Arcane Read online

  ARCANE

  EDITED BY

  NATHAN SHUMATE

  COLD FUSION MEDIA

  Arcane

  copyright © 2011 Nathan Shumate

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  Cover illustration by Dan Verkys

  http://www.gardenofbadthings.com

  Cover design by Nathan Shumate

  Cold Fusion Media Empire

  http://www.coldfusionmedia.us

  All contents are copyright ©2011 their respective authors.

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION: YOU GOTTA HAVE A GIMMICK Nathan Shumate

  WE BELONG TO HER Joe Mirabello

  A CAPELLA Jonathan S. Pembroke

  THE TRUTH ABOUT MOTHER Van Aaron Hughes

  THE WEB OF LEGENDS Damien Walters Grintalis

  REYES RIDES THE DEVILLE Dan Cavallari

  THE HEART OF THE MATTER Paul L. Bates

  EL DIABLO DE PASEO GRANDE Milo James Fowler

  THE DELIVERY A.A. Garrison

  CORPORAUTOLYSIS Christopher Slatsky

  MALLECHO Stephen Willcott

  GOD OF THE KILN Eric Francis

  TIED D.T. Kastn

  LADY OF THE CROSSROADS Christine Lucas

  BENEATH THE ARCH OF KNIVES James Lecky

  ALL COATED IN BONEMEAL Bartholomew Klick

  POSSESSED OF TALENT Thomas Allein

  SWEET HEAVEN IN MY VIEW Frank Stascik

  IT’S NOT THE BOYS IN THIS FAMILY THAT HAVE TO WORRY Brady Golden

  KISS OF DEATH Jeremy Zimmerman

  LEGACY S.M. Williams

  AN UNQUIET SLUMBER Rhiannon Rasmussen-Silverstein

  A FRIEND, THE SPIDER Caitlin Hoffman

  DESTINATION UNKNOWN Anthony J. Rapino

  IN ONE THERE IS MANY Max Vile

  INCIDENT AT THE GEOMETRIC CHURCH David McGillveray

  BLACK BUSH Gemma Files

  THE BEST AND BITT’REST KISS S.K. Gilman

  VISITING HOURS Josh Strnad

  SWEET DREAMS Fran Walker

  THE BUSINESS OF HERMAN LACZKO Mark Beech

  CONTRIBUTORS

  INtroduction: You Gotta Have a Gimmick

  Nathan Shumate

  In modern publishing, the entire speculative landscape is subdivided into labeled subgenres. Young adult vampire romances, post-apocalyptic dystopias, steampunk Westerns... Each of these tightly defined niches and notches on the spectrum of speculative fiction has its own adherents, its own shibboleths and, of course, its own anthologies. Themed anthologies are very much the trend of the times in small-press publishing, especially while fiction magazines are struggling to adjust to 21st century distribution models; if you have a hankering for pirate ninja alien-abduction stories with a polyamorous twist, there’s probably an anthology for that.

  Honestly, most themed anthologies don’t impress me. Some of them are superb, of course, if the designated theme is expansive enough and doesn’t necessarily prescribe the stories that can be told under that label. And that points to my main complaint with all but the best of themed anthologies: the stories they contain are too similar and too closely related, usually following the plot and setting strictures set down by a handful of canonical, genre-establishing texts. (All those who are tired to death of zombie anthologies filled with yet more iterations of George Romero’s “squabbling survivors confined by an undead apocalypse” tropes, raise your hands.) There’s just too much of the same, over and over again from the first page to the last.

  Arcane does not have a theme. Subgenres of the fantastic represented herein include ghost stories, revenge fantasies, hard-boiled detective cases, Lovecraftiana, New Pulp and the New Weird. Milieus range from ancient Greece to the Old West to Castro’s Cuba to several locales which have never existed and are never likely to; protagonists include morticians, necromancers, foppish wits and backwoods witches.

  The one simple commonality between them all, too tenuous to be called a proper theme, is that all of the stories contain some darker aspect—some shadow of the macabre, the unsettling or the bizarre; even the humorous stories (and there are at least a couple) display that shadow. That doesn’t help you know what to expect, exactly, but it’s not meant to.

