency exit doors and some avant-garde musical group based in New York. I don’t think they’re related at all.

We’re afraid. We’re all afraid. I mean, true to the message, all our internal alarms are going off. I mean, we don’t know what the hell is going on.

Because here’s the thing, and you may look into this, you may not, but I want to be upfront with everything, because I don’t want you or anyone else thinking I’m crazy. I know how all this sounds, but…the thing is, if you try to look up our town, Scissortail…you’re not going to find it anymore. It used to be on the map. It isn’t now. And, and…We can’t get out anymore. If you drive to the edge of town, it’s literally an edge, there’s just nothing, nothing but a big huge cliff, and the road just ends, and all over the edge of the road and the edge of the cliff, and all down the cliff side, ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND.

And I know what you’re thinking, this guy is just making all this stuff up to get on the radio. Scissortail never existed in the first place, and it’s just a matter of convenience he’s saying it’s no longer on the map. I’m just a big liar, right? I’m not. Take all those Bibles I mentioned before and place them atop my own mother’s grave, and I’ll still swear on them. I’ll do whatever you ask me to do to get you to believe me. We’re desperate here, we don’t know where else to turn, because it seems like every time we try to find help, all we get back is silence…Although that’s not even true, because all we get is ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND, and it may just be words but when you look outside and all the world is red all over, all those words bleeding into one another, smashing up against each other, it begins to sound like alarms, like…what’s the word…klaxons. That’s it. Klaxons going off in your head. ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND, over and over and over, and none of us…none of us…knows what it means, I, I…I can’t explain. Any of this. I have no logical explanations. I can’t reason my way out of this anymore…

Charles?

My front lawn is red…

Charles, are you still—

Oh God…right now! It’s right now! It, it’s Jim outside…he’s red, he’s covered in red…he’s walking outside, he’s getting covered in paint, right now, it’s happening RIGHT NOW! He’s alone but it’s happening right now. His face, OH JESUS—NO DON’T LOOK! GLENNA! DON’T—

Oh. Oh my God, oh Jesus oh Jesus oh…

He’s alone out there. He’s…I’m watching…He…

Oh GOD…

Oh—Please, someone look into this, try to find out, we’re still here, it says we don’t exist but we’re still here, we’re still here, I’m sounding the alarm, oh Jesus, I’m sounding the alarm, is that what it means? I’m sounding the alarm right now, this is the alarm, this is the warning, ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND ALARM WILL SOUND ALA—

…Hello?

Hello?

Michelle, did we lose Charles…?

Well, Michelle tells me we must’ve lost Charles from…Oklahoma, correct?

A small town in Oklahoma.

Well, Charles, if you’re still listening, we’re sorry we got disconnected before you had a chance to speak with us, but do please call back and we’ll get you back on the air. And if we don’t hear back from you, well, we certainly hope that whatever’s been troubling you, it gets worked out soon.

Okay…Next we have Ronny from Schaumburg, Illinois. Welcome to Talk it Out, Ronnie…

The post PseudoPod 578: Alarm Will Sound appeared first on PseudoPod.

• Author : Rebecca J. Allred
• Narrator : Dani Daly
• Host : Alasdair Stuart
• Audio Producer : Marty Perrett
• Discuss on Forums

‘From the Fertile Dark’ was originally printed in Nightscript II, in October of 2016.

Content warning:

Spoiler Inside SelectShow Loss of a child

“I started writing five years ago by participating in a weekly flash fiction challenge, and this story began as a 250 word sketch based on a photo of an empty swing.”

The Hugo Awards have these things they call nominations tallys but they are commonly referred to as The Long Lists. These include the top fifteen nominees, and show who just missed making the finals. For example, Escape Pod, PodCastle, and Mothership Zeta all made the long list last year for Semiprozine.

One of the great values of these long lists is that it allows readers even more excellent works to add to their “to read” pile. David Steffen has worked to make mining those lists significantly more convenient for you. For the third year in a row, David has published a volume of The Long List Anthology. In this most recent version are included works from names familiar to fans of Escape Artists. Lavie Tidhar, Ursula Vernon, Caroline M. Yoachim, and Ken Liu, among a host of amazing others.

Want to know what sort of story makes it to this anthology? Go listen to episode 607 of Escape Pod and catch Red in Tooth and Cog by Cat Rambo. Been procrastinating picking up Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw or Run Time by Escape Pod’s S.B. Divya? This anthology will assuage your guilt. You can find The Long List Anthology Volume 3 at all the usual purveyors of books. If you’re already the proud owner of this book, become a subscribing supporter of Diabolical Plots which is also edited by David Steffen. Subscribing there puts you in line early for not only the ebooks of the original stories published in Diabolical Plots, but also gets you in line early for The Long List Anthology Volume 4. Go support this fantastically creative human being.

From the Fertile Dark by Rebecca J. Allred

As tendrils of spilled ink mingle with the pool of blood expanding around her knees, Charlotte paints the shadow child on a wall the shade of wilted daffodils. Upstairs, her husband packs his things, slipping quietly from her life even as the last of their children slips from her womb. There will be no call for the midwife who, with the blessings of the town elders, declared her pregnancy an abomination from the start. Neither will she seek the aid of the doctors from away. There is nothing either the ancient woman or the practitioners responsible for its inception can do to stay the flow of despair and failure seeping from Charlotte’s sex, and she is already intimately familiar with the details of post-miscarriage self-care.

Hands trembling, she outlines the shape of a girl, four years old, with soft curls that fall to her shoulders—an imitation of invented memory. With each stroke, Charlotte replaces the foul taste of Black Haw extract and Chaste Tree berry with the flavors of vanilla ice cream and birthday cake; the acrid scent of antiseptic and bleached linens with the fragrance of baby powder and warm milk; and the repeated pricks of needles that promised a miracle at the price of her friends and family with the soft ticklish flutter of butterfly kisses. In her mind, the short, hurried footsteps traversing the hallway are not the clatter of a runaway spouse, but an echo of a toddler fleeing bath time. Charlotte chases the phantom memory into darkness.

