2nd Anthology of Horror: Trees And Other Dystopias

2nd Anthology of Horror

Trees and other Dystopias

Fruitjack

Published by Xinoeph

Billed as horror, the tales that comprise this anthology cover a broad range of subjects from humor to sci-fi / fantasy. Settings are unified by geography every so often. Themes are revisited and contrasted.

Equally as varied are my inspirations! Mad props go to Poe, Lovecraft, Blackwood, and Alvin Schwartz – short story writers whose work I devour. I extend credit, too, to those whose names are not known. I refer to folklorists and their immortal, blood-soaked yarns, passed from campfire to campfire, that kept me awake so many nights.

You’ll find Easter Eggs in the forms of call-backs or shout-outs to my muses and even to my 1st anthology of horror (relax; you don’t need to read it). The NAZIs resume their role of lurking, creeping malevolence. Wendigos / Skinwalkers may or may not make cameos. As do ghosts, aliens, cults, and evil of ‘everyday’ pedigree.

Copyright © 2018 by Fruitjack

All rights reserved.

No part of this work may be reproduced, transferred, and / or used in any form (e.g., graphic, electronic, and / or mechanical) without the prior written permission of the publisher, except for reviewers, who may quote brief passages.

Submit requests for photocopying, recording, taping, or storing (e.g., databases, websites, and / or other systems), either in whole or in part, to the publisher via e–mail.

This is a work of fiction; contents such as: names, characters, settings, and / or events – as depicted by this work – are products of the author. Any resemblance to actual events, settings, and / or persons, either living or dead, is coincidental.

All fonts are provided by Google Fonts and are used according to the terms of the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License.

Cover: To Watch the Galaxy © Sing-er Liu | Dreamstime.com

Published by Xinoeph

[email protected]

Preface

By the summer of 2012, after a year’ s worth of post-doc’ing at Colorado’s NREL, I realized my days writing fanfic were over. I didn’t mean to create an anthology of horror, though, that was an accident. Seriously…. OK, you got me! Aye, all along, wasn’t it my aim to recreate – in spirit if not in flesh & blood – the joy I felt as a kid when I’d get my hands on the latest booklets The Watermill Press sold to us as fairs? With the added mature / adult bent, of course. But I enjoyed the experience that produced my 1st. And I plotted to write my 2nd ‘soon’.

Well if that wasn’t five years ago.

:(

Eerily, my delay wasn’t due to writer’s block. Quite the contrary – I produced drafts of twenty stories – drafts that I whittled into the 9 that ‘made the cut’. Wilakers! The ‘leftovers’ are enough to fill my 3rd. Eventually. (I don’t make promises to humans; only vaguely worded threats & such.)

The culprit of my trouble? RL! My progress was up-ended by sequences of events beyond my control. Briefly, I survived: injuries, moves, struggles to find a job, moves, struggles to keep that job, and, ultimately, promotion into my current & cushy academic position. Oh, there were breakups and reunions as well as other, intimate epiphanies. Enough of that! The grit stays out of the spotlight. I require anonymity to function amidst society.

Billed as horror, the tales that comprise this anthology cover a broad range of subjects from humor to sci-fi / fantasy. Settings are unified by geography every so often. Themes are revisited and contrasted. You’ll find Easter Eggs in the forms of call-backs or shout-outs to my muses and even to my 1st anthology of horror (relax; you don’t need to read it). The NAZIs resume their role of lurking, creeping malevolence. Wendigos / Skinwalkers may or may not make cameos. As do ghosts, aliens, cults, and evil of ‘everyday’ pedigree.

Equally as varied are my inspirations! Mad props go to Poe, Lovecraft, Blackwood, and Alvin Schwartz – short story writers whose work I devour. I extend credit, too, to those whose names are not known. I refer to folklorists and their immortal, blood-soaked yarns, passed from campfire to campfire, that kept me awake so many nights.

The collection opens with Trees, a retelling of a story I heard as a Boy Scout. Over the years I revisited and revised it, changing the characters and the settings, altering everything but the conceit, the trope at its heart. It’s about kids / teens hiking through a wilderness. But they upset the forces that control the land. And the land fights back.

We switch from South to North American wildernesses with Dog Walks Ahead. It, too, is a retelling of folklore – that classic tale of the dog leading the hiker into something awful. The twist is the contrast of the ghastly dog and the very real and very ordinary evil of man.

Isn’t it just too much? So it’s the job of Follow The Traffic to let us breathe. It’s a dark comedy of errors followed by the longest and craziest trip through the guts of New Jersey that you’ll likely ever read. It may be the only such travelogue you’ll ever read. So take it for what it is.

