Tyler Miller's Blog: The Black Cat Moan, page 5
November 30, 2015
American Creed: Boxing in Literature
Watching the movieCreed–the latest installment in theRockyfranchise–turned out better than I anticipated. Sylvester Stallone’s ongoing exploration of Philadelphia’s favorite son is a pretty uneven affair, going rather downhill after the first installment. Still, it has its fair share of excellent moments, andCreedis easily the best of the bunch since the 1976 Best Picture winner.
Seeing the movie put me in the mind of other excellent boxing stories, both on the page and the silver screen. And...
November 22, 2015
The Forgotten Movies of Michael Crichton
Years after his death from cancer, Michael Crichton remains a force in American film-making.Jurassic World, inspired by Crichton’s novel, broke every opening-weekend box office record. HBO is releasing a TV series remake of Crichton’s classicWestworld, starring Ed Harris, Anthony Hopkins and Evan Rachel Wood.
Crichton’s influence has been felt too in shows likeHouseandGrey’s Anatomy, both of which are indebted to theER, a show Crichton created.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a novelist whose w...
November 14, 2015
Ian Fleming, Hugh Hefner, and the Spectre of American Manhood
In light of the newest James Bond installment, Spectre, hitting theaters last week (just in time for my birthday) I’ve been thinking a lot on Ian Fleming, the author of 14 Bond novels (though not, as it turns out, the author of the most 007 adventures—that distinction belongs to John Gardner, who wrote 16).
It’s important to recognize the significant differences between Fleming’s Bond, the 007 of the page, and the debonair Bond fashioned by Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli (and their descen...
November 3, 2015
Enter Now: You Choose How You Die!
Have You Ever Wanted To Be A Character In A Story?
Now You Can!
And You Can Pick How You Bite The Dust!
How to Enter:
Simply leave a review of either one of my books on Amazon.com: The Other Side of the Door or Stranger Calls (fair warning: it will help if you read them first). The authors of the first 25 reviews from each book will be entered into the contest drawing.
That’s it!
What You Win:
The winner will be selected at random from the 50 reviews (25 for each book). The winner will get:
To be a character in an upcoming story to be released in 2016!
To choose how they want their character to die!
Disclaimer: If you do not wish for your character to die, I’m sorry. It’s not that kind of story. Entry into the contest assumes that you are fully aware of the eventual demise of the character named after you, and that you have given your permission for your fictional alter-ego to meet their maker. Sorry.
Does it have to be a positive review?
No. Please leave your honest opinion of the book you review. If you love it, great! If you hate it, well…I can’t please everybody. No hard feelings.
On a side note, however, should it happen that the winner is a “negative reviewer” it may be that their fictional death is prolonged and painful. Just sayin.
Note:
For your entry to be considered, I will need some way of identifying you. Here are your options:
You can fill out your Amazon account with contact information, so that I can see your name and an email. If you win, I can then contact you.
You can leave a comment to this post telling me which review is yours. I will not make the comments public.
You can simply shoot me an email at Partmanpartmonkey@gmail.com and let me know which review is yours.
You can write in your review your name and how (should you win) you wish to die (in the story, not in real life).
Final Word To Cheaters:
Reviews left in which it is obvious the reviewer did not read the book will not be considered. Don’t be a douche. Read the book (at least part of it) and leave your real thoughts.
October 31, 2015
The October Country: Oct 31st: The Making of a Spooky Story
…that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain…
— Ray Bradbury
So here we are, come to the end of our journey. We’ve looked at a new short story every day this month, each of them stories that inhabit that twilight world Bradbury called the October Country. Some of them you knew well and greeted like old friends. Others were like odd looking strangers shown up upon your door.
Hopefully these stories treated you well. Hopefully there weren’t too many sleepless nights.
One of the benefits of reading so many spooky stories one upon another is getting a feel for how it is done well. While we can quibble about differences of style–the straightforward approach of Richard Matheson as opposed to the slinky subtlety of Steven Millhauser–that is a discussion which would lead us nowhere fast. If we’ve learned anything reading 30 creepy tales this month, it should be that there are many paths to fear.
Fear.
Ah, yes. What about fear?
If there is any link in the chain from one story to the next, it is certainly fear. The spooky story, regardless of the style of its author, is a story of fear. And, as the man once said, it is the tale that matters, not the teller.
So let us talk about fear, you and I.
A fine October tale is, more often than not, a simple story. Because fear is simple, is it not? It is elemental. Fundamental.
You fear the dark. The unknown. The stranger. Death. And worse.
But these are not complicated. They are not quantum mechanics.
No. Poe’s narrator in The Black Cat feared his own perverse desire to do wrong. Young Douglas Spaulding in Bradbury’s The Man Upstairs feared the stranger at his grandmother’s door. The hunters in Vasconcelos’s The Boar Hunt feared Mother Nature, red in tooth and claw.