  You might discover one other common point: All of the stories contained herein are very, very good. That’s why I want to present them to you—not because they fit a predefined subgenre, but because they break and defy such definitions and instead invade your imagination. Enjoy your reading, but don’t expect to get too comfortable.

  WE BELONG TO HER

  Joe Mirabello

  Two changes of clothes. Three pairs of underwear. A hat. A book. I repeat the list. Two changes of clothes. Three pairs of underwear. A hat. A book. Take nothing else. Change of clothes. Underwear. Hat. Book. By the ounce you will be weighed, by the ounce you will be judged. We will be ravaged by worms! Lo Juro! Lo Juro! Lo Juro!

  The list cycles in my mind, over and over as I clutch the steering wheel of the Volkswagen—it’s the people’s car, but it runs like shit. The Russian oil doesn’t help, but it’s all we have. The oil oozes from hidden places in our autos and collects on the road, coating it with sludge. The people are throwing rocks at us, and I imagine we’re driving through tar, the road pulling us back into Cabalguán.

  Crowds pour out from the alleys of Cabalguán, breaking against our car like waves.

  Gusano! Gusano! they shout. Worm! Get out of our country! Go to your Yankees! We don’t want you! Muerte a los gusanos!

  Maria cries from the passenger seat as a bottle smashes against the window. I hold her hand. It’s okay, I think. The car belongs to the Revolution. But Angelita looks up for the first time. She’d been asleep in the back, but now she sees the angry faces and stares at them, fascinated.

  No, I think. Let her ignore them. They are nothing.

  Angelita rolls down the window and tells them, with all the authority of a child, to stop and they do, blank faced and confused. She’s never told us her age, but she can’t be more than ten. Dressed in a white sun dress and wearing shoes that have been mended a hundred times with packaging tape, she’s a tiny thing, but the crowd listens. The angry faces relax and the people shuffle back to their houses and holes. Tonight they’ll listen to their loudspeakers and talk to each other about the Glory of the Revolution. I know they still hate us, but they leave, and I sigh with relief.

  They always listen to her. She could have told them to hang themselves and they would have. She’s done it before. One day she’ll do it to us.

  I thought she might that morning, when the inspector showed up in his crisp uniform.

  “There’s a man at the door,” Angelita said as she came into our bedroom, still sleepy eyed and in her nightgown. “He says the exit permits have come. What is he talking about?”

  We had known he was there already. We could hear the crowd of people that had followed the inspector to our door. Our neighbors, our friends, the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution. The G2. Gusanos! they all called up. We don’t want you here! Get out of our country, traitors!

  The inspector explained that everything in the house must stay. We had been but custodians and it belonged to the Revolution. Everything belonged to the Revolution. Two changes of clothing. Three pairs of underwear. A hat. A book. The Revolution would give us those. Maria and I had been packed for three years while we waited.

  “I didn’t know we were leaving,” Angelita said. “You never told me we were going to Miami.”

  “These permits are for Señor and Señora Fernandez only,” the Inspector said. “There was no request for a child.”

  Of course there wasn’t. I never requested one for her. We had never packed her clothes, underwear, hat or book. We never even
discussed it. Nothing needed to be said. Angelita, brought to us with blood and thunder, should belong to the Revolution too. We prayed for it. But Angelita told the man she was going with us, and he quickly agreed. Yes, of course you will go on the plane too. Go and pack, little angel. He would have spat in any other child’s face.

  We make the rest of the way out of Cabalguán without incident and soon we’re driving on country roads. I’m still gripping the wheel tightly and the list still repeats in my mind. I don’t know if the car can make the trip to the airport—it often overheats. Maria stares out the window at the tobacco fields, watching children pull away the ripened leaves for Fidel. They’re Angelita’s age, and work through the day, chanting, Cuba si, Yanqui no! Arriba la Revolucion! over and over. Angelita doesn’t seem to notice them. She is reading a comic book, an issue of Superman that I’d bought for her years ago, before the comics disappeared from the stores. She’s read it a thousand times, but she’d chosen it as her book. Two changes of clothes. Three pairs of underwear. A hat. And Superman. I try not to look at her in the rear view mirror. Every time I look at her I see her as I saw her that first time: naked, soaked, and with blood on her hands.