Deceiver…

Instead of condolences and comfort, they bring casseroles and cake. Pariah or not, Charlotte is a grieving mother, and the neighbors have appearances to keep. Charlotte receives their charity with silent gratitude, stacking parcels one on top of the other like so many tiny coffins. With the exception of answering the door to accept tokens of feigned sympathy, she resides in the nursery.

Curtains closed, shelves lined with little socks and shoes, pacifiers, and containers of baby powder, the nursery is an altar for an absent god. Tucked in a corner, a handful of plush characters peek over the edge of a bassinet, glossy eyes connecting the dots of rust-colored stains that trace loss across the floorboards like chalk lines on pavement. Charlotte covers the walls with the residue of wishes, adding a jump rope, toys, and a swing for the shadow child’s amusement.

Days stretch endlessly into weeks as time rushes past in a monochromic blur until the neighborly visits, much like the flow of blood that serves as a daily reminder of her failure, eventually slow and then stop altogether.

Behind the house, near the edge of the surrounding woods, a pair of swings twists in an early winter breeze. Unable to contain her grief any longer, Charlotte’s house invites the breeze to cleanse its stagnant halls, throwing open its doors and windows and spilling a kaleidoscope of sorrow into the night.

Charlotte gives chase, but for every lamentation recaptured and rebottled to nurture and protect, another escapes her lips, feeding the breeze until it becomes a gale. When it becomes clear her efforts are wasted, Charlotte takes to the swings. If she cannot stop her despair from taking flight, she will follow it into the sky. Charlotte swings up, up, up—toward the swollen moon as it drifts through the amnion of distant galaxies—and lets go. For a moment, she hangs suspended in the tempest. Then it retreats with all her cultivated misery in tow, and Charlotte plummets back to the earth to sow her garden of heartache anew.

“For what do you weep?” someone from within the wood whispers. The voice is low and dark, like distant thunder, and though it carries undertones of stealth and misdirection, it offers the first kind words Charlotte has heard in months.

“I weep for the death of my heart, that its ghost may forget how to love.”

“Even those who walk between worlds are haunted by the memory of loss.”

“I among them.” Charlotte rises, brushing blades of winter grass from her dress and steps toward the edge of the wooded area. “Who are you? Why do you speak with me? Do you not know that I am forsaken?”

“I am a granter of wishes. I can give you that for which your heart breaks.”

Temptation in the form of a flutter deep in the pit of Charlotte’s stomach draws her nearer to the shadowed wood.

“Nothing of such value is given freely.” Charlotte’s voice trembles with an amalgam of hope and fear. “What payment is due such a service?”

“Love,” the voice says. “Sacrifice.”

A vine wide as her palm and armed with thorns like fangs twists from the foliage into the moonlight. It lashes out, slicing through the thin fabric of Charlotte’s dress and leaving behind three sets of parallel wounds on her abdomen.

Charlotte cries out but does not flee. She touches the slits on her belly, smearing thick drops of blood against her shivering flesh. Fingers slick with red, Charlotte steps closer and attempts to wrap them around the vine, but it has no depth and passes through her grasp like vapor. She presses her fingers to her mouth.

“Love,” she says, bending at the waist and brushing her bloodied lips against the shadow, returning its kiss. “Love is sacrifice.”

The vine shudders. Its barbs scramble up the stem, coalescing into a razor sharp grin. “Flesh of your flesh.”

Lapping at the fluid coursing down the concave hollow of Charlotte’s stomach, the dark umbilicus sprouts arms and legs. They probe her wounds, diving between layers of muscle and disappearing into Charlotte’s body like smoke in reverse.

Her belly swells, the slits become gouges, and a sound like ruptured earth erupts from her throat. It is agony. It is rapture. It lasts forever and is over in the beat of a newborn’s heart.

Charlotte kneels, clutching her abdomen. The slashes have disappeared; tiny fingers trace their absence from the inside.

Deceiver.

Whore…

Words like wasps hover round Charlotte’s home, waiting for an opportunity to sting. Her much expanded midsection has captured the town’s attention, and to the hive of buzzing tongues, each postulate regarding her condition is less palatable than the last.

The presence of another draws Charlotte from sleep. Fearing the worst, that the elders have come for her and the unborn child, she tumbles out of bed and heads for the door.

“It is only I,” a calm, familiar voice reassures.

Charlotte ceases her escape and turns to confront her husband. He sits, hands clutching one another between his knees, on the edge of the bed they once shared.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to make amends. To beg your forgiveness and be a father to our child.”

Wrapping her arms protectively around her belly, Charlotte speaks the words she’s practiced time and again inside her mind.

“This child belongs to me and me alone.”

Her husband winces as if struck. “Not mine, then.”

“No.”

“I suspected as much. As do many of the others.” It is clear from his face that while he accepts this explanation, her husband had hoped the earliest rumors were true. That the miscarriage had been no more than a deception and the child inside her was the sum of their shared efforts.

“And yet my errand remains the same.” He rises and crosses to Charlotte, taking one of her hands in his own. “Forgive me, wife. I was a coward.”

A sensation like falling into the sky forces Charlotte to her knees. She looks into her husband’s eyes and hopes the urgency reflected there is not her own.

“I forgive you, but you cannot stay. The elders will never allow it.”

“It would not be the first time I rejected the will of the elders for the promise of a family.”

“That was different.”

“Was it? Tell me, wife. How came you to be with child this time?”

Charlotte pulls her hand away and returns it to its place upon her stomach which has begun to knot.

“Be it by medicine or by magic, it is the same in the eyes of the elders.”

Instead of words, a wail of agony pours from Charlotte’s throat and she curls round her tightening middle.

Her husband gathers her into his arms and rests her on the bed. “I’ll fetch the midwife,” he says when she’s past the first contraction.

“No! They must never see!”

“See what?”

Charlotte cries out again as another wave of pressure threatens to split her open. “Help me,” she pleads. “Help me, and you can stay.”

Hours later, Charlotte’s screams are replaced by the shrill cry of a newborn.

Deceiver.

Whore.