And yet, fear is not the only element here. Our October lineup is a gathering of something else as well: transgressions.
Yes. Are these not tales of lines crossed and prices paid?
The young boys who force a small child to accept an amputation against his will in Sorensen’s Child’s Play. The lunatics who break free from their asylum in Bloch’s Home Away From Home. The teenagers in King’s The Raft out for a swim long after the swimming season has ended.
It is perhaps King’s story that illuminates the most disturbing fear: that the line crossed may be piddly and, at first glance, unimportant. What line did Lydia cross in Stefani Miller’s A Hand to Hold, aside from being an overprotective parent? Is that so awful? Is that really such a sin?
The beating heart of the horror story drums out a single steady message: in this world, my friend, you never know the price of the ticket.
Sometimes you pay a little. Sometimes you pay a lot. Sometimes, all you have.
Thanks for reading.
The October 2015 Lineup
Vampire Lake by Norman Partridge
Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl
The Monkey’s Paw by W.W. Jacobs
Child’s Play by Villy Sorensen
Mars Will Have Blood by Marc Laidlaw
Dress of White Silk by Richard Matheson
The God of Dark Laughter by Michael Chabon
The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell
A Home Away From Home by Robert Bloch
The Glass Eye by John Keir Cross
Children of the Kingdom by T.E.D. Klein
The Other Town by Steven Millhauser
The Sole Survivor by Rod Serling
The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe
Objects in Dreams May Be Closer Than They Appear by Lisa Tuttle
The Book of Irrational Numbers by Michael Marshall Smith
When the Clock Strikes by Tanith Lee
The Boar Hunt by Jose Vasconcelos
The River Styx Runs Upstream by Dan Simmons
The Man Upstairs by Ray Bradbury
The Hitch-Hiker by Lucille Fletcher
A Hand to Hold by Stefani Miller
October 30, 2015
The October Country: Oct. 30: “A Hand to Hold” by Stefani Miller
In celebration of the month of October, I’ll be sharing 31 of my favorite spooky, eerie and creepy stories, one per day. The stories will range over an array of genres: horror, suspense, science fiction, mysteries and dark fantasy.
The October Country
…that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain…
— Ray Bradbury
October 30:
A Hand to Hold by Stefani Miller
Found In:
Unpublished, Winner 7th Annual Writer’s Digest Pop Fiction Award: Horror Genre
Opening Line:
“Eugene always liked the color pink.”
A Hand to Hold is a dark and haunting little gem, chosen by Joe Lansdale as the winning entry in the 2012 Writer’s Digest Pop Fiction contest for horror stories (my own entry, sadly, didn’t place…damn you Joe Lansdale). The story is all the more startling considering that Miller acknowledged that this was her sole foray into horror writing. Like Mary Shelley, she wrote her tale of terror on a dare.
Perhaps more young women ought to take on dares to write creepy stories.
A Hand to Hold begins with Eugene standing alone in a park, watching the young children play, and right away we understand that Eugene is not a very friendly chap.
“No mother would ever notice him standing in the distance, his eyes trained on her and her spawn. No child dared run near him for fear of strangers. Or perhaps they, in their youthful acuteness, could see past the facade…He never planned which child to take. It was purely based on chance encounters, small talk on the street corner or, like today, attracting his eye with a bright swatch of fabric. His targets were anyone, everyone. All they had to do was cross his path.”
Lydia has taken her young daughter, Jemma, to this very park. Lydia is a helicopter parent, always hovering at the edges. She knows she’s overprotective, but she refuses to be that mother who lets her child get snatched away.
Unfortunately, she’s already made a mistake, one she isn’t even aware of making.
“Just the other day Jemma broke free of Lydia’s grasp and ran to pick up a glove a man had dropped on the path. Well-dressed and a bit dashing, Lydia appraised the man as handsome and old-fashioned. He patted Jemma on the head and whispered something to her. At that precise moment, a shriek arose from the playground, and Lydia turned to follow it, missing her only clue.”
Eugene has selected his next victim.
What Miller does so well is presenting a truly hideous scenario in such a disembodied fashion. The sentences move from one to the next dispassionately, recording events in such a way that makes the reader squirm. Even the rhetorical flourishes are muted. Hitchcock said suspense was two characters at a table and beneath the table a bomb that only one character and the audience knows about. Miller executes this trick nicely, showing us Eugene, showing us Lydia and Jemma, and showing us the bomb.