And then we reach that point, that point from where we cannot return. Resist? Fools! Gasp as we sink into the absurdity of Blue Beelzebub, a tale that doesn’t give a hoot what y’all think of it. The narrative takes the shape of a magazine article vs. a detective story. The objective is to unravel the mystery of a game created by cultists that contains the unspeakable and the unnamable. What is that video game about? Why would anybody make it? Why would anybody play it? Although not a single of act of violence is depicted, it is implied as it toys with the idea of snuff so it may be triggery – beware!

Look, every anthology I’ve ever read gets saddled by a weepy romantic epic – tragic, doomed, whatever. Please Come Back is haunted not by ghosts or by cults but by prejudice. It’s an intimate portrait of loss, and gain, and acceptance – whose backdrop is the apocalyptic West. Just imagine if the last two years became the next twenty years - or longer. As civilization retreats, and the world itself regresses & decays, all of the progress that we attained simply vanishes.

The Jeffreys came to me as a dream. Sort of. Yeah the dream gave me the plot but not the story. I struggled to understand how to tell its tale. The theme is that technological advancement is not identical to sociological advancement. The execution is that of a story-within-a-story. The frame let me wax poetic about the Colorado countryside; it follows a geologist as they hike into a ghost town where they spend the night at the saloon. There they find a journal with a secret to say about that ghost town – if only it weren’t missing every other word!

Ogden’s Domain may be the most oblique certainly the most esoteric of the tales. It wasn’t always so cryptic. It’s juvenilia that I wrote between my junior and senior years at high school then expanded for this collection. Originally, the kids seek the hideout of the monster responsible for their town’s decline. The monster is / was a crude sort of shape-shifter who steals faces. I didn’t know squat about wendigos or skinwalkers when I penned it way back when. For the upgrade I opted to make as much of it ambiguous. Even the monster may not necessarily be a monster. Y’all need to unread what you read.

The Girl in The Window is also about an entity that fools & lures people into madness. Except that it’s 100% malevolent, 0% benevolent. No ambiguity! It’s also a love-letter to my favorite ghost-hunting show. Cthutlu forgive me for I sin! I live vicariously through the antics of the Ghost Adventures crew. Let me add that it’s equally inspired by Ancient Aliens. Yeah, the cult is at it again…. Damn those guys are creeps! Trigger – again – for suicide.

The collection closes with Exiles. We’re so obsessed by terrestrial and / or man-made cataclysms that we forget the universe is vast and violent, easily capable of swatting us out of existence. After the Sun is struck by a giant planet-like object, its composition changes and its age accelerates. Humanity has only a thousand or so years to get off of the Earth before it’s burnt to ash. Naturally, it’s the rich & powerful countries that will be rocketed to safety. Won’t be room enough for everyone, if you know what I mean.

-FJ

Trees

Cousins, Tom and Jack, shared a raft that (always) lagged. Ahead: brothers, Mark and Luke, competed to match each other’s pace. Beyond: the guide, Gabriel, paddled with wide, deep strokes while the runt, Zachary, ‘navigated’. All were into their 5ifth day at the Chaco.

Can we do it? Tom gasped for a lung’s worth of air. He brought the oar onto his lap, his fingers curling, his hands shaking. No. No.... No. With his sleeves he wiped the sweat by his eyes – the left eye, then, the right eye. "What, do you think the Chaco was a mistake?"

If it is? Too late to retreat. Jack did not want to speak of it. It was easier to paddle than to revisit the argument. They wanted that journey, despite alarms raised by the outpost, despite costs incurred by the mission. It was a chance to explore Paraguay and its mythical, exotic geography. Candidly, they ought to have factored their strengths and their weaknesses as a unit.

The domain of the Chaco was unlike any they experienced. Its air’s texture thickened as it oozed out of the wild. Its water’s mood swung by turns as either stretches of calm or flashes of storm. Sunlight, purified by trees, attained a palette to color that world as if it were a dream, more imagined, less real. Then, adding anxiety to uncertainty, they encountered silence – past the interplay of leaves, past the thatchwork of branches, where a universe of life should have echoed there lamented a void.

As that river approached a sink, it spread then it thinned, exploding into turbulence. The water roared everywhere. It whipped. It lashed. It threatened their doom.

They withdrew onto the coast.

Gabriel leapt from the raft, to the stream.

