Seeing is Believing (A Carl Kolchak story)

Something a little different here. I was always a fan of the 1970s movies and the 70s TV show that featured slubby investigative reporter Carl Kolchak, ably played by Darren McGavin. Earlier this year an anthology was planned celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first Kolchak story, the TV movie Kolchak: The Night Stalker. I was thrilled and started work on the story I was going to submit. Sadly time ran away from me and I didn’t get to finish it in time. This left me with a story I loved but one I couldn’t really submit anywhere else, so it seemed to best option was to post it for free here. Consider it fan fiction if you will, and obviously if the rights holders to the Kolchak brand have an issue I’m happy to take it down, but hopefully people can just enjoy it for what it is, my homage to a staple of 70s TV horror, with a slight dash of a homage to something else. I think it’s fairly obvious what else but you never know. Anyway. Enjoy!

Man has always been fascinated with the notion of predicting the future, from the oracle at Delphi to Nostradamus himself.

When 45 year old factory worker Hank Tuttle left the bar on Main Street the only future he was envisioning was a warm bed. If he could have seen what was coming, he’d have stayed in the bar until morning.

He managed to weave barely ten yards down the sidewalk, much to the amusement of the handful of people still loitering on the street that night.

None of them were laughing when a darkly shrouded figure swooped down on Hank and carried him away into a nearby alley.

Though inebriated, several of those witnesses gave chase. A patrol car was parked nearby, ostensibly to watch for drunken trouble and the deputy inside soon added his eyes to the search. Yet no trace of Hank, or his assailant, could be found. Not until morning at least.

Bensonville is the ninth biggest city in Nebraska, and the Clarion was the fifteenth biggest selling newspaper in the state. Had I worked for more prestigious newspapers? Of course, but I’d also written for plenty of rags that made the Clarion look like the New York Times, and the older I got the less choosy I got to be. It was the early autumn of 1991, the last whisps of summer were slowly dying and my 70th birthday lurked too close ahead, poised like a cobra to strike once I got within range.

Hank’s body had been found in the parking lot of a strip mall less than six blocks from where he’d been last seen, a fact (along with others) I gleaned from a contact in the police. As such I was the first reporter on the scene

Back in the day the cops I crossed swords with were all middle-aged, chain-smoking white men who seemed to get their suits from the same store and their hair cut by the same short sighted barber. By contrast captain Maria Rosenthal was 35, her red hair was nearly coiffured, and she looked like she could swap her uniform for a swish evening gown at the drop of a hat.

 Of course, as the motto goes, the more things change the more they stay the same.

“Kolchak! How the hell did you get here so fast?” She yelled, hands on her hips, the fingers of her right hand far too close to the butt of her gun for my liking.

“Me? I just happened to be passing and saw all the police cars”

Nearby someone was hoisting a gurney into the back of the coroner’s van. Yellow police tape was everywhere. Eager young officers were combing the ground for clues.

Captain Rosenthal made to speak but before she could I had my tape recorder in her face.

“Is it true his eyes had been removed? Just like the other two victims?”

“No comment” she replied. She tried to turn away, but I still move fast for an old guy, I kept the recorder in front of her

“And what about the other incidents I told you about? In New Mexico and Colorado, as if the killer were moving north?”

She gave me a withering look. “I can’t discuss ongoing communication with other law enforcement agencies.”

“Aha! But you are communicating with them?”

“No comment.” She looked over my shoulder. “Grant, you and Foley please escort Mr Kolchak back to his hotel.”

Beefy arms gripped me.

“You can’t do this,” I said as they began to drag me away. “I have rights!”

Rosenthal was grinning as she started to turn away, but her smile faded and those beefy arms released me. The cops had bigger fish to fry because at that moment, a truck from the local TV affiliate arrived. Seconds later a bunch of other reporters showed up. I guess I wasn’t the only one with contacts in the Bensonville PD.

Rosenthal didn’t have the numbers to evict all of us, so she changed tack and hosted an impromptu press conference right there in the car park.

She didn’t give much away. I tried to ask my questions again, but she ignored me. The other reporters’ questions were so inane Rosenthal looked offended. Say what you like about me, cops are never bored when I’m asking the questions. Annoyed, exasperated, murderous, but never bored.

I tried to get a handle on whether any of my fellow members of the fourth estate had any leads, but nobody was talking to me, in fact no one was even looking at me, and that included the cops. Carl Kolchak was, it seemed, persona non Grata. If such things bothered me, I’d have retired decades ago.

As I meandered back to my car I suddenly realised that not everyone was giving me the cold shoulder. One man was staring at me, a dumb smile on his face.

Glancing back every few seconds I could see that he’d broken away from the pack and was following me.

If it hadn’t been for the smile I’d have imagined he was a reporter who wanted to vent his spleen about how I was ruining things for everyone by upsetting the delicate equilibrium that existed in Bensonville between the police and the local media. Said equilibrium consisting of the police giving a statement and the reporters asking how high they wanted the typeface.

Even without the smile he wouldn’t have looked like a newsman, or a plainclothes cop.