Eugene, it turns out, is a janitor at Parker Grove Elementary School. But he wasn’t always a lowly janitor. He was once a pediatrician. The mother of a homeless boy he tried to save had stabbed him with a used needle, and Eugene contracted AIDS. A nasty turn of events that subsequently colored Eugene’s outlook on life. Since this incident, he’d taken a rather dim view of children and their parents.
“He’d wanted to move on the six-year-old sooner, but he’d been busy Saturday with a nine-year-old he’d caught stealing gum from the local grocery. Systematically he’d broken each finger on the child’s right hand at the knuckle; the kid denied stealing until the pinkie.”
Unfortunately for the boy, the pain doesn’t end there.
Jemma attends Parker Grove, where Eugene has watched her patiently. And when the time is right, he decides to make his move.
After disabling Lydia’s car at her home, ensuring that she will be late picking her daughter up at school, Eugene offers to wait with young Jemma for her parents to arrive. Once they are alone, he guides her to a maintenance shed that he has converted into his personal “workroom.”
“The girl opened her mouth to protest, her eyes suddenly widening with the realization that this was not what it seemed. Eugene clapped a hand over her mouth.
Lifting three loose boards, he created a large black hole in the middle of the floor. He shoved the girl down into the hole and followed on her heels.
But only he would emerge.”
In the depths of that horrid shed, Eugene strangles the poor girl to death. But not before performing a rather gruesome bit of surgery.
After a frantic and fruitless day of searching for their daughter, Lydia and her ex-husband arrive home defeated and spent. A box sits on their doorstep. When they open it up, Jay vomits upon the sidewalk. Lydia faints.
“Inside the box was Jemma’s little hand, between the fingers lay a note.
“For my over protective mother, the hand to which you so desperately hold.”
I’ve always understood what appealed to Mr. Lansdale about this story. He himself once said that in writing his own brilliant masterpiece, The Night They Missed the Horror Show, he strove to pen a “story that didn’t blink.” Few stories achieve such a goal. Even the most hellbent of writers tend to pull their punches. A Hand to Hold certainly does not. It looks bleakly and long into the dark abyss of the worst of our fears, and it calmly records whatever it finds.
Not the kind of tale to tell to grandma. But a noteworthy reminder that there is indeed evil in the world. Sometimes right next door.
More October Stories
For the month of October, you can download
Tyler Miller’s The Other Side of the Door
FREE.
In celebration of my favorite month, I’m giving away my collection The Other Side of the Door. These are stories inspired by so many of my favorite writers: Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, Richard Matheson, Shirley Jackson.
Stories like the award-winning Til Death Do Us, about a man who believes he’s gotten away with his wife’s murder…at least until her severed finger is delivered to him in a box. Somebody knows the truth…
Or another first-place winner: Not Dead, Not Even Past, the story of a small-town sheriff confronted with a string of suicides he can’t explain. Each of the victims share a disturbing trait: no matter how they died, all of them have lungs full of water.
I loved working on these stories, and I truly believe that you’ll enjoy reading them just as much as I enjoyed writing them. Check them out. For the entire month, they’re free. What have you got to lose?
Except a little sleep…
October 29, 2015
The October Country: Oct. 29th: “The Hitch-Hiker” by Lucille Fletcher
In celebration of the month of October, I’ll be sharing 31 of my favorite spooky, eerie and creepy stories, one per day. The stories will range over an array of genres: horror, suspense, science fiction, mysteries and dark fantasy.
The October Country
…that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain…
— Ray Bradbury
October 29:
The Hitch-Hiker by Lucille Fletcher
Found In:
The Hitch-Hiker
Opening Line:
“Goodbye, son. Good luck to you, my boy.”
In one way or another, all of us are likely familiar with the basic plot of Lucille Fletcher’s marvelous radio play The Hitch-Hiker. Produced for radio by the great Orson Welles, adapted into a Twilight Zone episode by Rod Serling (whose story, The Sole Survivor, we examined earlier this month), The Hitch-Hiker is one of those rare stories that sinks into the cultural conscience. You know it even if you’ve never heard the original before.
Fletcher was lucky enough for this to happen twice. Her other great radio drama, Sorry, Wrong Number, is another classic whose plot has been reused again and again in various guises.
The story begins with Ronald Adams leaving his mother on a cross-country trip. A nice, leisurely drive from Brooklyn to California. That’s a lot of open road, for sure, but a fine way to see the country. No worries.
But then:
Crossing Brooklyn Bridge that morning in the rain, I saw a man leaning against the cables. He seemed to be waiting for a lift. There were spots of fresh rain on his shoulders. He was carrying a cheap, overnight bag in one hand., He was thin, nondescript with a cap pulled down over his eyes. He stepped off the walk and if I hadn’t swerved – if I hadn’t swerved – I’d have hit him. I almost did!
Well that will certainly wake you up. But no matter. Ronald swerved, the man wasn’t hit, and all is well with the world.
