Fright Mare-Women Write Horror Read online

  Moving in a swift lope towards the sound, Constan abandoned her makeshift club. She did not need it. Her vision now blurred by a cloudy film but her hearing and sense of smell were sharp, acutely pinpointing her prey, now an indistinct shape resting beneath a tall pine. With a feral growl building up in her throat, Constan sprinted forward towards the pink and grey figure at the foot of the tree. It looked up. For a few, blurred seconds, she saw a dishevelled older woman, badly injured, filthy, her eyes widening in horror, her cracked lips moving in silent plea for mercy. The near blindness returned, all memory lost, only blood lust remained and then deep pleasure as Constan sunk her teeth deep into warm flesh, pungent with blood. The prey tried to fight back but was no match for her strength, speed and aggression. Constan feasted well, the clawing hunger at last sated. Time to move on. She stood by the ravaged body, the spilt guts still steaming in the early evening air. She was losing the power of all rational thought, of ability to make decisions.

  She was Constan

  Consta

  Con…

  Co…

  With no voice but a deep feral growl, the nameless thing she had become carried on walking, unaware of her destination. Some corrupted impulse, too primitive to be instinct drove her to keep moving, to kill and kill again. Within minutes of her journey, the hunger returned, brutal and more demanding. She had become hunger.

  There was nothing for her back at the crash site. The cold, rigid corpses were of as little interest as the wreckage and cast off tyres. There was nowhere else to go but up. At first, she was unable to coordinate her movement to adjust from walking to climbing. The embankment was steep, slick with grass and obstacles, debris from the coach’s fatal plummet, gorse bushes and pine saplings. She fell many times but without pain or reason, was undeterred, beginning the climb with the same stubborn determination as a wasp battering against a closed window. Darkness had fallen by the time she reached the top. She staggered for a few disorientated steps before collapsing onto the gravel verge, prevented only by luck from tumbling backwards down the embankment.

  Daylight at sunrise touched but did not warm her face, her transformation complete during the dark hours. There was nothing left of Constance Evans from Ledbury, divorcee and unemployed mother of none, indifferent older sibling to two brothers and unenthusiastic aunt to four nephews and a niece. No memories, no thought, just need. In life, she was overweight, inactive. In this new state she was agile but without a spark of intelligence and self-awareness. Triggered by the sunrise, she sprang to her feet on a roadside surrounded by crashed cars and lorries. Many were burnt out, still smoldering in the silent dawn. The unremarkable contents of peoples’ lives lay strewn across the dual carriageway as were the broken remains of the travelers themselves on this once busy road… travelers who had set out unaware they had journeyed to their final destination.

  She was oblivious to what had happened, what was happening now. She had no recollection of the coach driver braking hard to avoid a large group of people stumbling along the road towards him. Out of control in a spin of burning rubber and tortured brakes, the coach had swerved violently, broken through a metal safety barrier and halted perilously close the edge of the precipice. Confused from hitting his head on the side window and by the terrified screams of the passengers, he had unwittingly opened the coach door to people he thought were helpers. They were no longer people. As the first one attacked him, tearing at his throat with hands and teeth, the driver’s foot crashed down on the accelerator, plunging the coach to its fate. One no living person would ever know about.

  With nothing to guide her, not even instinct, she followed the road in the direction she already faced. Throughout her directionless walk, the route told the same catastrophic story, of shocking sudden and bloody violence, of crashed vehicles, bodies and debris. A chilling total silence. Perhaps the flies and other scavengers were resting, bloated from the massive bonanza of undisturbed carrion, a feast with nothing left alive to disrupt it.

  She walked by day, dropped like a stone, unmoving by night. Within days, others had joined her. There was no communication, no interaction between them, an ever flowing surge of moving rancid flesh and bone with nothing in common but the hunger, the desperate, ferocious urge that moved them forward in constant motion. They continued until confronted by a solid wall of upturned cars, lorries and hastily constructed guard posts, manned by well-armed soldiers. She carried on walking, joining the hundreds battering against the wall and each other with futile determination. Many were already broken by the relentless crush into moving fragments beneath their feet, a squirming mass of torsos and limbs, heads with glassy eyes and snapping teeth, all swimming in putrid body fluids.

