Suspended in Dusk II

Suspended in Dusk II

Angela Slatter et al.

Published by Grey Matter Press, 2022.

All short stories contained in this anthology remain the copyright of their respective author.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the authors, the editor or Grey Matter Press except for brief quotations used for promotion or in reviews. This anthology is a work of fiction. Any reference to historical events, real people or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are products of the authors’ imaginations, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

SUSPENDED IN DUSK: VOLUME TWO

ISBN-13: 978-1-940658-98-8

ISBN-10: 1-940658-98-5

Grey Matter Press First Electronic Edition - July 2018

Anthology Copyright © 2018 Simon Dewar

Volume Copyright © 2018 Grey Matter Press

Design Copyright © 2018 Grey Matter Press

Cover Artwork © 2018 Dean Samed

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword

Simon Dewar

Introduction

Angela Slatter

Angeline

Karen Runge

The Sundowners

Damien Angelica Walters

Crying Demon

Alan Baxter

Still Life with Natalie

Sarah Read

Love is a Cavity I Can’t Stop Touching

Stephen Graham Jones

There’s No Light Between Floors

Paul Tremblay

That Damned Cat

Nerine Dorman

Riptide

Dan Rabarts

The Immortal Dead

J.C. Michael

Dealing in Shadows

Annie Neugebauer

Another World

Ramsey Campbell

The Hopeless in the Uninhabitable Places

Letitia Trent

Mother of Shadows

Benjamin Knox

The Mournful Cry of Owls

Christopher Golden

Wants and Needs

Paul Michael Anderson

An Elegy for Childhood Monsters

Gwendolyn Kiste

Lying in the Sun on a Fairy Tale Day

Bracken MacLeod

Declarations of Copyright

Dark Fiction from Grey Matter Press

Foreword

Simon Dewar

I’m happy and humbled again to be providing a new collection of stories to readers, in part two of the Suspended in Dusk anthology series, this time released by Grey Matter Press (GMP).

A very thoughtful interviewer recently asked me what about the time of dusk appealed to me to choose it as a theme for the anthologies. My response was this:

Life is change, and change is either for better or worse. Change, one way or the other, is taking you into the light or the dark. This time of dusk—the time between times—is the time between the light and the dark. This grey area that we all find ourselves in from time to time is the fulcrum, the tipping point. This tipping point is the penultimate moment of change—where things either come good, or go badly, badly wrong. This is a fantastic place for great stories to be found, written and collected, I think.

Suspended in Dusk 2 is the product of a mix of men and women, of new and established writers, of people whose first language is not English, people who speak multiple languages, people of colour, people from at least four continents, people of different sexual persuasions, people who are of a religion, people who are of no religion. I’d say it’s impossible to achieve a perfect mix, but having said that, this book ain’t just the usual who’s who either. There’s diversity in this book and it adds to the flavour and the depth of work within these pages. I’m incredibly proud and honoured to be bringing these authors together and sharing their stories with you.

Some brief acknowledgments:  Many, many thanks to Anthony Rivera and GMP for taking a chance on this book when it was between publishers and looking for a new home. Thanks to Angela Slatter for her lovely introduction and wisdom, and to the authors for putting up with the rollercoaster ride. Thanks to my family who put up with my creative obsessions.

Lastly, dear reader, thank you for picking up this book. I hope you enjoy reading Suspended in Dusk 2 as much as I enjoyed collecting and editing it.

Simon Dewar

Canberra, Australia

11 December 2017

Introduction

Angela Slatter

Many years ago at the Brisbane Writers Festival I sat in on a panel which featured John Ajvide Lindqvist, author of the superb modern vampire novel, Let the Right One In. He made an observation that has stuck with me ever since: humans are the only creatures on the planet who go out of their way to scare themselves. You don’t see other creatures swimming close to sharks—apex predators that will eat them—just for a frisson of fear.

I hadn’t ever thought about it in such a fashion, but he was absolutely right. We do go out of our way to scare ourselves. We drive too fast. We stand too close to the edges of cliffs. We ride rollercoasters. We squeal our way through haunted houses at shows and fairs. We hang out in cemeteries after dark to see if anything might appear. We watch movies that run the gamut from psychological terrors like The Others or The Awakening to slasher flicks like Halloween, Friday the 13th and, the-even-more-terrifying-because-it’s-almost-real, Wolf Creek. We read books by Caitlín R. Kiernan, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Kathe Koja, and Shirley Jackson that have us hiding under our covers.