In fact, he looked even less like a Nebraskan than me. He was mid-thirties, with shoulder length blonde hair so light in tint that I suspected it’d go white sooner rather than later. He wore a suit, but no tie, and had the look of a man who’d rather be wearing shorts and a t-shirt. I could see him in a surfboard, he had that California surfer dude vibe to him.

Figuring if he was some serial killer it was best to talk while I was still close to the cops I waited for him to catch me up.

“Oh wow,” he said, his tone easy going, there was definitely a Beach Boys thing going on.

There was recognition in his eyes, but likely confusion in mine. “Do I know you, sir?” I asked.

He shook his head and laughed. “No but I know you. Carl Kolchak. The Carl Kolchak. I’m sorry, I’m just a huge fan.”

And then he proceeded to invite me to a nearby diner where he offered to buy me coffee.

I accepted. When most people I meet want to run me out of town, the lure of someone who wanted to talk was quite enticing.

Once we were sat down he introduced himself. I didn’t recognise the name at the time. In hindsight I think most everyone might recognise it now. He further informed me that he was a television producer.

I still wasn’t exactly sure why he wanted to meet me, but he helpfully explained, although he took the long way around. He was taking the low road and if I’d taken the high I’d have been in Scotland afore him. One day I really must visit Scotland, Loch Ness in particular has piqued my interest over the years.

I didn’t take the high road. I drank my coffee and listened instead.

“I was sixteen, my folks moved us to Vegas, just for a few months while my dad did a job, but I was there, right in the middle of those killings, the vampire, right?”

I said nothing.

“The vampire. I read your stuff, what they let you print, even got a hold of your book a few years later”

That got my attention, I’d heard masses of them had been pulped. I hadn’t seen a copy in years. I wondered if he had it with him? Had he come all this way just for an autograph?

It turned out to be a no on both counts, he wanted something else from me but first he had more to tell.

“I had a buddy in Seattle, so I got clippings of your stories there, the lunatic who was strangling people to gain immortality.  By the time you headed to Chicago I was ahead of the curve, had contacts in local newspapers, told them to save me a copy of anything from INS coming off the teletype with your by-line. Man, you had some crazy stories there “

I wanted to tell him I was flattered but ask him to come to the point. I had places to be, and unlike a young woman I had encountered in Albuquerque I wasn’t getting any younger.

I’d barely opened my mouth before he continued.

“And beyond Chicago. Memphis, New York, Jacksonville, Dallas.” He shook his head. “I have scrapbooks filled with your stories”

“Well that’s very flattering, but why have you tracked me down now? If you’ve been a fan for so long?”

‘Because now I have the opportunity to immortalise you forever.”

“You want to paint my portrait?”

He laughed. “Television”

“Say what now?”

“Television. I’ve pitched a show and the network has bought it, well the pilot at least.”

“About me?” I was shocked, flattered but mainly shocked, after spending so many years being laughed at, ignored, threatened, so many years being almost killed by vampires, aliens, werewolves, lizardmen… finally someone understood.

A lifelong cynic I should have known better, but we’re all vulnerable to flattery.

“Kind of. Negotiations are still ongoing. I want the lead to be a reporter, but the networks, they figure he should be a cop, or someone in law enforcement. And they want to partner him up with a woman. I mean I’m fighting against it but they’re paying so I might have to make some concessions.”

“A cop? So this wouldn’t be a documentary series then?”

“Oh no, but obviously it’d be heavily based upon you, on your stories. There’d be residuals in it for you, maybe even an executive producer credit if you play your cards right.”

I actually grinned at that. It was an odd feeling to be wanted. I had something in my bag, something I’d been debating sharing with Rosenthal, but while she’d likely take one look and throw me in a padded cell, perhaps my new young friend would find it interesting.

I rummaged in my satchel. “Just a second, I need to show you this.”

I pulled several photostats out, piling them up on the table. They threatened to fly away so I put my coffee cup on top of them.

“Just a second.”

“Mr Kolchak…”

“Carl! Call me, Carl.”

“Carl. I need to…”

“Here you go!” And with that I revealed the book. It was old, and if I’d let him look at the flyleaf, he might have seen the label for the State Library. He might also have seen that it was overdue. But I didn’t show him this. I opened at the requisite page, turned it around and tapped at the picture. “This is what’s killing people here. This.”

He peered at the picture. For a moment it looked like he was trying to read the text, but unless he could understand ancient Greek he wasn’t going to get very far. Luckily I knew someone who could, a sprightly young professor of antiquity at the university of Nebraska.

I like to think the photo told him enough. It was a crude picture of a man, naked as the day he’d been born. He was holding out his hands. There were eyeballs embedded in his palms, attached to the ends of his fingers. They ran up each arm, they were sunk into his chest, his stomach, and he had two more eyes above those he’d been born with, and several more below mixed to his cheeks. His mouth was wide open as if in a scream, his tongue extended.

And of course there was an eyeball there as well.

“What the hell?”

I smiled. “To Prágma Vlépei,” I said smugly. Pride really does come before a fall.

His face scrunched up. “Huh?”

“The Thing Sees,” I replied. “It’s Greek, this is a monster from Greek mythology, only one forgotten by all but a handful of scholars. Forget Medusa, this guy is far scarier. He exists to see. So the story goes he was a shepherd who always wanted to keep an eye on his flock, but it was so large and unruly that he could never see them all at once, and he lost more than one sheep to wolves and other predators. And so he made a deal with the Gods, to be able to see what other men couldn’t.” I laughed. “He quite literally has eyes in the back of his head. Eyes everywhere.”