Murderer…

When they come to question her, Charlotte tells the elder’s vassals that, despite his rumored claims to return home, she hasn’t seen her husband in months—not since he left following her most recent miscarriage. About the infant sounds coming from the adjacent room, she tells them nothing, keeping the bundle of coos and gurgles tightly swaddled as they search the house and surrounding land time and again for evidence of a crime.

They find none, overlooking the dim, shifting outline of a man huddled in the bedroom corner. Charlotte too learns to overlook him, and in time, he disappears altogether.

As the girl blossoms from infant to toddler, Charlotte grows ever more pale, spending day and night watching her daughter play with toys inked upon the walls of their secluded existence. Her only regret is that, unlike the jacks and the swing, her daughter’s dark touch is unable to animate the other shadow child and grant herself a playmate.

Walking home through waves of winter ash, a bundle of groceries held close to her chest, Charlotte is confronted by a woman cloaked in familiar wounds.

“How’s your daughter?” the woman asks, cheeks streaked with rage.

On both sides of the street, people have halted their journeys to bear witness. Charlotte’s answer is tentative. “Well, thank you. I was sorry to hear of yours. I pray they find her soon and in good health.”

The woman spits in Charlotte’s face and hurries away, choked sobs trailing behind her. Sharp glares aimed at her heart pierce Charlotte’s winter coat, but they fail to embed themselves in her fading flesh.

When she arrives at home, Charlotte is greeted by the sound of not one, but two children giggling. She rushes inside, terrified of what she knows she will find. Her daughter swings wide arcs across the nursery’s yellow walls, dusky locks trailing behind her like smoke. A second, unfamiliar shadow child pushes her as the original watches, silent and unmoving as a statue.

One by one, the town’s children vanish. One by one, their shadows appear in Charlotte’s home, the ranks of her daughter’s playground companions swelling into the dozens.

Deceiver.

Whore.

Murderer.

Witch…

Little more than a whisper, Charlotte watches as a mob gathers outside—larger, angrier versions of wasps equipped with more than mere stings. Near the back, draped in robes, the elders watch with a singular pious gaze.

“Give them back!”

“Come out, or we’ll drag you out!”

Someone throws a stone; it crashes through the window, and a river of children’s laughter leaks out.

“I hear them. They’re inside.”

“More lies. She must be destroyed!”

The children gather round Charlotte, pulling her away from the windows just as the first blazing torch sails into the living room. In the nursery, her daughter twists in the swing. Charlotte tries to gather the girl into her arms, but they no longer have any substance. The girl laughs and points to the original shadow child still inked upon the wall.

Exhausted, Charlotte sinks to the floor. This close to the shadow child, she can see flecks of dried blood admixed with the ink. Her blood.

The flames spread. They creep down the hall, a light made to devour shadow.

“Flesh of my flesh,” Charlotte says. “Love is sacrifice.” She presses her lips to the imprint and flows backward into herself. The children follow her into darkness.

Charlotte wanders the boundless forest in a veil of midnight, surrounded by giggles and rustling leaves as tiny shadows dart from tree to tree through beams of moonlight. Ahead, she glimpses a break in the dense timber and, beyond that, a memory of her former self. Its slight frame shudders, exuding a fountain of grief.

Charlotte calls wordlessly to the shadows and draws one to her breast. Then she moves to the edge of the night and asks the woman a question to which she already knows the answer.

 

 

 

Damien Angelica Walters has a new collection out now from Apex Books – Cry Your Way Home. Damien presents unease with exceptional craft. There’s a lot of non-traditional families in this collection struggling to survive in an uncaring world. There’s a number of young girls struggling with friendship and its collapse and the need to be heard and understood.

I love the ominous exploration of blended families in “Deep Within the Marrow, Hidden in My Smile” and the interaction of mothers and their teenage daughters in “On the Other Side of the Door, Everything Changes.” Grief is a common theme, no better presented in “Falling Under, Through the Dark” which bears the crushing weight of the loss of a child and the feelings of complicity in the guilt. – This one ran here on PseudoPod as Episode 510.

Probably my favorite of the collection is “Take a Walk in the Night, My Love” which nods to the quiet unreliability of a du Maurier character and explores gaslighting. You get your money’s worth with this story alone, making every other excellent story in this collection a true gift.

The post PseudoPod 577: From the Fertile Dark appeared first on PseudoPod.

• Authors : Evan Dicken, Stephanie Malia Morris and Drew Czernik
• Narrators : Karen Bovenmyer, Alexis Goble and Austin Malone
• Host : Brian Lieberman
• Audio Producer : Marty Perrett
• Discuss on Forums

PseudoPod 576: Flash On The Borderlands XLI: Flash Fiction Contest 5 Winners is a PseudoPod original.

Third Place: The Taking Tree by Evan Dicken narrated by Karen Bovenmyer

Second Place: Legal Tender by Stephanie Malia Morris narrated by Alexis Goble

First Place: Two Step by Drew Czernik narrated by Austin Malone

The Taking Tree by Evan Dicken

Governor Porter,

I deserve to die for what I’ve done, just please don’t bury me.

I’m reaching out because I got no one else. Even my lawyer keeps asking where the bodies are buried. I wish I knew. Then I could chop the damn thing down, but the tree don’t work like that.

I see it sometimes–out in the yard, beyond the prison fence–waiting for me. At night, I dread the moment when the heater clicks off and all that’s left is the rustle of leaves in the vents.

Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself.

In my earliest memories, the tree was an old thing, dry as driftwood. The story was it’d been a hanging tree back in the day–men, women, even children had kicked out their last seconds under its branches. I used to play in the woods nearby, passing judgment on squirrels and starlings, the tree my executioner. Once, we caught a stray cat. I think it was the screams that brought my parents running. People say I killed them too, but I was nine for god’s sake.

The tree followed me to foster care, its bark the rusty brown of old blood, leaves plump and shiny. I would wake to it tapping on my window, wanting more, wanting me.

I had this foster brother, Raymond, used to hide outside my window while I was changing. One night, I opened the curtains to give the creep a real show. I remember him staring from the bushes, eyes like quarters, then he just disappeared, twisting away like he was on the end of a rope.