Zachary stood – and suppressed a fear that, if he slipped, he would be thrust into the sink. As a unit their ambition overwhelmed their experience, yet, watching the guide, he wanted to be worthy more than he wanted to be afraid. He stood less and less hesitantly; at last, defiantly, he jumped off the vessel.

They caught up and the two, man and boy alike, towed their craft ashore.

Mark and Luke came later to repeat the procedure the guide taught them at the trailhead. It was the coast not the river that endangered them if the procedure was not adhered to. They were careful. One minded the hazard at the front. One dragged the raft at the back. They knew to organize their labor efficiently. Only the perceptive might have discerned a pattern of division that emerged.

Everyone waited for Tom and Jack.

Aye, go to, Gabriel’s English resonated with a unique mixture of accents. Speech was fragmented, declarative. "Andale!"

You heard the boss, Zachary added; the boy often served as the man’s (impromptu) translator and enforcer.

Tom attempted a jump but completed a tumble. Jack vaulted then struggled against the flow. They arrived drenched from head to toe. Their vessel was dry by comparison.

"How do we reach Bahia Negra like this?" the guide whispered through a strain of Ache. He wished to advance as he did not approve of wandering those (seasonal) rivers of the Chaco. Nevertheless, he felt obligated to come. Perhaps, if his skill offset their ignorance, it ought to mitigate the offense of the intrusion.

Objections had been raised but the managers overruled the workers. Their outpost lived and died by tourism not by superstition. The journey was not forbidden. Simply – the journey was not practical. As the majority of adventurers preferred the Paraguay to the Chaco, few guides and explorers were adept to the trip’s peculiarities.

Who may have known its cause? Stories were told, from time, to time. Partially, it was due to war. Mostly, it was due to myth. Time and (un)familiarity obliterated distinctions between fact and fiction. For such or such a reason people avoided it. For aeons upon aeons it was ‘taboo’ to enter. ‘Til man became a stranger.

That. so far, was a kernel of truth as the trip would be dangerous entirely due to isolation.

Gabriel explained (via Zachary) that their next dip into a river would be after an hour’s walk. Jack, Mark, and Gabriel folded then stuffed their rafts into their packs. Tom, Luke, and Zachary toted their supplies.

Let’s go, Mark said to Luke as the unit assembled by the coast.

Portage was required where streams became innavigable. Since they embarked at the trailhead, obstacles were plentiful. Hazards, chiseled by erosion, conspired to hinder their progress and to astound their imagination.

It was absurd to believe nations battled throughout that geography. The evidence could not be denied, however, as they unearthed relics of conflicts at odd intervals. The smallest were bullets. The largest were tanks. Either Mark or Luke thought they spotted a jet; Gabriel would not let them approach it. All of it lay as if it were asleep, overgrown by the advance of Nature – especially – by the slaughter of trees.

Trees just appeared to burst out of the wreckage as if they had been the weapon that killed the enemy.

The party of five missionaries and one native traversed a stretch of dirt encompassed by creeks. The creeks had to be avoided as they were intermittent – some wet, some dry. They were part of the Chaco’s drainage – a network through which the rainy season’s harvest collected from the mountains and funneled to the oceans. The creeks formed the periphery of the network where they conveyed debris chewed off the Andes.

The jungle soared in front of them. Its entanglement was a cloak of green beyond which their eyes could not penetrate. Every so often that cover thinned enough to reveal azure skies with wispy, thin clouds. Or sun. Or moon. Or vistas of other, altogether melancholic colors. Colors whose power of association they could not comprehend.

At a rise they caught a glimpse of the Chaco as it merged into the horizon, dropping then curving onto the Paraguay, visible as a river of sparkle amid that splendor.

The trail took them into a field that encompassed a curiosity. Its mystery was so subtle, it was not until they stood at its midst that they realized just how out of kilter it appeared. At the center it was a circle of such extent and of such perfection it demanded a creator. At the periphery it was a width of soil maintained equally as artificially. At the boundary between that circle and that width of soil grew shoots.

If not by form, then by function, it served as a nursery for those glassy, fragile trees–to–be.

There, where they stood at the center of the field, they found a stump.

Although it had been a tree, it was not entombed into the earth. Rather, it was free. Free to move if it were not so heavy. Its roots, too, were not fixed and they curled upward, inward.

Maybe somebody set it here? Mark said of the stump, whose four roots were aligned with the mountains and the oceans.

Zachary hovered at the stump with his knees and his elbows latched onto its rim. The stump itself was pallid outside and wizened inside. And it was not rotted as it ought to be, given its exposure. But the wood was not familiar.

