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Reprinted from The Deepening’s Horror with Clayton Bye.
None So Blind
By Ian Faulkner
Ghostwriter Publications, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-907190-11-7
145 pages
Horror
ARC/PDF
Buy Now at Clayton’s Amazon.ca store
NONE SO BLIND
Fanatics are blind to the thoughts and beliefs of others. What place will they find in the afterlife? Will the veil of self-deception part, or will the tortured soul continue along its cloudy and tragic path?
REWIND
Step inside the mind of a serial killer. Will you feel sorry for him or will your skin crawl and your guts churn? I wonder…
COLD BIRTH
Our actions have consequences. This story gives us a graphic and uncomfortable look at why we should never forget this simple truth.
NON OMNIS MORIAR
(I shall not altogether die)
What would happen to you if you lost a son or a parent? Would you fold in on yourself, or would you join together with the surviving members of your family to face the future? A terrifying look at the inside of a grieving mind.
GRANDPA BILLY
Meet a boy living in poverty with alcoholic parents who finds refuge in regular visits to his grandfather’s home. One day the old man moves away, and the boy doesn’t see him again until one tragic night when he and his siblings face certain death. A story about the power love has to raise us from the squalor and dangers of our lives.
EMMY
A young man interested in developing serious relationships and starting a family strikes up a conversation with an old woman out for a walk with her granddaughter. But she tells him an ever darkening story which takes him somewhere he could never expect.
AND THE HUNTER HOME
Observe a complacent man who discovers his entire life has been manipulated by his family. Will his discovery of their secret be enough to spur him into action, or will he fall victim to his habit of going with the flow?
DINNER FOR ONE
Have you ever watched a cat play with a mouse before killing and eating it? This may not be a behavior limited only to the feline species. Read Dinner for One to find out what I mean.
THE REVIEW
Ian Faulkner has put together a dark collection of tales examining the underbelly of life. It begins in a somewhat stumbling fashion with a story in need of more editing (for example, he makes the common mistake of overusing the word “that”). However, the rest of his short stories stand up better. In particular, Grandpa Billy, the only tale in the collection with a “lighter” side, is a fine example of short story writing. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
None so Blind was a read that left me with mixed feelings. The stories don’t try to make you feel better about some nasty people and experiences. Faulkner lays things out, warts and all; he writes horror without pretension. And he does it well. Hence my conflict…
The stories are so interesting, I read one after another: I gobbled them up. But there is little room for pleasure. Faulkner appears to be a writer who wishes to disturb, and he does so successfully.
True horror buffs should be pleased.
Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye 2009
Many readers, writers and editors think of the short story as something with a beginning, middle and end. The story, they understand, must make the very best use of every word. And the main character must be changed in some way, emotionally, mentally or physically. This change may be subtle or not.
All these of these points are true. Yet I have never been one to follow rules. I obey the laws of our land because the alternative is anarchy. But if breaking a rule does not harm, then I see no reason not to challenge it. To hell with the traditions of others.
The following short short story is an example of this. If you haven’t read the other related stories on this blog (They are all chapters in my new novel TechnoMage.), then you may not figure out all of the connections; oh, the necessary information you need exists within the story, but it isn’t going to be spoon fed to you. And the traditional beginning, middle and end just doesn’t exist.
Think of the story as exactly what it is: a few moments of conjoining time-lines in the lives of an antagonist and a protagonist. These few moments demonstrate both the positive and negative results of arrogance. I shouldn’t have to tell you this but, as I’ve hinted, readers of today are much too used to being spoon fed.
Enjoy the short for what it is meant to be…
Dialogue with The Devil
Satan was in ecstasy. Not since the destruction of mankind’s original planet had he experienced such a feeling of joy. His goal had been achieved! Magic and technology once again worked together to give him the power his siblings had taken away. And humanity’s medicines, when combined with Eden’s magic, worked miracles. Satan was still human, but never had there been a man like he. If his new state of being was what The Creator had been after with the humans, then the fallen angel would never again regret his battle with God. Mankind did not deserve even the possibility of such power.
And now, to crown this marvelous accomplishment, the seer had brought young Lightfoot back as a sacrificial offering. The Devil felt like dancing.
Reveling in the moment, the ancient being poked his captive with a black, sausage-like finger, licked black lips with a scarlet tongue, expressed his contentedness with a deep rumbling in the bellows of his lungs.
The boy’s eyes flickered, then opened. His breath hissed inward between suddenly clenched teeth. The Devil grinned at the sight of Jack’s eyes going flat. You could almost see hope draining from his body into the air.
“Having a bad dream, Jack?”
A fly circled around the boy’s head, landed on his sweat-slicked face. Lucifer set his gaze upon the carrion eater. The fly dropped to the floor, its tiny life snuffed out—just like that.
Jack trembled.
The Devil walked in a circle around his captive. He moved slowly, his ancient skin protesting every footstep with audible cracking and popping and ripping noises. Lucifer knew what his skin looked like: he resembled a giant, overcooked pig, one that had been roasted over open coals until black. His appearance, and the sounds of his breaking skin, seemed to horrify humans more than anything else about him. One used the tools one had.
“Speak to me boy,” The Devil commanded. “Ask me your questions, and tell me what you will trade for your life.”
That got the boy’s attention.
“Yes,” he said. “Your kind always wants to bargain.”
Jack didn’t answer right away. He forced his eyes away from the horrible creature who stood before him, checked out his surroundings.
He knew this place!
The Devil had taken over Morgan’s home. Jack was back on Eden! What did this mean?