I ran to the toilet and vomited blood. Somehow, I knew it wasn’t mine.

Once, I saw Raymond’s picture on a milk carton and almost got kicked out of the house for laughing.

It got easier after that, especially after I turned eighteen.

Lots of men will follow a young girl into the park, some women, too. The tree would snatch them up, quick as a heron gulping down frogs. I’d stand on my tiptoes, fingers brushing the tips of their kicking feet, feeling alive.

Afterwards, I vomited blood, organs, even bones sometimes. I went in for an x-ray and the negatives showed ribs of interlaced branches, the faint shadow of my organs picked out like leaves against a starless sky, and there, inside my heart, an acorn.

The doctor got this funny look when I asked him to dinner. I should’ve paid attention to the news. Someone had taken blurry video of one of my “dates.” They had some bullshit name for me–Lady Death or the Sorority Strangler. The doctor recognized me, and well, here we are.

Tomorrow, they’re gonna strap me to a table and I won’t get up, I accept that, hell, I welcome it. I’m not expecting a phone call. Burn my body, donate it, dump it the goddamn ocean, I don’t care. Just don’t put me in the ground.

I’m terrified of what will grow.

Legal Tender by Stephanie Malia Morris

We are women with money under our skin. A red rash of pennies peppering our ribs, dimes scattered across our bellies, a honeycomb of quarters sprouting between our thighs. The coins break out over our backs, fatten our wrists. Half dollars pave our scalps. We wear chokers of nickels.

The coins burn, like hot stones. Our fingers creak with the violent urge to scratch, to peel open our epidermis and dig among the follicles and sweat glands to where the coins lie, or down into the dermis and subcutaneous fat to where the coins are still soft zinc and copper nickel, not yet keratinized. Our mothers say, “Don’t scratch.” Most of us listen. But some do not. We see these women in the ER, the free clinic, on the side of the road, their faces shredded, hair wrenched out by the handful. We imagine how good the hair felt coming out, coins clotted in the roots, slick with gore, the metal glistening.

We contemplate the welts of our mothers’ coins, shadows beneath the long sleeves of their blouses. “Did you never get tired?” we ask.

And they say, “Of course we did.”

“Cover up,” our mothers say. Most of us listen, sickened by our reflections. Some do not. Our mothers send us a news story of a man who cut open his girlfriend with a razor and filled a plastic bag with dollar coins.

Our mothers say, “Don’t visit doctors.” They cite women opened up on the operating table, their bodies mined for silver. We ignore them. We show physicians our coin-spattered skin, answer their impersonal questions: yes, we break out daily, no, we don’t know why. Our physicians name over-the-counter antihistamines. We take our pills. But still, the coins spread. Our faces bloat with riches: eyes swollen purses, lips heavy as ripe fruit.

In our despair, we scream at our friends, our partners, our children, our supervisors, our customers, ourselves. We sob in public, we drink, we starve. We sleep.

We imagine the razor in our own hands, each cut sweeter than orgasm.

“How did you live?” we ask our mothers.

And they say, “We just did.”

The day we find blood beneath our daughters’ fingernails, their calves split with scratching, we imagine the decades ahead: our daughters turning into us, our hands trembling, as our mothers’ do, with desires on which we will never act.

“How could you watch us suffer?” We feel our own calves, the scars that taught us obedience knotted and black.

“You think it was easy?” our mothers say. “When we wanted so much more for you?”

We too want so much more. But we are tired of wanting. The coins must end somewhere.

So we whet our razors, kiss our daughters’ slack faces, and open the peach-soft skin of their ankles to find the coins crusted beneath. Even unconscious, they whimper and toss. “Hush,” we say. “This isn’t easy. We wish our mothers had done this for us.”

Two Step by Drew Czernik

I take one step, he takes two.

I woke up that first morning with the remnants of a nightmare in the back of my head. He was out there, coming closer. I blinked, rubbed sleep from my eyes and tried to scrub the nightmare from my brain. The sleep went, the nightmare didn’t.

I heard something, looked past Amy. Tyler stood beside the bed, tugging the sheets, the top of his head just visible above the mattress.

“Man’s coming daddy.”

I take one step, he takes two.

It was the same everywhere. People felt it; shadows in the back of their minds creeping closer with every step. Then the shadows began to catch up.

First it was the planes, empty ones landing on autopilot. Then they stopped landing and started falling. Commuters disappeared from trains, freeways snarled with accidents. The shadows were catching up. And when they caught you they took you. It didn’t take long to realize that the further you went, the faster they caught you.

And they always caught you.

The world slowed down. We stayed inside, didn’t move unless we had to. It didn’t matter, he kept coming. Every trip to the kitchen, the bathroom, every step. They all brought him closer.

We kept the TV on, hoping for an answer. You could see the fear growing in the anchorwoman’s eye every time she shifted. Finally, she stopped talking and just sat facing the camera, frozen. She was still there when the power went out.

I take one step, he takes two.

It’s been days since I saw anyone outside. The last was the lady three houses down, running down the road, looking over her shoulder and screaming something I couldn’t hear. She reached our driveway. There was a dark shimmer in the air behind her and then she was gone.

I wonder if that’s how it ended for Amy?

She left yesterday. After Tyler. We tried. We tried so damned hard. But how do you keep a three year old still? He thought it was a game. He’d run away, laughing as we chased him. Amy screaming, Tyler shrieking.

The last time, he got to the front door. He turned and giggled. “Man’s coming daddy!” He took one more step and there was that dark shimmer. His giggle turned to a scream and then he was gone. Amy didn’t say anything. She walked to where he’d disappeared, then kept on walking.

I didn’t bother closing the door behind her. Doors don’t matter.

I take one step, he takes two.

It’s just me now. Alone in this dark, quiet house. I’m moving again. There’s no reason not to anymore. He’s close. So close. I swear I can almost see the shimmer.

There’s a picture on the fridge that Tyler painted. It’s the three of us; smiling stick figures in thick blue finger strokes. I love that picture. I want to see it one more time.

I take one step, he takes two.

I take one st-

The post PseudoPod 576: Flash On The Borderlands XLI: Flash Fiction Contest 5 Winners appeared first on PseudoPod.