In our reading, many of us actively pursue the rush of adrenaline, the thudding heartbeat that shakes the rest of our body, the shortness of breath that feels like an oncoming heart attack and the certainty (for however brief a time) that we are prey. Whether we continue with it or not, almost everyone’s story-time experiences start with horror. What else are fairy and folk tales but our first horror stories? Two appalling cases of boogie fever: a queen forced to dance in red-hot iron shoes and a little girl whose feet must ultimately be amputated because the red shoes just won’t let her stop dancing. A woman who’ll throw her own sister over the sea brim to drown in an effort to win the princely husband competition = worst sibling rivalry ever. Mothers who happily desert their children in forests, and fathers who decide that marrying their own daughters is the Best Idea. Sure, the forest contains dangers but the true horror lies not in being eaten by wolves and/or bears—while it’s not the optimal outcome, at least they’re following their natural instincts—but in the things other humans do to us. We hear these stories when we’re very small and, even if we turn away from them sooner rather than later, their messages about death and fear and dreadful things have already been embedded in our child’s heart and mind. They lie there waiting, lurking and, I suspect, stealing one sock of every pair.

Horror is a genre named specifically for the effect it’s meant to have: to make us feel dread, terror, and not a little bit of awe at the spectacle of our inevitable mortality. We all know we’re going to die…we just don’t really think it will happen to us, or at least not quite yet. It’s a far off place. It’s the October Country. One of my grandfathers was fond of saying he didn’t mind dying, he didn’t want to be there when it happened. He wasn’t a horror fan, preferred Westerns in fact, but I still carry those words around with me. With horror maybe we get to have a preview, a try-before-you-buy kind of thing without the commitment to actual death. Just maybe coming close to the edge reminds us we’re alive.

Horror pushes the button on our fight-or-flight mechanism. We seek it out to add a bit of spice to the day, read or watch it for pretend scares, manageable fear in bite-sized chunks. We tell ourselves that it can be put away when we close the book, turn off the television, leave the cinema. We kid ourselves that we’re safe in our boring lives, we tell ourselves that we’re in charge. We can quit any time we want. That when the pages are closed the monsters, be they supernatural or fiends in human suits, can’t climb out again…but remember what I said about fairy and folk tales and their messages stuck deep in our subconscious?

Yeah. Still there. You can’t wash them away.

The night may well be dark and full of terrors as Melisandre says, but bad things happen in the daylight too. Serial killers appear to be the world’s largest growth industry. When we step outside we’re in danger; when we’re at home that often doesn’t change, whether we lock the doors or not. And we still don’t know what keeps going bump in the night.

Horror literature is, to me at least, the history of sharing nightmares. Just as misery loves company, so too does fear. Past masters such as M.R. James, Bram Stoker, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Barbara Baynton, Arthur Machen, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allen Poe, all knew that a terror shared was a terror doubled…and tripled…and quadrupled. They also knew they didn’t need to outrun their monsters, they needed to pass them on to you. In this grand tradition of sharing and scaring, we’ve seen some incredible horror anthology series over the years, from the classics to the new kids on the block: Stephen Jones’ Mammoth Books of New Horror, Robert Aickman’s Fontana Books of Great Ghost Stories, Mark Morris’ Spectral Book of Horror Stories, and now Suspended in Dusk looks set to continue in this vein.

In this collection you’ll find work to make you shiver and shudder, quake and quail. You’ll partake of the terrors that Stephen Graham Jones, Damien Angelica Walters, Alan Baxter, Sarah Read, Nerine Dorman, J.C. Michael, Benjamin Knox, Paul Tremblay, Ramsey Campbell, Letitia Trent, Paul Michael Anderson, Gwendolyn Kiste, Bracken Macleod, Dan Rabarts, Annie Neugebauer, and Karen Runge all have in store for you. But you won’t put the book down, or not for long anyway.