Except:
Now I would have forgotten him completely except that just an hour later, while crossing the Pulaski Skyway over the Jersey Flats, I saw him again – at least he looked like the same person. He was standing now with one thumb pointing west. I couldn’t figure out how he’d got there, but I thought maybe one of those fast trucks had picked him up, beaten me to the Skyway, and let him off. I – I didn’t stop for him. Then, late that night, I saw him again. It was on the new Pennsylvania Turnpike between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. It’s 265 miles long with a very high speed limit. I was just slowing down for one of the tunnels when I saw him standing under an arclight by the side of the road. I could see him quite distinctly – the bag, the cap, even the spots of fresh rain spattered over his shoulders. He hailed me this time.
Surely, by now, you’re realizing that you know this story. Consider for a moment that The Hitch-Hiker was written and produced originally in 1941. It’s had seventy-odd years to permeate the culture. That anyone is familiar with it today is a testament to Fletcher’s immense skill as a storyteller. I could list on one hand the number of radio plays that have had such success.
Ronald is rather spooked by now. Especially given the hitch-hiker’s eerie Helloooo…Hellooo that he calls out whenever Ronald drives by. But Ronald isn’t having any of it. He speeds past the hitch-hiker and continues on his drive.
When he stops for gas, he asks the attendant (in 1941, friends, gas stations outside of Oregon still had attendants) if there’s been any rain lately. The hitch-hiker’s jacket is spotted with rain.
“Not a drop of rain all week.”
“Oh no? I suppose that hasn’t done your business any harm?”
“No, people drive through here all kinds of weather. Mostly business, though. Ain’t many pleasure cars out on the turnpike this season of the year.”
“I guess not. What about hitchhikers?”
“Hitchhikers? Here?”
“Why? What’s the matter? Don’t you ever see any?”
“A guy’d be a fool to start out to hitchhike on this road. Look at it!”
But Ronald knows better. He sees that hitch-hiker everywhere. In Ohio. In Missouri. In Oklahoma. In Texas, he picks up a hitcher, a young woman, and offers to take her as far as Amarillo. She looks like she knows her way around hitching, and Ronald asks her a few hypotheticals. Such as: if a guy like Ronald is driving a steady 45 mph (not exactly a lead foot, our Ronald), and a hitcher snags a ride with someone doing 65, couldn’t they consistently get ahead of the dude driving like his grandmother?
Well…gee, the girl says. What a silly thought.
Then Ronald spots the hitch-hiker again.
“Did you see him too?”
“See who?”
“That man! Standing beside the barbed-wire fence!”
“I didn’t see anybody.”
“Right there!”
“It was nothin’, just a barbed-wire fence. What’d you think you was doin’ tryin’ to run into that barbed-wire fence?”
“There was a man there I tell ya! A thin, gray man with an overnight bag in his hand. I was trying to run him down.”
Ronald’s losing his shit. But wouldn’t you?
You remember how this story ends, don’t you? Weary of his drive, Ronald finally pulls over and decides to call his mother. Let her know how the trip is going. Except when he tries to call through, a voice he doesn’t know answers.
No, he can’t speak to Mrs. Adams at the moment. She’s in the hospital. She’s had a nervous breakdown.
“Nervous breakdown? My mother doesn’t have -“
“It’s all taken place since the death of her oldest son Ronald.”
“The death of her oldest son Ronald? Hey! What is this? What number is this?”
“This is Beechwood 9970. It’s all been very sudden. He was killed six days ago in an automobile accident on the Brooklyn Bridge.”
Poor Ronald, he swerved away from that hitcher on the bridge alright. But he swerved a little too hard. As the story closes, Ronald is trying to decide what to do. Whatever he decides, he knows the hitch-hiker is a part of his future.
The vast, soulless night of New Mexico. A million stars are in the sky. Ahead of me stretch a thousand miles of empty mesa and mountains, prairies, desert. Somewhere among them, he is waiting for me – somewhere. Somewhere I shall know who he is and who I am.
Until next time, radio fans…
More October Stories
For the month of October, you can download
Tyler Miller’s The Other Side of the Door
FREE.
In celebration of my favorite month, I’m giving away my collection The Other Side of the Door. These are stories inspired by so many of my favorite writers: Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, Richard Matheson, Shirley Jackson.
Stories like the award-winning Til Death Do Us, about a man who believes he’s gotten away with his wife’s murder…at least until her severed finger is delivered to him in a box. Somebody knows the truth…
Or another first-place winner: Not Dead, Not Even Past, the story of a small-town sheriff confronted with a string of suicides he can’t explain. Each of the victims share a disturbing trait: no matter how they died, all of them have lungs full of water.