• Author : Ramsey Campbell
• Narrator : Phil Lunt
• Host : Alasdair Stuart
• Audio Producer : Chelsea Davis
• Artist : Shawn Garrett
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“Christmas Present” originally appeared in the NAMELESS PLACES anthology edited by Gerald W. Page in 1975, followed by THE YEAR’S BEST HORROR STORIES: SERIES IV anthology, also edited by Page, in 1976. A slightly different version of the story was broadcast on BBC radio Mersey-side on December 24th, 1969, there read by Gavin Richards, produced by Tony Wolfe and with a special electronic score by Donald Henshilwood – and the story is thus dedicated to these three gentlemen. This presentation features audio production by your editor, Shawn Garrett using some sounds from Freesound,org and dedicated to Zoviet France, the sisters of St. Francis Academy and the 1971 film THE NIGHT CALLER.

The post PseudoPod 575: Christmas Present appeared first on PseudoPod.

• Author : Lucy A. Snyder
• Narrator : Tatiana Grey
• Host : Alasdair Stuart
• Audio Producer : Chelsea Davis
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“While the Black Stars Burn” originally appeared in the Cassilda’s Song anthology. It was reprinted in Turn To Ash, and is the title story in Lucy’s Stoker Award-winning collection While the Black Stars Burn.

Content warning:

Spoiler Inside SelectShow Child abuse

I wrote “While the Black Stars Burn” while I was attending a winter MFA residency at Goddard College in Vermont. I knew I wanted to write a story evocative of both the Robert Chambers story “In the Court of the Dragon” and Lovecraft’s story “The Music of Erich Zann” but which was not a copycat pastiche of either one. The heat wasn’t working well in my dorm room, and my being profoundly cold and under-slept definitely influenced my writing!

While the Black Stars Burn by Lucy A. Snyder

Caroline tucked an unruly strand of coarse brown hair up under her pink knit cap, shrugged the strap of her black violin case back into place over her shoulder, and hurried up the music building stairs. Her skin felt both uncomfortably greasy and itched dryly under her heavy winter clothes; it had been seven days since the water heater broke in her tiny efficiency and the landlord wasn’t answering his phone. Quick, chilly rag-baths were all she could stand, and she felt so self-conscious about the state of her hair that she kept it hidden under a hat whenever possible. She hoped that her violin professor Dr. Harroe wouldn’t make her take her cap off.

Her foot slipped on a spot of dried salt on the stairs and she grabbed the chilly brass banister with her left hand to keep from pitching forward. The sharp, cold jolt made the puckered scar in her palm sharply ache, and the old memory returned fast and unbidden:

“Why aren’t you practicing as I told you to?”

The post PseudoPod 574: While the Black Stars Burn appeared first on PseudoPod.

• Author : Laura Blackwell
• Narrator : Emily Smith
• Host : Alasdair Stuart
• Audio Producer : Chelsea Davis
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This story was originally published in She Walks in Shadows anthology, eds. Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles, October 2015 from Innsmouth Free Press. Prime Books issued the American edition, which is called Cthulhu’s Daughters. This will be its first reprint.

Some listeners will recognize characters and story elements from H.P. Lovecraft’s “Cool Air.” That’s because this story was written for She Walks in Shadows, an anthology of stories containing female characters from Lovecraft’s stories. All contributors to the anthology were women. She Walks in Shadows won the 2016 World Fantasy Award in the anthology category, and “Bitter Perfume” received an Honorable Mention from Best Horror of the Year, Vol. 8 editor Ellen Datlow.

The post PseudoPod 573: Bitter Perfume appeared first on PseudoPod.

• Author : D. Morgan Ballmer
• Narrators : David Cummings , Scott Campbell, Moaner T. Lawrence, Brian Lieberman and Alex Hofelich
• Host : Jonny Sims
• Audio Producer : Chelsea Davis
• Artist : Scott Campbell
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PseudoPod 572: Deconstructing Hillsdale is a PseudoPod original.

Click to view content warnings:

Spoiler Inside SelectShow The events described occur in America and are told from an American perspective. Being a multicultural society, it is not unusual for Americans from all walks of life to partake in diverse celebrations like St. Patrick’s Day, Oktoberfest, or Cinco de Mayo regardless of their individual heritage. Nor is it unusual for people of all backgrounds to enjoy themed activities ranging from Civil War reenactments, to Mardi Gras, to amusement parks styled after the Old West, etc. Therefore, events like the Gypsy Carnival are mentioned with the American understanding that these are themed affairs and not connected with a particular people. Deconstructing Hillsdale By D. Morgan Ballmer

What do you recall about the horrific events that unfolded in Hillsdale Heights on December 2nd, 2014? I remember thinking that the town seemed populated by ghosts, mostly. All over Jefferson County living room windows framed our friends and neighbors as they bathed in the cold glow of their televisions, transfixed by the ongoing standoff. The reports didn’t make any sense. Even when it ended, nothing made any sense.

The media attempted to paint a portrait of the gunman, Randy Hollstrom. They sprinkled buzzwords throughout their coverage as if ‘veteran’, ‘loner’, or ‘PTSD’ somehow explained what we were seeing. Our eyes screamed that the words we were hearing did not match up with the footage. Perhaps after so many hours our hunger for peace of mind outweighed our appetite for the truth.

There was no real way for the news to tell the story anyway. Think of those 3-D sculptures which appear as an elephant when seen head on, but take four steps to the right and suddenly it looks like a giraffe. Same with the Hillsdale event – you look directly at the facts and you will never see the evidence that matters. You have to approach it sideways.

One example, Randy’s son. Or, if you prefer, his lack of a son. Or perhaps the theory that he was haunted by someone’s son if not his own. Countless words have already been written about his alleged offspring. Was the boy kidnapped? Killed? Did he ever exist outside of his father’s imagination? Speculation on this point only diverts the conversation down one of several well-worn paths, none which answer the question.