Reading on the couch, you’ll wrap yourself tightly in a blanket because that’s the kind of protection which is second only to ensuring that all your limbs are not hanging over the edge of the mattress at night. Periodically, you’ll get up and check the locks on the doors and windows. You’ll keep reading and you’ll tell yourself that you’re safe. That your loved ones are safe. That no one will burst through that carefully locked door or, worse still, sneak in through the tightly latched windows as you sleep. That you’re just enjoying an amuse-bouche of death and destruction, nothing serious, nothing permanent. That you’re neither hunted nor haunted, that it’s all in your imagination, that it’s just a book. That you’re in control.

Tell yourself that enough times and maybe you’ll believe it.

Maybe.

Angela Slatter

Brisbane, Australia

04 October 2017

ABOUT ANGELA SLATER

ANGELA SLATTER is the author of the urban fantasy novels Vigil (2016) and Corpselight (2017), as well as eight short story collections, including The Girl with No Hands and Other Tales, Sourdough and Other Stories, The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings, and A Feast of Sorrows: Stories. The third novel in the Verity Fassbinder series, Restoration, will be released in 2018 by Jo Fletcher Books (Hachette International).

She has won a World Fantasy Award, a British Fantasy Award, a Ditmar, and six Aurealis Awards.

Angela’s short stories have appeared in Australian, UK and US Best Of anthologies such The Mammoth Book of New Horror, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, The Best Horror of the Year, The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror, and The Year’s Best YA Speculative Fiction. Her work has been translated into Bulgarian, Russian, Spanish, Japanese, Polish, and Romanian. Victoria Madden of Sweet Potato Films (The Kettering Incident) has optioned the film rights to one of her short stories.

She has an MA and a PhD in Creative Writing, is a graduate of Clarion South 2009 and the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop 2006, and in 2013 she was awarded one of the inaugural Queensland Writers Fellowships. In 2016 Angela was the Established Writer-in-Residence at the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers Centre in Perth.

Her novellas, Of Sorrow and Such (from Tor.com), and Ripper (in the Stephen Jones anthology Horrorology, from Jo Fletcher Books) were released in October 2015.

Contact her at AngelaSlatter.com.

In memory of Dallas Mayr: master storyteller, teacher, icon, friend.

Angeline

Karen Runge

It’s not like he was my real father or anything. Still, I sometimes think my final memory of him is the only thing I really see clear. It returns to me, stinging-bright, electric, every time a man pulls me into his arms. He can smell of days-old sweat infused with booze, or the musky-male tones of aftershave, the fresh bite of toothpaste. He can smell like motor oil and greasy hair, garlic and cheese, leather and suede. It doesn’t matter. He’ll pull me close at the waist, I’ll wrap my arms around his neck, and the moment I close my eyes, there I’ll be. Four years old again, folded tight in my father’s arms as he carries me down the street. I see the late afternoon sun washing gold down on us. I feel the lurch of his steps, his heart beating against mine. The sweat on his palms, bleeding heat into the thin fabric of my dress. I feel him trembling. I tighten my grip. I hold my breath. Sometimes when this memory hits, I don’t quite catch myself in time and I say the word out loud: Daddy. Whispered in a stranger’s ear. And some men like that. But most don’t.

I don’t know that I have any other memories of him. Sometimes I think I do, but they’re sketchy, stiff. Like something printed on cardboard, bent and battered, the edges feathered. They’re a little too bright too, like an image of heaven—something I’ve imagined instead of actually seen. I know he was very tall, and very thin. He smoked unfiltered Marlboros, and to this day I love the smell of cigarette smoke in a man’s clothes and hair, the yellow stains between his fingers, nutty-sweet against my tongue. I know he used to tuck me in, and maybe he told me stories, or sang me songs. I’m not sure. Maybe not. I know he used to take me to the swing park down the block, that spare catch of yellow grass and red dust strewn with trash. I remember it because I remember swinging. And I think it was him, because the hand that pushed me was strong and firm, and not small and thin like my mother’s. I remember laughing. Weightless, dizzy, high above the ground. Maybe I remember that, most of all.

