Jan 14

Jan 14 When The Creatures Call

When The Creatures Call - book excerpt

Part 1 Introduction: The Beast Burke

Booklist has hailed him as, “one of the most clever and original talents in contemporary horror.” I agree with Booklist. He is Kealan Patrick Burke, and he’s a beast of a writer. I think within the horror genre he’s got the best short story game in the past twenty-five years.

Nobody is more creative with their short stories.

Nobody is as original as Burke.

Nobody’s stories are as immersive.

Each time I read one of his collections I come across stories that leave me shaking my head, pondering how the hell the man even came up with the ideas let alone pulled them off in the short story format.

I’m not claiming the following stories of this section are on par with Kealan Patrick Burke. I will admit that they were written with his ability to immerse a reader into a fictional world within a handful of pages in mind.

I’m not certain my story “Best Day of Summer” would exist if not for Kealan Patrick Burke’s short story “The Barbed Lady Wants For Nothing,” which I’ve reread probably a dozen times if not more. Burke’s story has taken up a permanent residence in my mind, as it begs the following question—what really happens to all those missing people? Both Burke’s story and mine attempt to answer that question with supernatural occurrences, but beyond that they are completely unique from one another. I’ll tell you this, with “BDOS” I’m trying to gut-punch you. I want you to feel it at the end. I want you to feel winded like I have after reading a Kealan Patrick Burke story.

I started writing “Traditions Lost” for a Deadman’s Tome anthology titled Bikers vs. Zombies, but I didn’t complete the story in time. I hated the ending I’d written, and so I didn’t submit it. The story nagged at me for about a year before a proper conclusion came to mind. Kealan Patrick Burke has written a few collections revolving around seasons. His Autumn-themed collection Dead Leaves is an excellent study of the season we all look forward to and the pseudo-holiday we all love—Halloween. “Traditions Lost” is my Halloween story, and I strove to capture that crisp autumn air, that thrill of dressing up to trick-or-treat, and those feelings we associate with a dying year and moving on.

“The Headless Woman’s Woods” is one of the only stories I’ve written that I can’t recall where the initial idea sprouted from. I remember writing it, and more specifically I remember writing it after reading Currency of Souls. There is no connection between my story and that book other than my desire to write as detailed as Burke. I wish I had more to offer on the “THWW”,but I don’t.

Best Day of Summer

After telling his younger brother to hustle it up, Oliver turned away from the ice-cream truck thinking, this might be the best day of the summer yet.

The sun shined, but wasn’t burning, and Dad had toted them up to the citypark to bang the basketball against the unforgiving backboards and rims.

It wasn’t often Dad pulled away from work for an entire morning to spend time with Ollie and his brother, so when it happened, woo-boy it sure seemed the treat. Topping it off, after a few games of H-O-R-S-E and a round or two of Lightning, the familiar tunes of an ice-cream truck rolled down the street. In the most unlikely behavior, Dad had opened his wallet and handed over a ten to Ollie and told both he and Noah to go ahead and splurge. Dad didn’t know a whole lot about the prices of an ice-cream truck, because a ten spot certainly wasn’t going to allow a ten-year-old and his younger bro to splurge, but hey, like Dad so often pontificated, beggars couldn’t be choosers. So off they’d raced waving down the ice cream truck. They were even first in line when the truck pulled over, and a small cluster of kids had gathered behind them.

Ollie ordered a double-scoop Superman waffle cone and Noah after some hemming and hawing settled on a Peanut Butter Dream Ice Cream Bar. Ollie paid the worker, received what minimal change was left, and together, he and Noah started back towards the courts already feasting on their summertime treats.

“Either of you two playboys ever been with a woman before?” a low voice called over to them.

The question was so odd to their innocent ears it halted the brothers in their tracks.

A white panel van had appeared out of nowhere. It idled on the side of road that cut a path all the way through the municipal park. They’d just come from this direction; Ollie could see the basketball court not far in the background where his dad lounged in the sunlight with his back propped against the ball. Ollie was certain just minutes before when he and his brother had led the scampering charge to the ice cream truck that the van hadn’t been there.

The driver’s door swung open with immediacy, and in an instant the man rocked himself out of the van. He made his way around the front of the van and stood before the boys, beaming a smile that was all things but trustworthy, at least in Ollie’s eyes.

“Well, have ya? Been with a woman?”

The voice was odd, the question even odder.

A cold feeling of ice slid down Ollie’s back.

Despite his parents’ unending warnings to beware, he’d always come away feeling foolish for his cagey behavior when encountering strangers.

But this? This felt different from the word go.

Maybe it was the van itself. Maybe it was the dark tint to the driver’s glasses or the sweat-stained, dusty ball cap. Maybe it was the silver skull-ring on his finger or the dark, coarse hair popping from the back of his hand and up his arm. Whatever it was, something inside Ollie was screaming that this was the exact moment Mom and Dad had tried to prepare Noah and him for whenever having the stranger-danger discussion. It was more than off; it was wrong.