  It was a new year and Batista had fled the country. Men with thick beards and green uniforms paraded through Havana, firing guns into the air, while other men were lined up against the wall—the paredón—and shot. They showed both on televisions, though mostly the shooting. That night the winds changed and there was a terrible storm. The wind howled against the shutters and the rain fell against the roof like a thousand birds pecking for seeds. Changó is up to something tonight, Maria said. Saint Barbara’s at it! It was then that she saw Angelita through the kitchen window.

  “There’s a girl standing behind the house!” she said, wiping her hands on her apron. It was still our house back in those days, not Fidel’s.

  “A girl? Where?” I peered around her. Sure enough, there was a child standing under the great umbrella span of a tamarind tree. She was naked and shivering. She glowed. After blinking a few times I decided she didn’t glow. She was just pale. She was paler than any of us, paler than the Yanquis, paler than any Russian even, a ghost among the draping leaves. “Dios! Where did she come from?” and then, again, “Dios, her hands! Her hands are covered in blood!”

  My wife was already rushing out the door with a twill blanket. She threw it around the girl and hugged her tight, crooning, “Little angel, little angel! You must be cold! Are you hurt? What is your name, little angel?”

  The girl never told us, not even when she finally spoke. Nor did she explain whose blood was on her hands. But she was Angelita from that day on—Little Angel.

  Little Angel. The name sticks in my throat. I haven’t called her that since the first year. As I focus on driving down the country roads, passing by row after row of tobacco and sugarcane, I realize I don’t call her anything anymore.

  Once we were certain the streets were safe again, we took Angelita to Francisca the Curandera. Francisca was a dark-skinned woman with a bad leg, fingers riddled with arthritis and distant, dark eyes. She advised. She diagnosed. She calmed. She healed. She blessed. She fed people marjoram, sage, spearmint, and rosemary. She knew the correct toques for each of the Orishas, and she lit candles and offered cigars to the Saints. You could look at the cracks in her face and see the secrets of a hundred generations.

  I didn’t like her. I didn’t like Santería. Maria held to the religion though, and Francisca had told us the previous year that we would have a daughter, though my wife would never be pregnant. Now we had Angelita, brought to us on a night of thunder and blood. So we waited outside her healing room to speak to the Curandera once again.

  She told a woman before us to offer a jar of honey to Oshún, the Lady of Charity, and her husband would recover. Next, a father was given a cocimiento of chamomile and anise to give to his colicky baby, and next an old man holding his stomach was sent away and told to wait for death. When we brought Angelita before her, Francisca looked us up and down with those dark eyes. My neighbor Raul said once that those eyes had more of Africa in them than anything else on the island, and I believed him. Francisca placed a crooked thumb to the girl’s chest and closed her eyes.

  “We found her in the storm last night,” Maria explained, though Francisca hadn’t asked. “She’s an orphan. She must be—she was standing in the rain naked and alone. She is so white—I thought I might have been seeing a spirit. Is she American? She will not talk. Was she sent by Changó, in the storm? Have thunder and lightning brought us the child we prayed for?”

  The old woman’s eyes flared open quickly.

  “This is the daughter you were promised. But no Orisha has sent her,” she whispered thinly. “She is a worm from Hell, sent to ravage this paradise. Be rid of her! Kill her!”

  My wife pulled away, shocked.

  “Kill her!” Francisca lurched forward and grabbed my wife’s skirts. “For all that is blessed, you must! While you can! Send her back into the earth from which she came! Nos vamos a morir. The worms will ravage us all!”

  “Curandera! You aren’t well!”

  “Take her back to where you found her!” Francisca was shouting now, clawing the folds of Maria's skirt into fistfuls. “Slit her throat! Surround the body with white candles and set offering to Obatalá, Our Lady of Mercy! Pray for your souls and set flames to the girl! Kill her!”