No one knows if the boy existed. Randy loved him a great deal regardless. His final videos are almost exclusively about his son, which means the boy was real enough to him. Now forget the boy. Forget the dubious photographs, the questionable testimony of neighbors, and the illegible scan of a birth certificate anonymously posted online. Remove these distractions from your view and focus on the man himself.

Randy Hollstrom had a childhood replete with its own paradoxes. Hans Hollstrom, the family patriarch, was a part time house painter and full time drinker whose temper earned him multiple stays at the county jail. This seldom mentioned detail of Randy’s life emerged in an interview on the GhostRazor blog in May of 2016. The following excerpt is from an interview the site conducted with Wade Hollstrom, Randy’s older brother:

Wade Hollstrom: That morning we were sent to fetch some beer from the crossroads, ya know? A little spot with a couple mini-marts and a garage. Lots of snow that week so dad loaned Randy his coat and told us to get a move on.

GhostRazor: Randy didn’t have his own coat?

WH: Well, we were still growing up, ya know? It was hard enough keeping us in shoes that fit much less buying new coats every year. House painting doesn’t pay like that.

GR: If you were thirteen at the time Randy must’ve been ten. How did you buy beer?

WH: I didn’t say we bought it. We were sent to fetch it. We knew better than to come back empty handed.

GR: I see. Was it a long walk?

WH: About two miles. Of course, two miles on a country road can seem a lot longer with the snow. That day was cold. Like icicles hanging off our balls, ya’ know? Suddenly this old brown car appears from over the ridge and starts swerving down the road towards us.

GR: You’re out in the country when this happens?

WH: Yeah, nothing but woods and farmland on both sides. I pull Randy to the shoulder of the road because something seems funny, like maybe the driver is drunk or something. Sure enough, a few seconds later a stray dog comes running out from the fields. The mutt isn’t even looking. At that moment, it felt like I was watching a movie, ya know?  Like, I don’t know where the hell this dog is coming from or why this car is out on the icy road. But I could see what was going to happen, right?

GR: Oh no.

WH: Pow! Right? That poor mutt goes flying like a bowling pin. Car didn’t even slow down. I look over at the side of the road there’s a dog shaped hole in the snowbank. Like a Roadrunner cartoon or something. We can hear it whimpering. I’m standing there kinda dazed like what did I just see when Randy bolts over to the snowbank. He takes dad’s jacket off and starts spreading it out on the ground. I start yelling at him “Don’t do it! It’ll be the whoopin’ of your life,” you know?

GR: Because of the jacket?

WH: Yeah! Dad kept it clean, never took it to work. But Randy won’t listen. He lifts the mutt out of the snow and lays him on the jacket. Then he grabs the sleeves and starts dragging the dog towards the crossroads.

GR: Did you guys make it?

WH: Yeah. Dog probably made it too, I don’t know. Some trucker saw us and gave us a ride to the mini-mart. He promised to take the dog on to the vet. Don’t know what else he would’ve done with it.

GR: And Randy was punished when you returned home?

WH: Yeah.

GR: What happened?

WH: Just like I told him . . . that’s what happened.

There are a couple of relevant take-aways from this interview. The most obvious is Randy’s compulsion to save a helpless animal. Twenty years later we will watch him deliver several children directly into police custody while a neighborhood burns. He will be called a deranged kidnapper.

Little attention is given to the physical abuse both Hollstrom brothers suffered from a young age. Such circumstances have long term developmental effects, compulsive and erratic behavior among them. Compound this with the stresses Randy later endures at the Second Battle of Fallujah and you have the recipe for “personal demons”, a phrase the media used as the cornerstone of their reporting. The news repeated this catchphrase so frequently that #personal_demons became a trending tag on several social media platforms in the weeks following the Hillsdale event.

Yet the official story does not make sense when examined. Below is a snippet from the Jefferson County Tribune which hits upon the commonly agreed upon facts of the case:

Former soldier and decorated war hero Randy Hollstrom was shot to death by police during the early morning hours of December 2nd. Officers initially attempted to contain the armed man within the Hillsdale Heights neighborhood on Chester Hill despite desperate pleas from parents who feared for the safety of their children. Hollstrom twice emerged from the depths of the neighborhood only to release several bleary-eyed children into police custody before retreating back among quiet suburban homes and tinsel-strewn lanes of the Hillsdale community.

“Our primary concern was the safety of the children,” said Lt. Kessing of the 13th precinct.

“He would come toward our line surrounded by the kids, always cradling one in the arm that wasn’t holding the shotgun. Those first couple of hours we had no clean shot. Once the houses caught fire our hand was forced. With the additional distraction of the blaze our marksman seized the opportunity to engage. Thank God no children died.”

Thank God no children died. Indeed. No mention of the three missing children that police never recovered that night (four if you believe Randy had a son). A year before the incident this same community of six hundred homes reported two cases of missing children. Were these custody cases gone sour? One parent seizing their offspring and fleeing toward a better tomorrow? Perhaps.

Twice in one year?

Consider too, the infamous Szabó video that surged to over thirty million views in the wake of the Hillsdale event. In it we see a disheveled Randy Hollstrom, a man whose azure stare is devoid of emotion. He sits at a cheap table, perhaps a third or fourth generation hand-me-down. He clutches a stained coffee cup with an unsteady hand. Behind him a pair of sliding glass doors barely reflect the glow of twilight. For fourteen seconds Randy clears his throat, shifts uncomfortably in his wooden chair, and stares at a point to the left of the camera.

“There’s something you all need to know about my son. It sounds insane, but hear me out. I know he’s real, and I think I know what happened. I saw something that really made everything sort of come together,” he says.

The timestamp on the video displays NOV 30, 2014, a mere three days before Randy will be killed by police. The quality of the video is poor, cellphone footage shot in low light. Randy absently rubs his hands together for a few moments before continuing.

“Most of you probably know about rohypnol, or GHB, or whatever they call it. The date rape drug. The one that can wipe your memory. Victims will wake up after being drugged and have no idea what happened. This isn’t crazy conspiracy stuff, it’s medical science. It’s a fact. So we know the brain can be affected in this way by a chemical. But did you ever wonder if maybe there are other ways?”