“And now it’s in Nebraska?”

I closed up the book, returned it to my satchel where it banged against a khaki metal canister. “And now it’s in Nebraska. Not the original one, this is something more recent, I believe it is, or at least was, a man named Ludwig Baumann, a German national who emigrated to New Mexico five years ago, after an extended period in Greece where he worked as an archaeologist, though by all accounts grave robber might be a more apt term. Apparently, he had an almost supernatural ability to locate items thought lost for centuries.” I grinned. “Wonder how he did it.”

My new friend shook his head. “But why’s he killing people now?”

“It’s the curse, the curse that haunted the original creature. The Gods originally only gave him a few extra eyes, but it wasn’t enough. He got greedy. When you can see around corners you want to see over mountains, and he found he could take the eyes of others, absorb them into his body, until he was covered in them, until he could see everything. That’s why our killer is so hard to catch. He can’t see the future, but he can see around corners, through buildings. He can see all his pursuers and all his viable exits all at once.”

He laughed. “I always wondered.”

“Wondered what?”

“Where you got your ideas from, I’m a writer myself but this is incredible. You must have spent so much of your life in libraries researching this stuff.”

“Well I have, months, maybe even years but…” My enthusiasm faded. “This is real, it’s all real, the creatures. The vampire in Vegas, the werewolf on the cruise ship, the succubus in New Orleans.” I was exasperated. “You think they’re all fiction?”

“Well…”

“I’m telling you now, they’re all true. Don’t you believe me?”

He stared at me, a sad look in his eyes. Don’t meet your heroes, that’s what they say isn’t it. Well, he’d met his hero and found he had feet of clay, or at least he thought he did.

“I want to believe,” he said, sounding like a small boy.

I stood. “I don’t have time to wait. Let me know when you make your mind up.”

And so I left him there and returned to my car. The shoal of reporters was still circling Rosenthal like she was bait thrown over from a fishing trawler. I left them to it because I had somewhere else to be.

However much he was turning into a pure monster, the chances were that Ludwig Baumann still retained some sense of self, he could have hidden in the woods, but I figured that wouldn’t suit him at all, the man had been a scholar, used to the finer things in life by all accounts.

He hadn’t used his own name to check into a motel or rent a house, and no one recalled taking money from anyone with a German accent, and I’m pretty sure they’d have recalled a customer with a dozen eyeballs in his face.

My search of the property market did throw up something though. On the outskirts of town was a row of abandoned buildings, and one of them had, until very recently, been a bookstore. The proprietor had died, and the place was still tied up in all manner of legal claims. By all accounts it was still fully stocked.

Where else might a man with a love of learning and a hundred eyeballs be happier?

It was the middle of the day when I got there, parking my battered rental car a short distance away so I could sneak up on the place. It turns out I parked too far away because I was out of breath by the time I got there. Sometimes I forget I’m not in my prime anymore.

My satchel was heavy. I could have left the book behind but the other items in there I might need. I had my camera in hand as I approached the bookstore.

Robbie’s Reads was a lonely place. Unlike the storefronts either side it looked like it was still open for business. There were books in the window. If it had still been open there would likely have been no customers, the street was deserted, in fact I hadn’t seen another living soul since I turned off the highway. This part of town had been fading for many years, the demise of Robbie’s Reads had been its dying breath.

I didn’t approach the front door. Instead I went around back, sneaking through the yard of the store next to it. Judging by the rotting tables and chairs I guessed that shop had sold furniture.

There was a gap in the fence just big enough for me to squeeze through, though I had to remove my satchel. I went first and then reached back quickly for my bag.

I expected to be ambushed at any moment, but the yard was as quiet as the grave. It was also tidy, with just a few boxes piled up beside the back door.

I approached warily. I didn’t expect the door to be open, but the handle turned smoothly. That should have been my cue to leave but I’d never been very smart, and age had made me no wiser.

The door did not creak. Perhaps it had been recently installed, or perhaps its current tenant had oiled the hinges.

Inside it was gloomy. Dust hung in the air, made visible by the shafts of sunlight that peeked in through the open doorway.

There was a door wedge on the floor. I took out my torch before using the wedge to secure the door in the open position. Then I stepped inside.

I was in a backroom; part kitchen, part storeroom. To my left were boxes labelled as having been sent by various publishing houses. To my right was a sink, a small stove, and a refrigerator. The sink looked clean. The smell of food lingered in the air.

A side door promised to lead upstairs but however reckless I was feeling, I had my limits. This left one door, that obviously led into the store.

It too opened smoothly. The smell hit me immediately, the dry scent of old books. The shop itself was well lit, it hadn’t been deserted long enough for the windows to become grimy, so a lot of sunlight streamed in through the windows.   

I saw a desk and a cash register, the drawer fully open to show no money was inside.

I saw row upon row of bookshelves and there, hidden from view if you peered through the window, was a camping cot. A lantern beside it, along with a pile of books. A single book was open, face down on the bed.

I’d found his nest!

I reached into my satchel, which was the point a shadow fell over me.