  None of the attackers still complete and active at the base of the barrier reacted to orders shouted above them to open fire, nor did any fall back as shots rained down on them in ear-splitting volleys of bullets. Instead, they used the bodies of the fallen to aid their climb. The thing that was once Constance made the ascent with the rest of the swarm, attacking and overwhelming the living defenders in their guard posts, leaving nothing but smears of blood and abandoned weapons as evidence that the soldiers had ever been there.

  Back on the road, Constance and her fellow beings continued on, heading beyond the mountains to the well populated towns and cities of North Wales. Some they encountered would become food, others adding to their ever growing numbers.

  Craving was all…One that could never be satisfied.

  Never.

  Raven Dane is an award winning fantasy author based in the UK. Her published works include the highly acclaimed Legacy of the Dark Kind series; Dark Fantasy/Sci-Fi crossover novels: Blood Tears, Blood Lament and Blood Alliance. However, Raven’s skills in fiction don’t end there with a comedy novel, a scurrilous spoof of High Fantasy clichés – The Unwise Woman of Fuggis Mire which was published by Endaxi Press in 2009. In more recent years Raven has met with critical acclaim for her occult steampunk adventures: Cyrus Darian and the Technomicron and Cyrus Darian and the Ghastly Horde. Cyrus Darian and the Technomicron was the winner of best novel at the inaugural international Victorian Steampunk Society awards in 2012.

  Raven has had many short stories published in anthologies including in Full Fathom Forty, a celebration of forty years of the British Fantasy Society, and the first annual of ghost stories from Spectral Press called the Thirteen Ghosts of Christmas. She also has stories in four horror anthologies published by Western Legends Press.

  Raven was the first author to be signed with Telos Moonrise, a new fiction imprint for the world renowned Telos Press. They published her collection of spooky and macabre Victorian and Steampunk short stories, Absinthe and Arsenic in 2013. Telos published her alternative history/supernatural novel Death’s Dark Wings in 2015.

  She is currently working on her third and fourth Cyrus Darian novel and more short horror story commissions.

  GOBLIN BOX

  by

  HILLARY LYON

  Red stripes, yellow polka dots, and green diamonds painted against a bright blue background. The corners were a bit worn, likely scuffed from years of careless handling. There was a hexagonal-shaped hole on one side, for what Linda assumed was a crank handle. She turned the box over to look for a manufacturer's mark; there was none. There wasn't a price tag, either. Rather than put the odd box back on the shelf, she dropped it into her shopping basket. She'd ask the clerk how much when she reached the register.

  Linda loved to shop in thrift stores. An adventure, each time; she never went in looking for anything specific. That way led to disappointment, always. No, she learned long ago to shop without an agenda, to just let the store reveal its unsought treasures to her. She'd found so many un-ordinary items that way. Items that made her trendier friends jealous; which, Linda gleefully admitted to herself, was kind of the point. She prided herself on her unique taste, on her ability to find just the right curieux objet. Besides, shopping in thrift stores, flea markets, and yard sales f
it her personality perfectly. She was all about shabby-chic.

  She moved up and down the store's aisles like a shark looking for prey, smoothly weaving her way in between idling shoppers. Occasionally, Linda reached around a shopper to snag a treasure overlooked amid the jumble on the shelf before them. Only once in all her shopping expeditions did she have an argument with another shopper over a bargain find. An older woman had her hand approximately an inch above a small silver candle holder when Linda grabbed the tarnished treasure. They exchanged heated words, but Linda left with the candle holder. She really didn't want it that badly, but since the other woman made such a scene, Linda was not about to relinquish it. After getting her trophy home and polishing it thoroughly, she found that it wasn't kitschy or retro; it was plain-vanilla boring. She gave it to her stepsister, Hyacinth, for Christmas. Of course she loved it; she was hopelessly uncool.