It’s not like he was my real father or anything. Still, when I look back on my childhood, all I see is him, and me. His arms around me, and mine around him. My breath caught in my throat as he carries me down the street.

* * *

The motel where I lived and worked was called Sunny Blue, and my room was on the second floor. It had a bed and a television set, a small bathroom attached. There was a bookshelf by the bed where I kept my kettle, an iron, a hair dryer. A battered hardcover copy of Senseless, stolen from the library (though not by me), which I read over and over again. When I first took the room there used to be an armchair by the bed too, but it smelled so bad I threw it out. A stink in the upholstery like fried fish and spoiled blood that gave me strange dreams. There was a parking lot out front of the motel (mostly empty), and a swimming pool behind (always green). It wasn’t a bad motel; it was good enough for families passing through to stay the night with their kids. It wasn’t a great motel either though, because I was there of course. I wasn’t the only long-stay resident, but I was the only one with this kind of living. I paid for the room in cash every week, and Saul took it without question. He was a big guy, balding, who didn’t talk a lot. His eyes were the colour of weak coffee, he had a scar across his chin, and I sometimes thought he sort of liked me. He called me Angie-Lee, which was wrong, but I didn’t correct him. Keeping Saul on my side was important to me. I used to fantasise about things going wrong, and Saul being the one who came to the rescue. Breaking the door down, bellowing, a look in his eyes like outrage broken on hurt. Gathering me up, safe in his arms. Holding me.

I had a regular roster of twelve clients. Five were married, six were over fifty, and one of them was barely eighteen. I loved all the men who came to see me. Their frailty, their fragility. I loved them for their need, and the ways they tried to hide it. Little boys masquerading—hard-mouthed smiles, vulnerable eyes. They needed me as much as I needed them. But of the twelve, there were four I held onto tightest. They were precious to me beyond the cash value they ascribed me. Precious to me in all the ways that cut a little deeper, count a little dearer. Precious because, each in their own way, they reminded me of my father.

* * *

Baxter came on Tuesdays, mostly. Of my four lovers, he was the one I’d been seeing the longest. Three years to the end, I think. He was dying. He never told me this in so many words, but it was clear just by looking at him. When I first met him he was tall and thin, with that stooped-scarecrow look that reminds me so much of my father. Bony shoulders, slit smile. But his stooped-scarecrow frame devolved to a brittle skeleton wrapped in loose skin. Waxy texture, clammy sweat. When he sneezed or coughed, he left blood spots on the tissues. A fine mist, more pink than red, churned from the depths of his lungs. Expelling a little more of his essence every time. His eyes sank deeper into his skull over the final year, and mostly when he came to see me then he didn’t have the energy to really do anything. We lay down together on the bed, his arms around my waist, my arms around his neck. I nestled against him and breathed in the smells of tainted sweat and slow sickness. He kissed my forehead with his thin, paper-dry lips. In those moments, I loved him more than any of the others. He sensed that, I think. He breathed a little faster, held me a little tighter. I would turn him over to rub his shoulders. I kissed the sunken flesh that slipped around his spine and ribs in finely wrinkled folds. And I closed my teeth on the word: Daddy.

He usually stayed an hour, sometimes two. Before he left, I made him peppermint tea. I sat cross-legged on the bed and watched him sip it. The delicate, clean aroma of the tea trickled up the walls and along the floor. It highlighted, instead of hid, the dirty chemical taint that flowed off of him. The smell of his disease.

In the final weeks, every time before he left I’d catch myself wondering if I’d ever see him again. I kept the tears behind my eyes as I helped him dress, helped him stand, took his money. I walked him out the door and along the open corridor to the stairs. His steps were slow. My eyes stung.

Saul watched us from the front office as we passed. More than once he stopped me on my way back up.

Christ, Angie-Lee, what the hell could you possibly be doing with that creature? he said.

I don’t kiss and tell, Saul, I said and smiled. Words like this come out my mouth sometimes, in moods and tones not really my own. And Saul stared at me, thinking, biting back the questions he knew I wouldn’t answer anyway.

Back in my room, I cried for the dying, and for the dead. I buried my face in the pillow he’d just lain on. I wrapped myself in the sheets still spiced with his scent. The smells of death, and not of lust. I tried to recall an image of my father. But in moments like that, I can’t see him anymore.