I loved working on these stories, and I truly believe that you’ll enjoy reading them just as much as I enjoyed writing them. Check them out. For the entire month, they’re free. What have you got to lose?
Except a little sleep…
October 28, 2015
The October Country: Oct. 28th: “The Man Upstairs” by Ray Bradbury
In celebration of the month of October, I’ll be sharing 31 of my favorite spooky, eerie and creepy stories, one per day. The stories will range over an array of genres: horror, suspense, science fiction, mysteries and dark fantasy.
The October Country
…that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain…
— Ray Bradbury
October 28:
The Man Upstairs by Ray Bradbury
Found In:
The October Country
Opening Line:
“He remembered how carefully and expertly Grandmother would fondle the cold cut guts of the chicken and withdraw the marvels therein; the wet shining loops of meat-smelling intestine, the muscled lump of heart, the gizzard with the collection of seeds in it.”
We started this celebration of October with Ray Bradbury’s The Jar. It seems only fitting to include another fabulous tale by the great master of dark October stories. The Man Upstairs hails from the same collection. If you’ve never read The October Country, and especially if you have enjoyed the stories covered this month here at Black Cat Moan, then my humble suggestion is that you should track down a copy of Bradbury’s masterpiece. It’s well worth your time.
The Man Upstairs opens with a somewhat grisly scene: a careful description of the gutting and butchering of a chicken, an activity the eleven-year-old Douglas Spaulding rather enjoys. Indeed, he has many questions for Grandmother concerning the inner workings of animals. People too.
“Grammy,” Douglas said at last. “Am I like that inside?” He pointed at the chicken.
Grandmother runs a bed and breakfast. It’s the slow part of the year, but a new visitor arrives asking for a room. A man.
“Cold gray eyes in a long, smooth, walnut-colored face gazed upon Douglas. The man was tall, thin, and carried a suitcase, a brief case, an umbrella under one bent arm, gloves rich and thick and gray on his fingers, and wore a horribly new straw hat.”
Douglas doesn’t much care for this odd-looking gent, but Grandmother is an old hand at taking borders. She doesn’t turn away money. The man takes an upstairs room.
The new guest is a bit odd. He eats with his own silverware, for example. Except it isn’t silver. His forks and knives and spoons are made of wood. And when Douglas brings his bags upstairs, the man pays him a tip…in pennies. In fact, he has no silver change at all, only copper pennies.
Strangest of all, however, is what Douglas sees the following day when peering through a stained glass window in the upper levels of Grandmother’s house. The window is built with six-inch panes of glass, each a different color. Douglas gazes out the window at the world below, and who should happen to stroll by but the new tenant, Mr. Koberman.
“Douglas squinted.
“The red glass did things to Mr. Koberman. His face, his suit, his hands. The clothes seemed to melt away. Douglas almost believed, for one terrible moment, that he could see inside Mr. Koberman. And what he saw made him lean wildly against the small red pane, blinking.”
Mr. Koberman spots Douglas spying, and though Douglas does his best to pretend he was doing know such thing, Mr. Koberman knows better. Later int he day, as Douglas is playing outside, something crashes through the that same window, shattering the colored panes. Douglas is blamed, but the boy knows the truth. About who broke the panes, and about Mr. Koberman too.
That night, Grandfather comes for dinner. The family and the boarders eat together, and Grandfather, who works at the newspaper office, enlightens the guests with the local news.
“It’s enough to make an old newspaper editor prick up his ears,” he said, eyeing them all. “That young Miss Larson, lived across the ravine, now. Found her dead three days ago for no reason, just funny kinds of tattoos all over her, and a facial expression that would make Dante cringe. And that other young lady, what was her name? Whitely? She disappeared and never did come back.”
After dinner, Mr. Koberman excuses himself and leaves. He works nights, another oddity. Sleeps all day, works all night. In fact, he’s a pretty heavy sleeper.
“As was his custom every day when Grandma was gone, Douglas yelled outside Mr. Koberman’s door for a full three minutes. As usual, there was no response. The silence was horrible.
“He ran downstairs, got the pass-key, a silver fork, and the three pieces of colored glass he had saved from the shattered window. He fitted the key to the lock and swung the door slowly open.”
Inside the darkened room, Douglas takes a closer look at the sleeping Mr. Koberman, another look through the various colored panes of glass. And he confirms what he saw before. Mr. Koberman looks like a man on the outside, looks just like you and me, but on the inside, which is made visible through the colored glass, Mr. Koberman isn’t like you and me at all. No sir. Huh uh.
Over everything was a blue glass silence.
“Wait there,” Douglas said.
He walked down to the kitchen, pulled open the great squeaking drawer and picked out the sharpest, biggest knife.