  In addition to her curious box, Linda also found a rose-colored cashmere beret, a set of bookends shaped like snoozing leprechauns, and a pair of delightfully over-sized plastic sunglasses. All for under seven dollars! Well, that was her estimated, before tax price—and before she knew how much the box would cost. But surely it couldn't cost much.

  The teenager at the register shrugged when Linda pointed out there was no price tag on the box, and that it lacked a handle, and was slightly dinged and scratched. The girl, whose tag proclaimed her name was Kaisie, chewed her gum slowly as Linda lobbied for a low price.

  "Lady," Kaisie sighed,"how about a dollar?"

  "How about fifty cents," Linda countered. She tapped her foot impatiently.

  "Seventy-five cents. I can't go any lower. It was already on the bargain shelf. Take it or leave it." Kaisie blew a large pink bubble, popped it, and looked grimly towards the line of customers growing behind Linda. Why did the best-dressed customers always quibble? Not like they couldn't afford the asking price.

  Linda snorted and handed her a crisp twenty dollar bill. She snatched her change out of Kaisie's hand and huffed out of the store. She didn't hear the teenager wish her a good day, and even if she had, she wouldn't have acknowledged it. Check out girls were so—thick, dreary and unenlightened. Linda smiled at that thought as she drove out of the Auntie's Attic Thrift Store's parking lot.

  * * *

  Sitting on her vintage sofa (a boxy number from the seventies, upholstered in rust-colored crushed velvet), Linda examined her recent finds. The beret would be great for colder weather—she imagined herself skipping down the street like Mary Tyler Moore, singing gleefully to all the birds and strangers she passed. How wonderfully wacky! The leprechaun book-ends were already situated on her classics shelf in a strategic placement, so deliciously ironic: world literary classics bracketed by American kitsch. Linda shook her head in silent approval.

  On closer inspection, the over-sized sunglasses were a disappointment: the plastic was cracked beneath the left lens, and when she put them on and looked in the mirror, they appeared more like novelty glasses than actual sunglasses. Well, what did she expect for less than a buck? Linda tossed the glasses into her recycle bin.

  Lastly, she picked up her odd box and turned it this way and that. Linda held it up to her ear and shook it. Inside she could hear a faint jungle, like a little bell, and a slight, reverberating echo, like a vibrating spring. She examined the hexagonal hole on the side, and wondered if she could jimmy the thing, force it to turn and open the lid. If not, then how sad, she mused: a jack-in-the-box with no release. Linda imagined a colorfully dressed, doleful doll cramped inside that small space, a red smile painted over a sad mouth. She placed the box on her marble-topped coffee table, between a small brass elephant and a child's retro tic-tac-toe slider game. "There," she laughed to herself, "now it's just like you're in the circus."

  * * *

  When Linda had parties, and she had them fairly often, she made point of inviting all the tenants in her quadruplex. To her way of thinking, if they came, then they couldn't complain about the noise. If they didn't come, well, she didn't care. They rarely came, or complained. For her guests, Linda's parties were always full of food and music and noise. For Linda, the parties were a way for her to show off her new treasures, to catch up on gossip and drug abuse with her friends, but most importantly, to fish for a new boyfriend.

  Tonight's soiree was especially important for Linda, as two years ago to the day she was dumped by her live-in beau, Tony. TV-Star Tony, Tony-the-Tease, Triple T (Temper-Tantrum Tony)—all nicknames their friends gave him. He wasn't really a TV star, but he was handsome enough to be one, and had the overweening ego to match as well. He was a charming, shameless flirt who harbored a bad temper when he didn't get his way. Linda still had a fist-print in the plaster wall of her den to show for that. After he moved out, she hung an empty frame around it, and called it "Tony's Little Love Tap." She also took a picture of it, and sent it to his mother. Her friends thought that hilarious.