They were supposed to ignore the man and turn away. If the man came at them, the tactic was to run and yell for help.

Instead, Ollie had stopped. He’d stopped nearly everything.

Stopped walking.

Stopped licking his Superman ice cream.

Stopped breathing.

He even stopped being aware that he was a big brother and unconsciously his hand groped for Noah’s, not to offer comfort but rather receive it.

Not only that, but the rest of the world seemed to have stopped. Ollie’s focus narrowed to the man in the dark glasses and the white panel van.

“I’ll just take that as a no then,” the man said. “The name is Stu and I got something reeeaaal special for one of ya’s in the back of this here van,” the man said. With an open palm he banged against the back sliding door. “Now no fightin’ over this. I knows how brothers like to scrap from time to time, but we’ll be fair and square in deciding who gets this special treat. Now promise me, no fightin’.”

“No fightin’,” Noah repeated, even taking to Stu’s drawl.

“I agree,” Ollie said, wondering why he was taking part in this conversation instead of turning heel. Despite the words feeling so detached from himself, he continued, “I won’t fight my brother.”

This was inexplicable. Ollie was scared. It might have been appropriate to think of his state of mind as scared as hell, yet his feet stayed frozen to the spot.

“Good enough for me,” Stu nodded. He grasped the back door handle, but before sliding it open, he said, “Now wait a minute here, playboys. You two wouldn’t be trying to pull a fast one on me, now wouldja? How can I be sure you’re of proper age? Hey, hot-rod, how old are you?” Stu nodded towards Noah.

Don’t answer him, Ollie thought. Please whatever you do don’t say anything, because once we start talking, we won’t be able to get out of this. I know I’m the older brother, and I’m supposed to look out for us at a time like this, but somehow I can’t, but I think I could if you’d just stay quiet, Noah.

“I’m eight,” Noah said.

“Oh, alright,” Stu said, and took off his cap to slap his thigh agreeably. Dust jumped from the hat. “Eight’ll do. And how ‘bout you, big brother? What’s your age?”

He knew he shouldn’t answer, knew he should turn and run while yanking his brother along.

“Ten,” he said.

The man set his hat back proper and whistled through unmoving lips. “Double-digits, eh? Big man you are.”

With that, Stu yanked the back door, and it flew open. WHHHOOOMPH!

The back of the van had been modified into a small bed chamber.

The woman on the cot was the epitome of desire. She was raised up to her knees, straight-backed, and her fiercely blue eyes stared straight out at Ollie and his brother.

Ollie had seen sexualized women on the internet and TV, but nothing like this in real life.

She wore a thin, almost see-through, white fabric that had been cinched and tied to resemble a bikini. Her golden skin sheened with a thin layer of sweat. She breathed deeply—cravingly—and with each breath her chest thrust up and out in display. Shackles wrapped her thin wrists and rusted large-link chains hung from mounted eyelets in the van’s ceiling, securing the woman.

Slut.

The word surfaced to Ollie’s mind unbidden. A dirty word, a nasty word. A word Ollie had never spoken aloud and also a word he just plain didn’t like being in his thoughts. Yet, there it was in all its naked glory.

Slut.

It couldn’t be all bad though. How could something that was making his skin tingle this way be a bad thing?

“Take a good look at her, playboys,” the man said. “She’s quite the tart ain’t she?”

Next to him, Ollie heard his brother gasp, “Yes, sir!”

Only now did Ollie notice how tight the front of his own shorts had become. Oh man, he liked what he was seeing, but he didn’t want that to happen, not out here in the middle of the public park.

Panicked, he looked around, but to his relief saw that nobody was paying any attention to them.

“Best part is,” Stu chuckled, “one of you two playboys is gonna climb right up in there and get a round with her. Don’t that sound peachy?”

Ollie turned his attention back to the woman. Oh, hell yes, he wanted to climb up and onto that cot with the goddess before them. He’d agreed not to fight his brother, but that was before he’d known what was being offered. He didn’t know the rules of how one was chosen, but all bets were off about him not taking a round out of Noah if that’s what he had to do.

That body and her entirely sexually charged posture, yeah, he’d fight for that. Even more, her face was to die for—those intense eyes, those slightly parted lips.

Suddenly the face rearranged, and it was the most disturbing thing Ollie had ever seen in his ten years.

The nose had stopped atop her forehead. The blue as the summer sky eyeshad split up, one ending right next to the out of place nose at the top of the disfigured face and the other staring out from below a delicate but high cheek bone. The sex creature hissed, exposing razor teeth inside the mouth which now ran vertical along the opposite cheek.

The face spun again, this time a complete blur like a slot machine gone haywire. All of her features seemed to run together creating a visual vortex where her face should have been. All at once the features abruptly locked properly into place.