I looked up, saw something dark and monstrous falling from above, a living shadow, a giant winged bat.

I realised moments before he ploughed into me that it was merely a man draped in a cloak.

Or what had once been a man.

He clattered into me and I hit the floor hard. It’s an odd thing to say in hindsight, but in that moment my greatest fear wasn’t death, it was that I’d break a hip.

That soon faded when I looked up into a face of utter chaos.

You could, if you focused, still make out Ludwig Baumann’s mouth, and his nose, but it was hard to focus on anything but the eyes. A dozen or more of them, all shapes and sizes, all colours, arranged with no logic, some horizontal, some vertical, many at an angle, and every single one of them blinking down at me.

“Why are you here? Why couldn’t you leave me alone?” His voice was raw, as if he was talking whilst simultaneously trying to chew, and I realised there must be eyes in his mouth as well.

“I’m almost done. Soon I’ll be able to see everything!”

Suddenly I felt fingers groping my face, reaching for my eyes, preparing to pluck them out.

I was about to scream when I saw something moved in the periphery of my vision. A book.

Ludwig obviously saw it coming, he ducked out of the way, rolled off me.

Another book. Again Ludwig was too fast for my saviour.

“That’s right you monster, over here! Leave Carl alone!”

It was him, my fan.

He was by the front door, which it seemed he’d forced open, with an armful of books, looking like a small boy throwing stones at a bear. Ineffectual, but he’d distracted Ludwig and that was enough.

“Get out of here!” I yelled.

“But, Carl?” he said and gestured to the beast that was now lumbering towards him.

“I’ve got this,” I said and reached into my satchel.

Ludwig was caught in two minds, conscious of the man by the door, but also seeing me though many of his myriad eyes, seeing me take the khaki coloured canister from my bag.

As my new friend turned and ran, this made up Ludwig’s mind. The creature of a thousand eyes turned towards me, fingers raised and ready to tear my eyes from their sockets. My whole body ached, I didn’t think I could even get up.

But I didn’t need to. Pulling the pin on the grenade was hardly a chore, neither was rolling it across the floor towards Ludwig.

Dozens of eyes followed the rolling metal canister.

As for my eyes I closed them tight and smothered my face into the crook of my arm as the grenade began to dispense its load.

Teargas.

The screams that followed will haunt me for the remainder of my days. Even protected my own eyes stung. For Ludwig it was so much worse. There was no way to cover all those dozens and dozens of eyes he had, no way to minimise the pain the teargas was causing, and not a one of those eyes was clear enough to see a way out of the trap.

I can only imagine what happened next as Ludwig, tears streaming from a hundred eyes, staggered around the bookshop in pain and anguish. A man who dreamed of seeing everything suddenly utterly blind. I would have almost felt a smidgen of pity, if he hadn’t slaughtered so many in his inhuman quest.

Eventually he blundered into a bookshelf with such force that it teetered, rocked back against the wall and then forward again even as he staggered away from it.

The avalanche of books hit him first. Unpleasant but any damage they could cause would be minimal.

The bookshelf that followed was a different story. It was heavy. It crushed Ludwig to death, or so I heard.

Time passed. The teargas cleared and the next thing I knew my new friend had returned to drag me back into the light. We waited for the police to arrive. My saviour gently doused my eyes with water, and all he kept saying was. “It’s real. It’s all real!”

The police arrived, along with paramedics who insisted on taking me to hospital. By the time I was released it was all over. Ludwig had died from his injuries. The police were happy to accept that he was the killer, but no mention of his supernatural physicality was ever mentioned. There was an autopsy. I even got a hold of a copy. It was all very bland and ordinary. As far as the coroner was concerned Ludwig Bauman had only two eyes.

I tried to publish my story, which went about as well as you can imagine. I left the Clarion soon after, or rather was encouraged to leave, and shortly after that I left Nebraska.

I considered retiring but I knew that would be a death sentence. A friend of a friend got me a job at a small paper in North Carolina.

As for my fan. I never saw him again. I think his brush with the uncanny was enough to put him off the reality of life, to push him back towards fiction.

His show got made. It became very famous. I even watched it for a while. The hero was young and handsome, and he wasn’t a reporter. And he had a female partner, he didn’t work alone. Together they encountered monsters every week of the kind I’ve encountered, though slightly less frequently, and also became embroiled in an ongoing conspiracy which thankfully I never have.

He was nothing like me except in one pertinent respect.

Nobody ever believed him either. 

An Ocean Remembers

We shouldn’t have come here. If the journey from Earth hadn’t been so tortuous, if we hadn’t felt so weary, and if our ship hadn’t been on the verge of falling apart, I think we’d have turned around, because this world wasn’t what we envisaged.

It was harsh. Cold. We didn’t understand. We thought it was a world to be tamed, a world we could shape in our own image. The reverse was true.

The days are short, but the years are agonizingly long. This world takes decades to orbit its sun. By the time the climate began to warm we had almost forgotten what heat felt like. We welcomed it. We didn’t understand.

The ice melted.

Then we melted.

We assumed it was a disease, some horrible affliction that turned flesh into water. We threw every meagre resource we had left at it. Perhaps if the scientists hadn’t fallen victim first, or if ship’s computers still functioned, we might have understood, though I doubt we could have stopped it.