  To be honest, Linda wasn't entirely blameless in the break-up. More than a bit of princess herself, she was an only child of two very successful lawyers. Two very busy, very stressed out perfectionists. Rather than compete for her parents' attention through over-achieving, Linda opted for the reactionary approach: she dropped out of school to follow a trendy jam-band, drifting from one neo-hippy boytoy to the next. With a trust fund generous enough to finance a Fortune 500 company, it's not as though Linda had to worry about the realities of making a living. Or reality at all, for that matter.

  So when Handsome met Spoiled, it was all good times until her biological clock started ticking and babies crawled into their conversations. Not that Tony would have made a good dad (he wouldn't), or that Linda would be a doting mom (she wouldn't), but the idea of convincing him to have a child with her took hold and became her vanity project. Tony saw things differently, and as he despised being manipulated—primarily because he saw himself as the master manipulator—he bailed. One afternoon he packed up his things while Linda was out shopping, and by the time she returned, he was gone. She was more insulted than hurt; Tony had successfully thwarted her imminent baby-making plans. Now she had to find a new guy and start all over again.

  * * *

  For this party, Linda set out various munchies in brightly retro Fiestaware bowls on her coffee table. She moved the knickknacks from the table top to a crowded shelf on her all but bookless bookcase, except for the odd box. That she left as a conversation piece. Maybe when her friends got loaded, they could get the box open. Or at least have a good laugh speculating on what was inside, beneath its garishly printed paper wrapper.

  "Oh my god! This thing is so tacky, it's cute!" squealed Shoshonna, Linda's on-again, off-again best friend, who was currently on. "Where did you find it? And what is it, exactly?" she asked as she turned the odd box in her hands. "I mean what does it do? Or is it just a purty little thangy?"

  "Auntie's Attic. They got a new shipment of merch from south of the Mason-Dixon line, with all kinds of crazy cool stuff. You should check it out, Shonna, before all the good stuff is gone," Linda answered, knowing full well that all the cool stuff was already long gone. Such was the nature of her friendship.

  "I think it was a jack-in-the-box," Linda went on,"but the handle's gone, and I can't figure how to get the lid open. Maybe you can, or better yet, get that hunky-monkey over there in the corner to help. Mr. Tight-Vintage-Oasis-1994-World-Tour-T-Shirt. What's his name, again?"

  "Dahhling, I think you mean Mr. GQ? That's Marion. I hope you don't mind I invited him, I know I probably should have asked, but—"

  "No worries," Linda cut her off. "He's cute. Bring him over and introduce us. After all, a hot guest should at least be greeted by his hotter hostess."

  Before she flounced away to retrieve Marion, Shonna leaned in confidentially, grinning. "Just so you know, he's bi. And quite the player, so don't get your hopes up. Not boyfriend material. At. All. But lotsa fun!"

  But as Shonna and Marion moved toward Linda, her neighbor from across the
hall, Mr. Gruber swept in and blocked their approach.

  "Miss Chow! You've thrown yet another groovy party—I do love being a part of your shindig!"

  "Uh, thanks, Mr. Gruber." Linda swayed back and forth, attempting to look behind her neighbor to catch Marion's eye.

  "Oh, call me James! 'Mr. Gruber' was my old man," he guffawed.

  Linda winced but didn't reply. She was not about to encourage him by calling him "James." Grub-worm, maybe, but not James.

  "These people you invited—very up-to-date with their world-view. Progressive philosophers, each and every one! So stimulating to be among them." James motioned to the clusters of people around him, and in the process sloshed his whiskey sour on both his bright red turtle-neck and his crisply ironed jeans. He didn't notice.

  Linda supposed this was his way of thanking her for the invite. She'd not expected that he would actually show up. She tolerated Gruber well enough—when he kept his distance. Unfortunately, that wasn't often. A never-married, aged swinger with his stringy silver pony-tail, he reminded Linda more than a little of the Crypt-Keeper character from the old comic books. She closed her eyes and shivered ever so slightly.

  Oblivious to her discomfort, Gruber went on, "Say, I noticed that harlequin box on your coffee table. Where did you find that little geegaw?"

  "At a thrift store," Linda sighed. "If you would excuse me, I should—"