Very calmly he walked into the hall, climbed back up the stairs again, opened the door to Mr. Koberman’s room, went in, and closed it, holding the sharp knife in one hand.
Turns out, young Douglas has paid pretty close attention to Grandmother in the kitchen. And he performs a rather rudimentary but more or less successful gutting and butchering of odd Mr. Koberman. What he takes out of the man looks nothing like the organs that should be there. In fact, Douglas brings them down and shows Grandmother when she returns, and she confirms that she’s never seen anything like them before.
Then he asks for his piggy-bank.
A while later, he tells Grandfather he’s got something to show them. They march upstairs and into Mr. Koberman’s room. Grandfather, shocked, quickly calls the coroner.
The coroner shivered and said, “Koberman’s dead, all right.”
His assistant sweated. “Did you see those things in the pans of water and in the wrapping paper?”
“Oh, my god, my God, yes, I saw them.”
“Christ.”
The coroner bent over Mr. Koberman’s body again. “This better be kept secret, boys. It wasn’t murder. It was a mercy the boy acted. God knows what might have happened if he hadn’t.”
“What was Koberman? A vampire? A monster?”
The coroner isn’t sure. He’s only sure Koberman wasn’t human. Especially given that Douglas claims Mr. Koberman remained fully alive during the dissection. What killed him wasn’t being disemboweled. What killed him was the couple pounds of silver coins Douglas dumped from his piggy bank into Mr. Koberman’s open body.
“I think Douglas made a wise investment,” said the coroner…
More October Stories
For the month of October, you can download
Tyler Miller’s The Other Side of the Door
FREE.
In celebration of my favorite month, I’m giving away my collection The Other Side of the Door. These are stories inspired by so many of my favorite writers: Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, Richard Matheson, Shirley Jackson.
Stories like the award-winning Til Death Do Us, about a man who believes he’s gotten away with his wife’s murder…at least until her severed finger is delivered to him in a box. Somebody knows the truth…
Or another first-place winner: Not Dead, Not Even Past, the story of a small-town sheriff confronted with a string of suicides he can’t explain. Each of the victims share a disturbing trait: no matter how they died, all of them have lungs full of water.
I loved working on these stories, and I truly believe that you’ll enjoy reading them just as much as I enjoyed writing them. Check them out. For the entire month, they’re free. What have you got to lose?
Except a little sleep…
Artwork above by Nelson Hernandez
October 27, 2015
The October Country: Oct. 27th: “The Bird” By Tyler Miller
In celebration of the month of October, I’ll be sharing 31 of my favorite spooky, eerie and creepy stories, one per day. The stories will range over an array of genres: horror, suspense, science fiction, mysteries and dark fantasy.
The October Country
…that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain…
— Ray Bradbury
October 27:
The Bird by Tyler Miller
Found In:
Stranger Calls: Dark Tales
Opening Line:
“Ever since he’d seen the bird, nobody took Miguel seriously anymore.”
Ah, yes. The shameless aggrandizing of the author.
The Bird is my story. Originally published in Abomination Magazine and later collected in Stranger Calls: Dark Tales. In which case, it’s fair to ask if what you’re reading is little more than an extended advertisement. Which, I suppose, it is. But not one any different from the 26 short story reviews that came before it.
And, besides…this is a good story. I promise.
Miguel used to be well-known and well-liked in Chelan. Ran an auto-shop out of his garage, did good work and charged people a fair price. People liked his wife, Tatia, too, and when they brought their cars to Miguel they’d often sit out in the shade with Tatia and drink fresh horchata she made herself.
A good life.
Then, one day, Miguel and his brother Raphael took a day hike deep into the woods. Only Miguel returned. And the story he told was, to put it lightly, hard to believe: he claimed a gigantic, towering bird had killed his brother. A hideous, winged monster.
You can imagine how people took that.
“After seeing the bird, people in town crossed to the other side of the street to avoid him. conversations wound down when he entered a room, the way a radio signal quickly fades when the cord is yanked from the wall. Children ran towards him in supermarkets, flapping their arms outrageously and cawing in high-pitched voices before their mothers could corral them once more, always muttering hurried apologies and never looking Miguel in the eyes. After the bird, they never looked him in the eyes.”
Miguel hasn’t been formally charged with anything, but informally, unofficially, the townspeople have already tried him and found him guilty. Business has dried up. His friends have abandoned him, all but one: Luis. And Miguel has taken refuge in the bottle, sleeping the days away on the couch as his marriage crumbles.
Tatia turns to Luis for help.
“She told Luis everything. The swift accumulation of empty Cuervo bottles beneath the kitchen sink. The midmorning naps and afternoon naps and evening naps, all of them overlapping at the ends and becoming one long hibernation, interrupted only by the search for more tequila. And, what worried her most, the dark look in Miguel’s eyes which she had never seen before.”