Where were the rings? he wondered.

The wood was decorated by rays instead of rings – and by an embedded ax.

The runt dared to nudge the ax but its bite was too deep to dislodge, swallowed, as it were, by the stump.

Careful, Luke warned, remember your skeleton?

Zachary sighed; he (almost) forgot that tank he climbed into then could not escape. It’s a stump not a skeleton.

"Na, it is a skeleton, Luke teased. Anyhow, Mark might be right, it might be a memorial."

Jack took a photograph of Zachary toying with the ax.

"A memorial? Tom wondered. Who’s memorial?" The ax had been weathered a century. As were the relics planted by war. Was that the age of the field? Younger? Older? Who might be coming to the field year after year to maintain it? Somebody cares for it, he concluded. What if they’re nearby?

Aye, go to, Gabriel grasped the runt by the shoulder as he implored them to withdraw. The site inspired a sense of dread. He, too, imagined it might be a ‘holy’ site, worshipped by somebody. And he did not want their invasion of it to be construed as disrespect. And it was imperative to make progress by noontime.

Soon the jungle enveloped them but the puzzle of the field was a matter of gossip. It rekindled their curiosity. For a while, at least, the goal of Bahia Negra was forgotten. Thoughts of their families at the capital were displaced by the fascination that brought them into the Chaco.

Look! Tom shouted. At the trunk of the tree.

Everyone paused to gawk at the site the teenager indicated.

Its trunk glinted; the texture smoother, the color lighter than a tree with bark should have been capable of. Its shaft was thinner and shorter than the average: from its base to its divergence it spanned at most six feet of height and three feet of width. Above its divergence, its trunk split into two, diametric limbs, like a ‘T’. Below its divergence, its limbs supported networks of thin, long leaves. Its weepy, droopy canopy sparkled through a dew that seemed to be drawn free from the air.

The tree was unique – its fruit, however, invited attention.

Anchored at the divergence – where they developed as a clump of four – where they grew into flattened sides and sharpened peaks – the fruit was a bounty that waited to be picked. Their skins were vibrant shades of reds disrupted by rays of deep, deep onyxes. Their vessels throbbed, they wished, they hoped, with a taste of nectar.

Yet to Gabriel the throb did not suggest juice, the color did not suggest edible, the hide – the hide with its spikes and its ridges – the hide did not suggest fruit.

OK, fruits, we see fruits, lots and lots of fruits, the guide said to rouse the unit away.

They continued – quietly – and the jungle reflected the restraint. They found the dearth not the wealth of life. It felt as if not a creature stirred. Especially by the ‘T’–trees that dominated the landscape.

They did not probe the situation. How would they? How could they? It was not expected – so what were they to do about it? The Chaco as a whole was uncorrupted by man’s encroachment. His comings and goings were transitory. War had been an episode – the exception not the rule. What the silence might or might not be, it was how the jungle operated. It was Nature. It was pure.

The clock tolled noon when they stepped out of the ravine and into the river.

The stream flashed a reflective, placid complexion whilst the current roared. They encroached into lower and lower territory and their rafts responded as if they skimmed the surface of the river. They were dragged by such a power that they paddled to decrease not increase their speed.

To Gabriel’s relief they progressed.

So the river conveyed the party and they relaxed. As a unit they wallowed through the luxury of a daydream amid that solitude. Magic enriched the landscape. Gloom, too, slowly but certainly tainted the experience. It was the reality that the trek would be complete soon. That they would be, again, among their kind. As they advanced, the Chaco retreated and retreated and retreated, until it would be confined to memory. They always counted the steps to Bahia Negra, then with eagerness, now with sorrow.

Forgotten was the argument between Mark and Luke that they were not prepared to venture so far.

The journey they elected was not (often) attempted or granted – as it blazed through zones of the Chaco that had not been mapped for a century. War – and the tales of the Ache – and the stories of other, Amazon natives – everyone and everything conspired with geography to keep that realm unspoiled for aeons. They asked why it was taboo. They did not expect the answer. Or – perhaps – they should have. There was no answer. Few alive understood what tantalized the legends into existence.

They would not be the first. They would not be the last. Certainly, they were among the scant who dared. For at least a week they would be as distant from man as earth allowed.

Their families hesitated then relented – and the mission, flush with more inflow than outflow, secured the arrangements.

At a jump their siesta shattered – and, as their rafts drifted, they faced the coasts where sounds echoed.

By the edge of the river an orchard of ‘T’–trees appeared to sprout out of that water. They stood at intervals and at angles as