A sudden impact strikes the glass. The unexpected noise is jarring enough to make first time viewers jump. A small, dark shape vanishes from beyond the glass doors as swiftly as it came. Frame by frame analysis yields few clues. The most popular theory suggests that a black garbage bag, perhaps carrying nails, blew against the house. The explanation is supported by the fact that the home behind Randy (the same one that will burn down a few days later) is a bank foreclosure abandoned during mid-renovation.

Other online commenters claim to see a small hand. One describes it as “the hand of a child striking the door before being yanked back into the night”.  The reaction we see on camera is instantaneous. Randy bolts from the chair and throws the glass doors wide. As he runs off camera he shouts a single exclamation:

“Szabó!”

The video plays another ninety-eight seconds of the deserted table and open doors before ending.

Szabó? A quick internet search reveals this as “a common Hungarian surname “. Amateur internet sleuths quickly formulated several crackpot theories over what this exclamation might mean. Serious aficionados of the case spent days reviewing the rest of Randy’s online videos only to discover the name is never mentioned again. This is a perfect example of why looking directly at the facts blinds people to the depth of this story.  There is an answer to the Szabó question if you search the videos from another angle. It is found in a clip shot four years before the Hillsdale event.

Video Title: Hey Ho, Gypsy Carnival, Yo!

Date: 09/10/2011

The camera pans over a table littered with papers, coffee cups, dirty plates, and beer bottles. Randy is digging through the piles of refuse while the voice of the cameraman questions him.

Unknown Voice: Did you lose the flyer, man? C’mon! I just gave it to you yesterday. How deep could you bury it?

Randy: (Laughing) You’d be surprised.

Unknown Voice: If I miss Vayelle and her coven of belly dancers because of you I’m taking my Xbox controller back.

Randy: Bad news, I don’t know where that is either.

Unknown Voice: Serious? No, wait. You really lost my controller?

Randy: One thing at a time. First let’s find your belly dancers, then we’ll talk about the other stuff.

Unknown Voice: We should talk about personal responsibility.

Randy pulls a lime green sheet from a stack of papers on the table and thrusts it towards the camera. It is one of the few times his magnetic grin is proudly on display. The flier reads:

Unknown Voice: You found it! Now find two bucks for parking and we can roll.

Randy: Of course I found it. I can’t let my boy down.

It is not clear whether Randy is talking about a child or the cameraman when he refers to “my boy”. This is one of a half dozen instances in his video archive where the phrase “my boy” is used in an ambiguous manner. What is clear is that Randy attended the carnival in 2011, and one of the performers was Master Mesmerist Szabó. This is the only other occurrence of that name found to date in the Hollstrom videos.

Further research reveals this discovery is only a minor victory. Master Mentalist Szabò has no other known names. Nor can his identity be found through public records. Authorities in seven different states currently maintain open investigations into Merikano’s Travelling Gypsy Carnival, yet they have found no one to question. The company is not registered with any government agency. The members remain completely anonymous while nineteen outstanding complaints ranging from kidnapping to contributing to the delinquency of a minor currently languish in police archives. Meanwhile, Merikano’s Travelling Gypsy Carnival has vanished as suddenly as it appeared.

It seems impossible that such a large production could operate like ghosts in modern times. Surely a carnival requires permits to operate, liability insurance, payroll records, storage contracts for their equipment in the off season, and so on? There must be something police can trace.

There is not.

They have used a roster of fake names and identities when signing paperwork. Scouring the few secondary sources available we find the following modus-operandi:

• The carnival is held at questionable venues open to operating outside of bureaucratic norms. Places like the Hillsdale Flea Market, firework vendor lots, or old race tracks.
• Operations are cash only, no refunds.
• Each event lasts a single day.
• Advertising is done by word of mouth or printed flyers.
• State agents auditing the carnival for regulatory infractions all claim that the carnival was in compliance, though no written records of a single audit have ever been located.

What about racial profiling? Regardless of one’s opinions on the practice it seems a small matter for police to compile a list of Roma who regularly cross state lines. Catch the culprits by process of elimination. That might work if the carnies were, in fact, Romani. However, as the blogger Roma_4lyfe observed:

Look people, when you go to a Renaissance Faire do you think the place is run by Saxons? Does the bartender of your favorite Irish pub talk like a Leprechaun? Then why would you expect this fly-by-night freak show to be run by Gypsies? As a proud Romani, I take it upon myself to check out these shindigs whenever they swing through town. For the record, Merikano’s “gypsies” hide a suspicious number of Metallica and Guns N’ Roses tattoos under those colorful scarves, if you know what I’m saying.

Really, the whole venue is straight up creepy. You always see kids at these things, but this one had a lot of them. Not happy, ride-drunk, cotton candy munching brats either. I’m talking about packs of brooding, listless, pre-teens aimlessly roving the grounds. Where are these kid’s parents, and weren’t they taught not to stare at people? Seriously folks, level up those childrearing skills, you’re giving us Gypsies a bad name!

It appears everything we know about the carnival is questionable, and we know almost nothing. Could the very existence of Merikano’s Travelling Gypsy Carnival be as questionable as Randy Hollstrom’s son? Now you understand why the story of the Hillsdale event cannot be contained within a two-dimensional newspaper article. The foundations of the deception run deeper than our modern minds are trained to excavate.

Sherlock Holmes is famously quoted as saying “when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”. This style of thinking is difficult for a generation of eight-second attention spans. We are accustomed to searching for answers by the mouse-click. Finding none, our lazy minds reach for the comforting shibboleths of the day:

Deranged veteran suffering from PTSD.

Child abductor.

Armed.

Loner.

Disturbed.

Delusional.

#personal_demons

These are the refrains we hear whenever Randy Hollstrom’s name is mentioned. Refrains that remains suspiciously consistent regardless of the source. Words we embrace to sideline a harrowing event into a comfortable pattern.

Yet somewhere within the recesses of even the dullest minds lurks a suspicion that the official story isn’t quite true. Rather, there is much about the event we must completely ignore in order for all the pieces to fit together. Randy never physically harmed a child. On the contrary, he sent them directly to the waiting authorities before going back for a second group. As one famous blogger declared, “For a kidnapper he’s behaves an awful lot like a liberator”.