Luis, no doubt, means well. He’s a good friend, after all. But in the end, his attentions focus on Tatia instead of Miguel. Which leads about where you think it would.
One day, rising out of his stupor, Miguel realizes that his wife is not home. He calls her work, and discovers she is not at work either. Hasn’t been all week. So Miguel takes a drive. He finds Tatia’s car parked at Luis’s house.
“Miguel went back to his truck.
“He drove straight home.
“At home, he went to the bedroom and to the closet. From the top shelf, way at the back, he took down his rifle.”
Not, however, to shoot his wife. No, Miguel is going hunting for bird.
It takes him two months, but he finds what he’s looking for. And he returns to town, confident now. When Tatia leaves from school after work, she sees Miguel waiting for her in the parking lot. She apologizes for her indiscretion, weeping, but he tells her to save her tears.
“You no believe in me, and that is why you go. It is not your fault, Chiquita. I lose your faith. I lose it when I come back out of those woods. I lose my brother, and that I know, but I also lose your father, and that I not be knowing until you and Luis. Then I realize. I know.”
Miguel forgives her, but he tells Tatia something else: he has found the accursed bird.
“That is where you been for two months? Hunting for the bird?”
“For you, Chiquita. For your faith in me. So you know to believe again.”
He will show her the bird, and her faith in him will be restored.
She saw the truth etched in his eyes and realized it was the same truth that had stumbled out of the woods with him all those months ago.
“Show me.”
Miguel takes Tatia deep into the woods. And for a time, Tatia doubts, but eventually they come to the bird. And Tatia knows the truth.
“The bird saw them, or smelled them, and suddenly it rose onto its feet. Its head stretched out of its feathers, a pale, naked pink orb with two brilliant black eyes bigger than bowling balls. It kept rising and rising, and Tatia imagined it might not stop until it blotted out the sky. The bird’s wings rustled, the sound scratchy and heavy, and then they expanded in a flurry, snapping outward so quickly Tatia started.”
Not to worry. Miguel has managed to chain the bird to a neighboring tree, keeping it from being able to attack them. For a time, the two stand and stare, entranced at the sight of this monstrous beast. Tatia realizes that Miguel had told the truth all along. She never should have doubted him.
But Miguel’s motives aren’t exactly pure.
“She never saw the knife. Indeed, the blade moved so quickly and was so sharp she hardly felt the slice at all, only a single, sharp sting and then the warmth of blood running down her leg. She twisted her neck around, wondering what forest insect had bitten her, and felt shock at seeing the back of her pant leg turning deep crimson and the blood leaking over her shoe and into the dirt.”
Miguel’s blade has hobbled her, and Tatia falls to the ground, unable to stand and walk. Calmly, cruelly, Miguel crosses the clearing and unchains the bird.
He watched the bird follow the trail of blood.
“Now you believe.”
Definitely not an Oprah ending. Sorry, folks.
More October Stories
For the month of October, you can download
Tyler Miller’s The Other Side of the Door
FREE.
(Or you can purchase the collection Stranger Calls, to read The Bird in full)
In celebration of my favorite month, I’m giving away my collection The Other Side of the Door. These are stories inspired by so many of my favorite writers: Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, Richard Matheson, Shirley Jackson.
Stories like the award-winning Til Death Do Us, about a man who believes he’s gotten away with his wife’s murder…at least until her severed finger is delivered to him in a box. Somebody knows the truth…
Or another first-place winner: Not Dead, Not Even Past, the story of a small-town sheriff confronted with a string of suicides he can’t explain. Each of the victims share a disturbing trait: no matter how they died, all of them have lungs full of water.
I loved working on these stories, and I truly believe that you’ll enjoy reading them just as much as I enjoyed writing them. Check them out. For the entire month, they’re free. What have you got to lose?
Except a little sleep…
October 26, 2015
The October Country: Oct. 26th: “The River Styx Runs Upstream” by Dan Simmons
In celebration of the month of October, I’ll be sharing 31 of my favorite spooky, eerie and creepy stories, one per day. The stories will range over an array of genres: horror, suspense, science fiction, mysteries and dark fantasy.
The October Country
…that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain…
— Ray Bradbury
October 26:
The River Styx Runs Upstream by Dan Simmons
Found In:
Prayers to Broken Stones
Opening Line:
“I loved my mother very much.”
This story has the distinction of being the piece of writing that made Dan Simmons’ career. In his early thirties, Simmons had had no success as a writer, and he wrote one last story and submitted it in a contest at a writing conference. He told his wife: either it wins or I give up on writing. Lucky for the world, it won.