“What’s going on?” Jack asked.
“You didn’t think your actions were going to go unanswered, did you?” replied The Devil. “I had a lot invested in Morgan. And what you did to Richard… That was noteworthy, boy. Such potential.”
“How can that thing be Richard?” Jack queried. “He’s dead. He must be dead.”
“You haven’t figured it out, Jack? Not as bright as you think you are?”
The Devil chuckled. It was a terrible sound.
“All things are possible when you combine magic and technology. The beginning and end of all of man’s atrocities lie in that marriage bed.”
He paused, looked into Jack’s eyes.
“Pandora’s Box,” said The Devil, his voice filled with undisguised glee.
A sudden hollowness appeared in Jack’s gut. He couldn’t breathe.
“My family,” he whispered.
Now Lucifer truly shone. His voice took on a silky tone as he spoke.
“We are sorry to announce the tragic passing of the entire Lightfoot family. John Lightfoot, son of Patrick; Rosalee Lightfoot (nee Marsalis) and Jack Lightfoot, son of John. Also mourned is Katy Lightfoot (nee Watterson), wife of Jack. All were respected members of their community. They will be missed. God have mercy on their souls.”
Lucifer tilted back his head and laughed.
Rage blossomed in Jack’s chest. Red and white butterflies pulsed behind his eyes. He fought back tears. Then, for the first time since regaining consciousness, Jack noticed his restraints. He noticed because he was straining against numerous leather straps that bound him to a table top.
“Bastard,” he screamed. Then he jumped. First, to the world he called Hell, to see for himself that Richard wasn’t at the bottom of the pit where Jack had left him to burn. The seer wasn’t there, but The Devil was, a grinning visage of evil. Jack jumped again. This time to his father’s home. A blackened ruin was all that remained. The Devil stood beside Jack and shook his head sorrowfully.
“You’re mine Jack. There’ll be no escape for you. How could I allow that?”
And they were back in Morgan’s office.
Lucifer commanded that Jack look him in the eyes. Jack did. The Devil began to grow in size. He continued to expand until he was ten feet tall, becoming more muscular, growing heavier, skin taking on a golden hue, smooth, younger. Hair sprouted on The Beast’s head. And in the end, transformed, Lucifer stood before Jack as an Adonis. He’d become a blond, gorgeous giant, whose beauty put your heart into your mouth and sent your eyes to the floor in subdued awe.
“I rule here. How did you come to think otherwise?” The Devil said. “Your choice is to live and serve me or die and serve me. There is nothing else available to you.”
But Lucifer, arrogant by nature, failed to understand Jack Lightfoot’s own arrogance. Oh, to be sure, Jack knew he was in serious trouble, understood that he had been defeated, recognized his terrible loss. But Jack didn’t know how to give up. He believed with everything he was—and this was his arrogance—that humans are unlimited beings, that they are young gods. Jack wasn’t capable of joining The Beast, nor could he roll over and die. Instead, the talented sorcerer, in a moment of absolute genius, saw a way out.
The Devil, through Morgan and Richard, had opened Pandora’s Box. Jack would use that. He would embrace Lucifer’s desire to bring magic and technology together. He would go into the box itself.
The boy made one more jump. This time it was to a place he suspected The Devil wouldn’t follow.
What did our young hero do? The unimaginable, of course. Jack Lightfoot jumped out of his physical body, across the void and into the largest, most complicated computer he knew of—the newly completed Google complex on the shores of the Columbia river, in the northwestern US. He did this by riding a wave of all the power he could summon, combining magic, spirit and technology to create his version of what The Devil appeared to have done to Richard the seer.
Lucifer stared at the lifeless body before him and howled his fury.
Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye 2009
Finding Creatures & Other Stories
by C. June Wolf
Wattle and Daub Books, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-9810658-0-9
240 pages
Fiction
Casey Wolf submitted her book Finding Creatures & Other Stories to be reviewed on The Deepening World of Fiction’s horror blog. We both knew, in advance, the collection probably wouldn’t fit the horror genre. Yet Wolf’s stories dig at the soul in a sometimes dark and subtle way. Much of the fiction is also speculative, a type which lends itself well to horror.
There’s Aggie’s Game, a disturbing look at a child’s battle with the grim reality of her life. This is a fine horror story. It contains a few computer generated formatting problems that messed up some words, but the piece is an otherwise superb example of what good horror writing is. Truth be told, Wolf makes me wish I was a better writer than I am. Her work touched me in deep places.
Dana’s Hand is another of Wolf’s stories which resonates with a quiet horror. A mother lost in dementia is guarded during the day by her offspring, Dana, and calmed of her night-time terrors by the strange healing powers of Dana’s left hand. But it is not the subtle horror of the situation which captures us. No, it is Dana’s capacity for joy and her appetite for life that reaches us, that lifts our spirits to a sweet sadness too many of us already know.
Mr. Cowmeadow’s Sky is at once disturbing and uplifting. A story about a dying man on a dying world who yet finds joy in the continued existence of his son, the only thing in his life he ever considered worthwhile.
The rest of the stories in this wonderful collection? I think the talented and accomplished author who introduces the book sums it up perfectly: “Wolf uses different genres, different voices, different cultures—in short whatever she needs to make the story work. What ties it all together is her sure-handed prose and a depth she brings to her writing, that indefinable element that rises up from between the lines and gives a good story its resonance… —Charles de Lint—
Finding Creatures & Other Stories is excellent fiction—period. I heartily recommend it.
Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye 2009
Continue reading about Speculative fiction author, C. June Wolf
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