Drugs. Quarantine. Prayer. Nothing worked. One by one we succumbed. One by one we died. Or thought we did.

The dream followed. A languid, fluid dream. Our thoughts merged, memories slithered and twisted around one another like a nest of snakes. We were no longer individuals, we were a gestalt. It was beautiful, no secrets, and yet no guilt, because we no longer had any sense of self. We floated in perfect chaos all summer long.

Then winter returned, and the ocean froze. Suddenly we found ourselves corporeal once more, only now it was different. Not only because we’d got used to our disembodied dream state, no, it was different because we didn’t coagulate as the individuals we’d once been. Now we were curious, hybrid entities. Mongrels made of memories. A Frankenstein’s monster of thought stitched together from disparate recollections and desires.

We were confused and frightened. We were in pain. Somehow, we evolved the ability to move, becoming stiff, creaking giants of ice. We tried to find harmony, but we didn’t understand ourselves anymore, and we certainly didn’t understand each other. There was fear. Distrust. Liquified togetherness gave way to solidified separation.

We disagreed. We argued. Eventually we fought. Winter was long and violent and terrible. Death was beyond us, but suffering wasn’t.

Summer eventually ended the war. Those rigid creatures of ice collapsed once more into wonderful anarchy. We ebbed and flowed and dreamed, and we were happy. Only now, somewhere in that collective sentience, there was a hint of fear, the knowledge that winter would return.

Which of course it did.

That was so long ago. We cannot comprehend how many winters, how many summers. A thousand? A million? It makes no difference. Time only matters when we’re ice, when we are liquid, we’re beyond such pettiness.

We are solid now. I am solid now.

I am ancient, and yet at the same time brand new, because this particular collection of thoughts and memories has never coalesced before. I am old. I am young. I hurt. I am newly born and already I long for summer, but summer is so very far away.

 

Tempo

Just a quick note that my time and space bending sci-fi thriller Tempo is free to download for the next 5 days. Remember you don’t need an expensive Kindle to read it, there’s a free Kindle app you can use on a phone, tablet or computer 🙂

If you do download and read a copy all I ask is that you consider adding a short review, they really do help!

UK link

US link

The Treat

As it’s Halloween, when spooks and ghouls go out to play, I thought it only fair to gift you a tiny tale of terror…enjoy, and when you open the door to Trick or Treaters tonight, well maybe you’ll wonder…

I like Halloween, it’s the one night of the year I feel safe going out.

If I walk up to someone’s front door on Halloween night they don’t cringe or scream when they open the door, don’t shut it in my face and turn out all the lights. No, on Halloween they smile at me, they talk to me, complimenting me on my costume, asking how I create such a vivid effect. I talk about using my mum’s makeup, and charcoal, lots of charcoal. Does this convince them? I don’t know, there’s a flicker in their eyes sometimes, as if they understand but can’t consciously bring themselves to accept that understanding, so they joke and give me candy.

I can’t taste the candy of course, but the wrappers are pretty.

Usually the other children play with me. It seems a different group each year, though it’s hard to tell when they’re all dressed up as witches and vampires. They’re happy for me to tag along with their little gang, though I have to be careful, if they ask who I am then I stick to a first name only, never my own, and if they ask where I go to school I tell them I’m at boarding school far away.

I can’t very well tell them my school is St Michael’s, because St Michael’s burned down in 1976, the only casualty a nine year old girl who’d been playing with matches.

I stay with the other kids until they start to drift away, until they all head home. I used to stick it out to the last, until there’d be me and one other child left, but I don’t do that now. Somehow, once a kid is alone with me they recognize me for who I really am, as if there’s some group hypnosis at work that keeps us all safe and happy, but only so long as we’re together. It isn’t much fun seeing one of your new friends running away from you screaming, and it isn’t fair on them; Halloween isn’t a time for real scares, it’s a time for pretend terrors.

On Halloween night I skip and play and laugh. On Halloween night I have friends, I have fun, and I almost forget…

But then midnight comes and I trudge away from the bright lights and people. Midnight comes and I go back to the graveyard.

Until next year…

 

First Through the Door

Danny was leader of the firearms unit, so he was always first through the door.

So it was Danny who saw Melissa struggling with Lionel, Danny who saw the knife in Lionel’s hand, and Danny who pulled the trigger before Lionel could stab his defenceless wife.

Naturally there was an inquiry, but Danny was a highly decorated officer, it was deemed a righteous kill.

Melissa inherited her husband’s fortune and moved to Dubai.

Six months later Danny resigned. He couldn’t do the job anymore. He had nightmares. The force offered him a desk job, he said he needed a clean break.

He travelled the world. Eventually he ended up in Dubai where he married Melissa.

Suspicions were raised, investigations undertaken, but the detectives could find no evidence of collusion. No evidence Danny and Melissa had met before that fateful day.

Still, questions remained.

After all, Danny was always first through the door.

 

The Hunter

Over time humanity grew and spread, like a field of bishop’s weed, quickly dispersing far beyond their point of origin. They covered the globe and then reached further, at first just tentatively into the solar system, but then they grew smarter, they grew bolder.