It is not the first time Randy acted as an emancipator. His trip to Merikano’s Gypsy Carnival made a brief splash on the Hillsdale police blotter:

BATTERY

On Sep. 10 two men were reported brawling near the Hillsdale Flea Market vendor lot. When officers arrived on scene they discovered an injured man accompanied by a minor female. The man claimed the altercation took place after an unknown assailant attempted to abduct the girl. The girl gave no statement. The man was taken to Highlands Hospital Center where he was treated and released. No arrests.

Those familiar with the Kertzman Report know the how’s and why’s of this story. Bill Kertzman went to considerable lengths to verify the identity of the two combatants, though he had no luck locating the girl. Ultimately his conclusions rest on the testimony of three sources who witnessed the altercation. All three identified Randy Hollstrom as the man who was injured intervening on behalf of the girl. One witness said the abductor was a dark-haired performer from the carnival. The same source said the abductor also seized a boy shortly before fleeing the scene. No other sources can corroborate that claim. Both other witnesses were unable to recall any details of the assault other than that one had occurred.

They could not recall any details – even though they were mere feet away when a violent fistfight erupted.

Once again, we encounter an astonishing rate of failure with human memory. As if somewhere within these connected events lurks a force capable not only of carving away the memories of the past, but also of editing events that are transpiring before people’s very eyes. It sounds fantastical, the stuff of pulp literature and old sci-fi magazines. Yet the pattern is clear.

No one remembers if Randy had a son.

No one can find Merikano’s Gypsy Carnival.

Two out of three witnesses remember nothing of the man who attempted to kidnap a girl less than twenty feet away from them. A man who would brawl with Randy, fracture two of his ribs, and flee the scene.

The girl made no statement.

There are a handful of astrophysicists who study the activity of black holes by conducting seismological observations upon the debris field that ring them. By examining how the matter at the edge of a black hole behaves certain deductions can be made about the unobservable stellar enigmas themselves. In this same vein consider: what is coincidence except the visible manifestation of machinations we cannot directly observe?

Can we, like the astrophysicists, deduce anything useful from the coincidences glimpsed at the perimeter of Randy Hollstrom’s story? Let us consider one final piece of the puzzle before attempting to reassemble it into a recognizable portrait. Let us talk about what the firemen found in the ruins behind Randy’s house.

Let us talk about the steel cages.

Popular sentiment holds that the cages found standing among the charred rubble were meant for imprisoning children. Fanciful versions of this theory speculate that Randy crawled through the bedroom windows of the children, shotgun slung across his back. Before the startled child could process the nightmarish vision unfolding before them he would silence them with threats or force. Then, out the window they would go, the fortunate ones to the cages and the less fortunate never to be seen again.

This version of events overlooks two major pieces of contrary evidence. The first, live news footage shows Randy directing his child captives into the custody of the police on two separate occasions. The second, police reports show that the cages were not located in the burned ruins of his home, but rather in the ruins of the abandoned house behind him. In fact, there is no physical evidence whatsoever connecting Randy with the cages.

But wait, what about the silver bracelet and cats-eye marbles? Children’s objects found within the very cages themselves! Is this not evidence that the cages were used to confine children? Perhaps. It is possible the cages may have been used for such a terrible purpose. Three or four children are still listed as ‘missing’ from the Hillsdale neighborhood. The fact remains, there is no reason to believe Randy was the culprit.

Then who?

Let us weigh the evidence meticulously. Randy Hollstrom did abduct eleven children from their bedrooms on the night of Dec. 2nd, 2014. However, until that fateful night he had no criminal record. As previously mentioned, Merikano’s Gypsy Carnival has a list of outstanding charges involving crimes against minors that spans seven states. More importantly we must ask “who had regular access to cages large enough to house human children”? Look again at the carnival flyer in the Septermber 10th video, specifically at the depiction of the ‘petting zoo’. Do those cages look familiar now?

Furthermore, Randy had a history of helping others regardless of personal risk. The carnival has a legacy of strange and disturbing events occurring everywhere it went, though people are unable to pin down solid facts. This pattern of missing data is the only hard data we have about the group. No one knows anything about Merikano’s Travelling Gypsy Carnival, except that they have belly dancers and animal cages.

And they have a master mesmerist.

Perhaps you begin to see the three-dimensional picture now. We will never have all of the pieces in place, but from a sideways angle the image is unmistakable. A mysterious carnival of dubious renown crosses paths with a veteran suffering from hero complex. An abduction is foiled, perhaps. Or maybe as Randy is beaten severely by an unknown carnival performer a young boy is taken in lieu of the girl. Possibly a son that is barely remembered?

Suppose the members of Merikano’s Gypsy Carnival are not satisfied with this. Perhaps their original target held a special value. Perhaps their pride can allow no transgressions against the group to stand. Something compels them to squat the abandoned home behind Randy shortly afterward and continue their child trafficking. This will be the beginning of their most masterful puppet show. One that will culminate in the death of the man who openly challenged them.

Did the boy escape when we see that tiny hand slap the sliding glass door in the November video? Or did they let him out to torment his father?

Or, perhaps the media is right. The astonishing amnesia surrounding this case and every other case involving the carnival is simply a coincidence. A mere footnote in another tragic tale of a damaged veteran struggling with personal demons.

This is far more comforting than the thought that maybe his demons were not personal at all. Maybe his demons are also our demons, and they’re still out there.

 

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• Author : Sarah Gailey
• Narrator : Dani Daly
• Hosts : Dani Daly and Alex Hofelich
• Audio Producer : Chelsea Davis
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This story was originally published in Issue 31 of Fireside Fiction in February 2016

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Spoiler Inside SelectShow Domestic Violence Haunted by Sarah Gailey

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• Author : J.M. McDermott
• Narrator : Setsu Uzume
• Host : Alasdair Stuart
• Audio Producer : Marty Perrett
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The Jamcoi was first published in Disintegration Visions in 2012 and was reprinted by Apex on their website on November 26, 2014.

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Spoiler Inside SelectShow Cruelty to animals

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