* * *

Usually after one of Baxter’s visits, I’d dry my eyes and head back out. Flip-flops on my feet, my hand full of coins. I’d slap down the stairs, wave to Saul, and cross the parking lot out to the street. There’s a payphone there. Box-shaped, battered door, the damp stench of old urine and rusted metal trapped inside.

I dropped the coins into the slot. I dialled. I listened to the electronic buzz of the phone, ringing on the other side. Here-here. Here-here. Here—

When she picked up, she always knew it was me. I don’t know how, an intuition, a sense, whatever still existed between us. She waited for me to speak.

Hi, Mom.

Angeline. Sometimes she said my name with happiness, bright and high, and I’d know she’d been drinking. Sometimes she said it with dread, low and slow. Or anger, fast and biting. I didn’t care. It’s rare to hear someone say my real name. Say my name right. Maybe she knew that, too.

Why did you always tell me daddy was sick?

She sighed.

He wasn’t really sick though, was he? Not really. Was he? And usually, when I asked this question too many times, she’d hang up.

* * *

Hank drove an old caramel-coloured Bentley. He wouldn’t change the paint job because he said that particular shade helped to hide the rust. The thing’s engine was train-wreck loud, blasting black exhaust fumes behind it. It gave me good warning when he was pulling into the parking lot. He wore a black leather jacket like my father did, and he smoked menthol cigarettes with the filters snapped off. Mint and tar swirling in his mouth, tainting his saliva, spread across my skin.

Of all the men I loved, Hank was the one I most hated. Hours before he came round, I’d already be dreading it. Dreading him. When he arrived, he’d layer a section of the floor with paper towels. I went down on my knees, and he handed me a litre bottle of iced tea— peach or lemon, store-bought. He made me chug it empty in front of him. Then he crouched down, eye to eye with me. He cupped my jaw with the gentlest touch. He licked my lips, the tip of his tongue just touching my teeth. Then he rammed his fingers down my throat until I brought the tea back up. Bile and sugary water pooled at his feet, splattered over his hand, his shoes. He couldn’t get excited any way else. He said it was something about watching the spasm, the expulsion. The relief in my face when it was over. Sometimes I think I almost understood. I wouldn’t have allowed this from anyone else, except he always did the cleaning up, and he always said he was sorry.

Sorry, Angel. Slow and sweet, like he meant it. He put his fingers in my mouth again, gentler, so that I could taste the cigarettes he’d smoked.

And with my mouth thick with his touch, his taste, I couldn’t say the word I most wanted to say.

Daddy.

* * *

On slow days, lazy days, usually Mondays, I went down to the office and talked to Saul. I sat beside him, his feet up on the desk, my legs crossed underneath, and we passed a bottle of bourbon back and forth. Sometimes we did this without talking—I kept my eyes fixed out the wide front windows when I felt his glance jumping to and away from me. I tried not to flinch at that furtive touch. Saul never touched me. Not once in his life. And he looked and talked nothing like my father did. But he was a father. And I’m a daughter. And that’s all I need.

When his eyelids puffed up like tiny soft pillows and his tongue moved a little slower in his mouth, I knew it was safe to ask him about her. His daughter. The one he lost.

She had curly dark hair, something like yours, only yours is a little straighter.

My hair is ash blonde and pencil-straight, but I never reminded him of this.

Her name was Amy. She liked to ride her bike up and down the street. She had a boy’s laugh, bony knees. I took her on a flight with me once and she decided then and there that she wanted to be an air hostess. She thought the ladies were so pretty. He smiled at this, fading away from me, lost in a memory I couldn’t touch.

What did she used to call you? I asked. I asked this every time.

Pop.

Not Daddy?

No, he sighed. "Not Daddy."

And he’d hand the bottle back to me then, because he had a way of understanding things, I think.

* * *

Glen wasn’t a father. I think it’s something he craved. To have a little girl to treasure, to dote on, to dress. He bought all the clothes he wanted me to wear. The dresses were baby pink, lilac-blue, sunshine yellow. They had lace and frills and cap sleeves. They drew my figure ironing-board straight, and pressed my breasts flat.