Some stayed behind, most went to the stars. It made his life harder, but however far they went he grew adept at locating them. He had long since learned to create copies of himself, corporeal shadows that ensured he could track millions of them at once across a thousand worlds.

His list grew year by year, but so did his guile. Whether you lived in a bunker on Mars, or sailed the crystalline seas of a world three hundred light years from Earth, he would find you.

At night you would secure your doors and sleep soundly, and whilst you dreamed he would enter your home, bypassing any alarm, any lock. He would stand by your bed and watch as your chest rose and fell, rose and fell.

And when you woke the proof of his visitation would be there at the end of your bed. A neat parcel, tied with a bow. Just what you’d wished for.

And one nebulous facet of Santa Claus would cross your name off his list.

Until next year…

 

Bunker Mentality

Earlier in the year I entered a sci-fi short story competition hosted by the National Space Centre in collaboration with Literary Leicester Festival, and I found out a few weeks ago that I’d been chosen as the runner up in the 16+ category!

I’ll be presented with my prize, and read a short excerpt from my story, on the 18th November (and hopefully will be able to post some pics) but until then if you’d like to read my story it’s free to read on the National Space Centre website so just follow the link HERE and enjoy!

Creation Myth

Just a very quick post to point out that I’ve had a story published on the Daily Science Fiction website. It’s free to read and very short so why not take a look!  http://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/robots-and-computers/paul-starkey/creation-myth_SF

The Thinking Man’s Bastille

The Thinking Man’s Bastille

By Paul Starkey

Today he would escape from prison.

Jack had to, because incarceration was slowly killing him. Not in a physical sense, but it was slowly sapping his will to live. Already, just six months into his sentence, he saw signs of the ennui that would eventually claim his life if he didn’t break out. He slept more than ever before, yet was always tired, lethargy bordering on paralysis, and his appetite was fading like the libido of an old man. He didn’t wash very often, and sometimes went days without even brushing his teeth.

He spent most of his time on his bed reading books downloaded onto his wafer, or watching the wall mounted scroll, though he minimised the screen resolution; rather than it filling the entire wall it was shrunk to the size of a television set from the cathode-ray era. Sometimes it still seemed too big. When he did leave the bed to wander the confines of his prison, he did so with the shambling gait of a zombie.

“Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”

It was one of many homilies his father had regularly uttered. Like “Ten men play harder than eleven” or “Always back the outsider in a three horse race”. Archaic wisdom from another age—after all there were no horses anymore outside of a zoo—but sometimes there was a kernel of some greater truth ensconced within those words, but even if there hadn’t been he would still have missed them, still have missed his dad.

Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time might have been the wisest of them all though, and maybe the one Jack should have paid closest attention to whilst growing up, but children rarely pay enough attention to their parents, and boys especially to their fathers, and he hadn’t given a moment’s thought to the consequences when opportunity arose.

They ended up being called simply the October Riots, the third instance of spontaneous civil disobedience that year. People became almost blasé about them.

The cause was never fully explained. Maybe it was down to the undertrained constable who hit some old biddy with a plastic bullet as he tried to disperse a group of stone throwers. Certainly the rioters claimed that was the spark, but everyone had an angle; the Tories blamed the increase in numbers claiming welfare, mainly Scottish migrants, whilst Democratic Labour blamed the Tories for cutting the value of the welfare stipend. Socialist Labour, meanwhile, blamed Democratic Labour because they always did, and as usual the whole thing descended into a DL/SL slanging match which allowed the Conservatives to push another welfare cap through parliament.

None of this mattered to Jack, he’d only ventured out because of curiosity. He wanted to see what was occurring, and he’d taken any excuse to venture outside back then, he hated feeling hemmed in, loved fresh air and wide open spaces, even rain rarely deterred him.

He wasn’t completely stupid however, like a sensible tourist at Pamplona he was content to watch the action from the side-lines; he had no intention of actually running with the bulls.

He hadn’t been alone in this, around the periphery of the violence a curious, carnival atmosphere sprang up. People brought their drinks out from the pubs, street vendors relocated from other areas and started doing a roaring trade. Even when a police sweeper exploded it didn’t dent the mood, instead people treated the flames cast into the air from the detonation like an impromptu firework display.

Gradually the lines between rioters and riot-watchers blurred and, like a sailor hearing a siren song, Jack found himself tantalised into drawing closer to the rocks. One minute he was downing a bottle of beer and dancing with a cute redhead, the next he was clambering in through a smashed storefront along with several others, passing more who were already clambering out the other way, clutching stolen booty tight to their chests.

The shop had been one of the few still operating on the high-street, and the irony was that if he’d been caught up with the crowds who broke into the empty shops either side his sentence would have been lighter, because he wouldn’t have actually stolen anything. As it was when the police nabbed him he had a rolled up scroll under each arm. Irony number two was the fact that they were last year’s model, barely worth anything second hand, inferior even to his cheap Brazilian import.

The stupidity of his crime didn’t serve as any kind of mitigation, and neither did his previously spotless record. Messages needed to be sent, examples made. All the fact of this being his first offence brought him was the option of something called “nuanced incarceration”. An option he jumped at because the idea of going to an actual prison scared the hell out of him.

Idiot.