  Maria screamed and yanked her skirts back. Francisca was on her old feet now, hysterical. I stepped forward. Francisca’s sons were at my side, and all of us struggled with the frantic Curandera, desperately trying to pry her off Maria. Angelita placed herself behind us, still silent then, but gazing up at the crazed woman with curious eyes.

  “Damned of hell!” the Curandera cried. Foam gathered at the corners of her mouth, collecting in those wizened wrinkles. “Kill her! Pray to Our Lady of Mercy! Pray! We will be ravaged by worms! Nos vamos a morir! Kill her!”

  I fled the healing room, pulling Maria with one hand and Angelita with the other. When I looked over my shoulder for a final glance I saw Francisca pinned by her family members. She clawed at the air and peeled away at her skin, all the while calling after us, screaming, “I swear, I swear, I swear! Lo Juro! Lo Juro! Lo Juro! Nos vamos a morir! We are all going to die! We will be ravaged by worms!”

  I never saw the Curandera again. Raul told me she died not long after, which is just as well. Fidel soon decided that religions were against the Conciencia Revolucionaria, and that Santería had no place in the Revolution. Neither did Christianity, as I learned when I watched the monks down the street packing up their belongings. I took Angelita to them after I saw Francisca and they clapped me on the shoulder and assured me she was no demon. She is just a little girl, they said, a little angel that Jesus has entrusted into your care. The monks smiled when they told me this.

  Then they were kicked out of the country; the Catholics, the Jesuits, the Dominicans, all of them. The Russians didn’t need a God, so damn it, Fidel didn’t need one either. The militia men came in with their hammers and destroyed all the marble statues and brick crosses.

  We’re an hour into the countryside and Angelita is staring at me. She’s put Superman away and has turned her attention to my neck. I can feel her eyes, though I don’t look up at the mirror to check. What does she have in store for me and Maria? My neighbor Raul never liked it when she looked at him either. He told me once that her eyes were like scalpels, dissecting you ounce by ounce.

  A year after the Revolution, Raul stopped talking to me. He had become the neighborhood head of the Defense Committee—the CDR—and he sat on the wide patio in front of his house with a rifle across his lap while he listened to everything everyone said. He repeated the words to the G2: what people were saying, who they were saying it to, who was gathering and for what purpose. He checked our bags to make sure we didn’t have anything from the black market. No sugar, no rum, no coffee. These were all rationed and they all belonged to the Re
volution. He recruited a different neighbor each night, handing him the rifle and deputizing him as “la guardia” for the shift. We sat out on his patio and spied for him.

  On one of my turns I was handed the gun and for a moment I thought about turning it on Angelita. The gun wasn’t mine, though. And the bullet wasn’t mine. And Angelita wasn’t mine. I told myself this because I was afraid to act. I needed excuses. It was all Fidel’s. Except me. I wasn’t his. I’d had enough of Fidel. Most of us had, whether we were smart enough to know it or not. I’d put in requests for exit papers and it would take three years to receive permission to leave.

  Raul found out, though. The CDR told him and then he told the neighborhood. They all knew; the CDR made sure of it. Raul, my neighbor, who used to be my friend, would call from his porch, shouting, “Gusano! Gusano!” Angelita didn’t like it much and one day she told him to jump off the roof of the old cinema. He did, and he died. I never told Maria how it came to be.

  I kept most of what I saw of Angelita away from Maria. I never mentioned the time I opened the door to Angelita’s room and found the bodies of stray cats, strung facing the wall like a dozen dead traitors. I never told her about the man in the park that Angelita had told to go drown in the mud. I never told her about the newspaper clippings Angelita collected of all the people who had died trying to escape the island. She had cut across their necks with a knife, making a gash through every photo. Gusanos, she had written on the wall under them. Cut them in two and they will grow into two worms. I never told Maria any of these things, but she knew.

  I lay awake at night sweating, afraid to know the things Maria had seen, the things Angelita had done that Maria kept from me. And then, of course, Little Angel, what have you done that neither of us had seen?