The River Styx is set in a future where resurrection has become a reality (albeit a shaky one, kind of like the new release of Windows…it works, but clearly there are bugs in this new technology). Our narrator is a man looking back on the death of his mother, when he was eight-years-old.
Simmons gives us one of the hands-down best opening paragraphs:
“I loved my mother very much. After her funeral, after the coffin was lowered, the family went home and waited for her return.”
Personally, I think it’s that second clause (after the coffin was lowered) that makes this a home run. It gives an extra moment between the setup and the payoff, a little shudder-step, while at the same time giving us a concrete image that juxtaposes the beginning and ending of the sentence. That clause is the stroke of a writer who knows exactly what he’s doing.
And Mother returns. Though not exactly like she was before. And at great expense. Resurrection isn’t cheap. Our narrator’s father must fork over a quarter of his income for years in order to afford bringing his wife back from the dead.
Not everyone is pleased. Our narrator’s aunts and uncles are either wholly against or silently dubious. Our narrator’s older brother, Simon, is uncertain, reserved and, ultimately, unconvinced.
“Then it was our turn to hug Mother. Aunt Helen moved Simon forward, and I was still hanging onto Simon’s hand. He kissed her on the cheek and quickly moved back to Father’s side. I threw my arms around her neck and kissed her on the lips. I had missed her.
“Her skin wasn’t cold. It was just different.”
The Resurrectionists tell them to think of it as a stroke. Mother won’t be Mother, not exactly, but she’s alive. Sort of.
“For the first week, Father slept with Mother in the same room where they had always slept. In the morning his face would sag and he would snap at us while we ate our cereal. Then he moved into his study and slept on the old divan in there.”
Nooky with the living dead is likely a real bummer. Father, clearly, isn’t going there. In addition to sleeping on the couch, he takes up drinking heavily, which leads to a lot of shouting and hair-trigger explosions.
It’s not that Mother necessarily does anything wrong. She’s not even particularly scary, not in an overt way. Certainly not intentionally. She’s just…off.
“Mother never blinked. At first I didn’t notice; but then I began to feel uncomfortable when I saw that she never blinked. But it didn’t make me love her any less.”
Simmons weaves two strands through this story that are critical. First, that resurrection more or less sucks. There’s no real upside here. The dead are just husks. They don’t do anything. Second, that our narrator still very much loves Mother.
Both of these will be important.
Eventually, Simon convinces our narrator to run away. He’s had enough. But the boys do not get very far from home. They bring a tent, and they camp out, but in the morning our narrator tells Simon he’s returning home. Simon, reluctantly, agrees.
It’s not just Mother, see. It’s the fights at school, the dirty looks from neighbors, the rumors and the gossip. Resurrection is still pretty new, and while there are more and more of the Resurrected walking the streets every day, the Living have yet to accept them fully.
And one day, Simon can take it no longer. On a family trip to the coast, Simon hangs himself under the boardwalk.
“I don’t know what made me look up. Footsteps from above. A slight turning, turning; something turning in the shadows. I could see where he had climbed the crossbraces, wedged a sneaker here, lifted himself there to the wide timber. It would not have been hard. We’d climbed like that a thousand times. I stared right into his face, but it was the clothesline I recognized first.”
Father, naturally, doesn’t take this well. And though he lives with it for a time, he too eventually commits suicide.
Our narrator, his family devastated, moves on with his life. Takes a decent job. And tries to make a life. But it’s hard.
“I used to have shares in a condominium in one of the last lighted sections of the city, but when our old house came up for sale I jumped at the chance to buy it. I’ve kept many of the old furnishings and replaced others so that it’s almost the way it used to be. Keeping up an old house like that is expensive, but I don’t spend my money foolishly. After work a lot of guys from the Institute go out to bars, but I don’t. After I’ve put away my equipment and scrubbed down the steel tables, I go straight home. My family is there. They’re waiting for me.”
Few tales end with such soul-shuddering final lines.
More October Stories
For the month of October, you can download
Tyler Miller’s The Other Side of the Door
FREE.
In celebration of my favorite month, I’m giving away my collection The Other Side of the Door. These are stories inspired by so many of my favorite writers: Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, Richard Matheson, Shirley Jackson.
Stories like the award-winning Til Death Do Us, about a man who believes he’s gotten away with his wife’s murder…at least until her severed finger is delivered to him in a box. Somebody knows the truth…
Or another first-place winner: Not Dead, Not Even Past, the story of a small-town sheriff confronted with a string of suicides he can’t explain. Each of the victims share a disturbing trait: no matter how they died, all of them have lungs full of water.
I loved working on these stories, and I truly believe that you’ll enjoy reading them just as much as I enjoyed writing them. Check them out. For the entire month, they’re free. What have you got to lose?
Except a little sleep…