It was odd to put shoes on; he mostly went around barefoot, and though they were old and well-worn they pinched tight as new shoes now. He’d taken a shower for the first time in days, already invigorated by the thought of freedom the hot water roused him further. He ate his heartiest breakfast in weeks.

As he walked towards the door his mind wandered. Where would he go, how long could he stay free, what would the authorities do when they caught him? He already knew they would, he had no money, no identification, and wasn’t remotely suited to the life of a fugitive. To stay free would entail either becoming an actual criminal, and taking what he needed from others through guile or force, or else dropping out of society altogether. Neither option appealed. He wasn’t tough enough for a life of crime, and he liked comfort too much for the life of a downout, and even if he could bear it, downouts were becoming scarcer all the time, so he’d stand out like a sore thumb unless he ventured south to the Cornish Wastes.

And why on earth would anyone choose to do that?

No, he would be caught quickly, but his hope was that by virtue of escaping his incarceration the authorities would send him to a real prison. Odd that suddenly a life of locks and lags didn’t seem so bad.

He’d turned these thoughts over and over a thousand times before, and nothing new came of today’s cogitations, but that hadn’t been the point, he’d just wanted to distract himself from the feelings of dread that crawled over him like ants as he neared the door.

It didn’t work. Each step was a struggle. The urge to turn back, to just curl into a ball on the floor, was strong. Palpitations started. His heart began to pound and his chest seemed to tighten around it. But he fought on until he reached the door to his prison.

Except it wasn’t really the door to his prison. It was the door to his flat. The door to his prison was buried deep inside his mind.

He got as far as putting his hand on the latch, but he couldn’t bring himself to disengage the bolt. Dark terrors were pulling hard against him now: the fear was rising as panic threatened to overwhelm him.

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t even open the door, let alone step… outside. He knew it was irrational, but he was convinced that if he did all would be lost. The world would swallow him, he’d be engulfed within its vast emptiness like a single drop of rain within an ocean. He needed to stay safe, needed comforting walls around him.

He stepped back. The panic eased, and his heart began to calm. By the time he reached his bedroom he felt himself again, though this was no benefit. In the absence of fear there came only shame.

Nuanced Incarceration. In a time of austerity, of quadruple dip recessions, it was the latest thing. Cheaper than prison, more humane too, if you believed the hype. Jack didn’t, not anymore. What was the American term; cruel and unusual.

The particular punishment strand of Nuanced Incarceration Jack had volunteered for was called ICA; Induced Custodial Agoraphobia. Induced initially in Jack’s case by several hypnotic sessions and reinforced by regular, mandatory injections of a benzodiazepine derivative.

They said it was reversible, but somehow Jack suspected his three year tariff as a prisoner in his own home might turn out to be a life sentence.

He wanted desperately to cry, but sobbing required energy, and just getting to the front door had left him frail and weak, so he crawled under the duvet and let himself drift off to sleep, even though it wasn’t yet three in the afternoon.

In the instant before consciousness faded he took comfort in a tiny spark of defiance buried deep inside him that, despite lacking the oxygen of hope, somehow continued to burn.

Tomorrow he would escape from prison.

 

The True Meaning of Zombie Christmas

Happy Christmas everybody! As a free treat today I offer the below Christmas themed horror story. Watch out for zombie Santas!

***

The guide was a waste of money. There are still multiple guard patrols, but their schedules are so predictable that a toddler could find a gap, let alone an experienced fifteen year old urban explorer.

I guess they don’t expect anyone to want to get in. As for those within; well, the dead might walk but they sure as hell can’t climb, which is probably why the authorities don’t bother too much about the roof.

We’re crouched beside a smashed skylight, hands shrouding our torches so the light only shines down. Below is the upper level of Stonebridge Shopping Centre. My guide at least has provided a rope ladder, it hangs below looking uncomfortably like a shoelace you might dangle to tease a cat.

He shakes his head, chapped lips pursed. “The jewellers have all been looted; all the cash is long gone too.”

“I’m not after money or jewels.”

His eyes narrow, I can almost hear the cogs whirring as he considers various scenarios, none of them palatable. I could tell him I’m doing this for a thrill, but somehow I don’t think he’ll buy that. “It was the Saturday before Christmas five years ago,” I tell him, even though he knows the story. “Rumour had it Toy Horde had somehow got a delivery of Action Ahmed figures and I wanted one so bad. Dad could have got me one weeks earlier if he’d got his arse in gear, but he always left things to the last minute, so he was here that Saturday.”

My guide nods. “Ah…”

“He texted mum at nine fifty. Ten minutes later the Lazarus Army’s bomb went off.” I didn’t say any more, he, like me, would have watched it all unfold on telly. MI5 got a tip off, not quick enough to stop the toxic gas, but quick enough to seal the shopping centre before any of the infected could escape.

The bulldozers and cement trucks had turned up soon after—far too quickly for some conspiracy theorists—and despite protestations the doors were permanently sealed. There’s been talk over the years of sending in clean-up teams, or of just razing the place to the ground, but like a sunken battleship it’s morphed into a bizarre kind of memorial.

“I’m going in.”

My guide doesn’t ask what my plan is. Likely he’s taken a look at the zip gun strapped to my hip and come to the most logical conclusion.

The air is calm, but the ladder still flaps around like it’s caught in a breeze. The effect on my stomach isn’t pleasant. I have a torch gripped in my left hand, another fixed to my head. I caught a whiff of inside from the roof, so I’m glad I have a face mask to keep the stench away.

My feet touch solid ground before I can get seasick. I don’t care if my guide waits; don’t even care if he takes the ladder. I have a thin coil of rope, and I’ve clambered out of tougher places than this.

I’m wearing leather and denim. It’s not quite shark proof chainmail, but with luck it should be enough to prevent me getting bitten.

I’ve studied the plans of this place until I could walk around it blindfolded, so the meagre light cast by my torches is more than enough for me to find my way. I head south, towards the main bank of escalators. So far it’s quiet, so far I can’t see any of the dead. The authorities claim they’ll have decomposed by now. I don’t believe them. Prevailing Internet wisdom is that the biological agent will have prevented them from rotting too much. The dead probably hibernate if there’s no one around to munch on, but like a hedgehog sensing spring they’ll soon liven up.

In the gloom up ahead I hear bells tinkling, it’s such a cheery sound within this glum mausoleum that for a moment I think I’m imagining it. A moment after that and I’m convinced it’s soldiers come to collect me.

A two headed Santa staggers out of the darkness up ahead and I almost laugh at the absurdity of it all.

It isn’t a double headed monster, rather two men each dressed as Santa; their ankles are tied together, and each has an arm draped loosely around the other’s shoulders. Their free hands dangle limply. I wonder if, originally, they carried buckets to collect charitable shrapnel, a few pence to assuage the guilt of people spending enough to feed a family of Africans for a week on a crappy remote control helicopter for Uncle Gary.

The tinkling comes from bells stitched to their grubby red hats. Dried puss sticks greying cotton wool to their faces.

They see my lights and start to shamble quicker, sensing their first meal in years. I don’t draw my gun, I’ve no need to make additional noise if I can help it, and besides, bound together like that double zombie Santa has a turning circle wider than the average cruise ship, so I’m past them before they’ve even started to manoeuvre after me.

Unfortunately in the process I kick a discarded shopping bag across the floor, making enough noise to…well, you know.

Four of them shamble out of a branch of Make’Oeuvre. The woman in the lead wears a bib, and one side of her waxy blue complexion is a different shade to the other. She totters on heels so high that I imagine she shambled like a zombie even before she was dead.

I draw my zip gun. It’s homemade but I trust the maker with my life. I shoot makeover zombie in the knee. Headshots are a gamble, but a kneecap will always slow a zombie to a crawl.

She drops. A fat man in a tacky Christmas jumper trips over her and lands flat on his face.

That leaves two; myriad designer bags still dangle from their wrists slowing them down. Two kneecaps later and I’m on the move again, running this time, even as more and more of the shopping dead appear out of the gloom. Nobody knows exactly how many people were infected in here; six hundred is a conservative assessment. I need a distraction.

The escalators are clear so it’s safe to turn towards the oncoming tide, and damn it’s almost a tsunami, a wall of corpses shambling inexorably towards me.

It takes an effort of will but I turn my torches off. I can still hear them though, although there’s a shift in the timbre of their moaning. Confusion. Zombie eyesight isn’t great, but they’ll keep coming unless I give them something else to chase.

I throw the bounzer over their heads. It doesn’t go off until it lands. My friend Zoe makes more selling these than the zip guns. Multi-coloured lights flash in the distance; a jingling tune plays. It’s supposed to be for babies or dogs; zombies are a bit like both. The moaning increases in volume as they turn, en masse, to follow the pretty lights. Still I hold my breath for a few seconds more before softly padding downstairs.

* * *

I have another bounzer but I hold it in reserve. I keep my lights off and my gun in hand. I can see shapes moving in the gloom, hear the occasional moan. They’re reacting to the earlier gunshots and the bounzer which is still playing Ring a Ring o’ Roses upstairs, and they don’t seem to notice me as I slip quietly past.

Toy Horde was a magical place for much of my childhood but it’s gone downhill somewhat; the windows grubby and broken. Strings of Christmas tree lights that had been strung above the entrance must have fallen at some point and the wire now stretches across the doorway, the bulbs are dead as zombie eyes. My dad struggles against the wire. That’s just like him.

He sees me and strains harder against the makeshift barrier. It’s curious to see eyes that are at once lifeless, yet filled with unfathomable hunger. He’s my dad, but he’s a stranger too, a slavering monster dressed in my father’s skin.

His grunting will attract others, I need to hurry. The zip gun’s still in my right hand. I holster it and pick up the Toy Horde carrier bag he obviously dropped when he walked into the Christmas tree lights.

I don’t look at him; I only have eyes for the shiny plastic box. “Better late than never, dad,” I mutter softly. He moans in reply.

With reverence I slip the box into my rucksack. A mint condition Action Ahmed Astronaut figure is the rarest of the rare; it’s going to be a flush Christmas.

I head back towards the escalators. Behind me dad’s groans intensify. I like to think he’s expressing pride in my enterprise rather than frustration that he can’t eat me, but either way he’ll prove a handy distraction while I slip away. Merry zombie Christmas, dad…