Year's Best Hardcore Horror Volume 4 Read online

  Praise for Year's Best Hardcore Horror

  "…glutted with graphic scenes of torture, dismemberment, evisceration, and pornographic sex." (Vol. 2)-- Publishers Weekly

  "Not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach, the 19 stories in this new best-of annual anthology feature episodes of graphic gore and violence--including torture, dismemberment, self-mutilation, and home abortion--that are designed to push buttons as well as boundaries…strictly for hardcore horror fans." (Vol. 1) --Publishers Weekly

  ALSO BY RANDY CHANDLER

  EDITOR:

  Year's Best Hardcore Horror

  Stiff Things: The Splatterporn Anthology

  Red Room Magazine

  NOVELS AND COLLECTIONS:

  Bad Juju

  Stolen Roads

  Daemon of the Dark Wood

  Devils, Death & Dark Wonders

  Dime Detective

  Duet for the Devil (with t. winter-damon)

  Hellz Bellz

  Angel Steel

  EDITED BY CHERYL MULLENAX

  Year's Best Hardcore Horror

  Red Room Magazine

  Stiff Things: The Splatterporn Anthology

  Vile Things: Extreme Deviations of Horror

  Sick Things: Extreme Creature Anthology

  The Death Panel: Murder, Mayhem and Madness

  Necro Files: Two Decades of Extreme Horror

  Deadcore: 4 Hardcore Zombie Novellas

  Deadlines: Horror and Dark Fiction

  First Red Room Press Electronic Edition, April 2019

  Year’s Best Hardcore Horror Volume 4 copyright © 2019

  by Randy Chandler and Cheryl Mullenax

  All Rights Reserved.

  Red Room Press is an imprint of Comet Press

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Visit Red Room Press on the web at:

  www.redroompress.com

  facebook.com/redroompress

  twitter.com/redroombooks

  Copyrights continued here

  Diabolically dedicated to all the hardcore and extreme publishers, editors, and authors.

  CONTENTS

  HARDCORE CARNIVAL Introduction by Randy Chandler and Cheryl Mullenax

  VIGIL Chad Lutzke

  HAIR AND TEETH Deborah Sheldon

  RUT SEASONS Brian Hodge

  CONTROL Jeff Parsons

  CILANTRO Annie Neugebauer

  VOICES LIKE BARBED WIRE Tim Waggoner

  BENT Rebecca Rowland

  LORD OF THE MESA Scáth Beorh

  THE GODHEAD GRIMOIRE Sean Patrick Hazlett

  CARNAL BODIES R.E. Hellinger

  CROSSROADS OF OPPORTUNITY doungjai gam and Ed Kurtz

  DAD'S FAMOUS PRESERVES Seras Nikita

  THE BEARDED WOMAN Alessandro Manzetti

  THE DEVIL'S DREAMLAND Sara Tantlinger

  ALL GOD'S CREATURES GOT REASONS Frank Oreto

  THE UGLY J. R. Park

  I HAVE A CONFESSION Douglas Ford

  WHEN THE OWLS CALL Lyman Graves

  BLOODLETTNG AND INTRIGUE ON ALL HALLOWS' EVE Jeremy Thompson

  MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO By Alicia Hilton

  AUTHOR BIOS

  HARDCORE CARNIVAL

  INTRODUCTION BY RANDY CHANDLER AND CHERYL MULLENAX

  Something twisted this ways comes.

  Like a dark carnival rolling into your town after midnight, the current incarnation of Year’s Best Hardcore Horror comes now to disturb you with demented literary goodies and baddies, freak you mercilessly with assorted oddities and entities, and terrify you with horrors taboo and titillating. And yes, there is a Bearded Lady.

  So…step right up, ladies and gentlemen. Don’t be afraid to be afraid. That’s the name of the game for all you gents and dames, boyz and ghoulz, and everything in between. Step up, step up, because the show is about to begin.

  First up is “Vigil” by Chad Lutzke. Chad takes us into a neighborhood where a steady stream of decayed corpses are exhumed from a neighbor’s cellar. We see the event as nearby neighbors see it, from a distance, but never far enough away to avoid the appalling stench of the rotting bodies. Don’t be surprised if that god-awful smell comes wafting off the page. Extreme olfactory horror at its best.

  Deborah Sheldon went under the knife for the inspiration of “Hair And Teeth,” and the result is a tale of gynaecological body horror likely to terrify women and make most men squeamish.

  With “Rut Seasons” Brian Hodge makes a return to Year’s-Best pages in a tale as chilling as it is heart-wrenching, inspired by a thousand-mile drive littered with roadkill and some personal tragedies. Brian is hand’s-down the horror writer’s horror writer.

  “Control” by Jeff Parsons introduces us to a meth addict stalking potential victims in Central Park to get money for the next score. When the predator targets an old woman puppeteer with a dancing marionette as an easy mark, things take an unforeseen turn down a very dark path.

  Annie Neugebauer is back with “Cilantro,” a Neugebauerian yarn of culinary chaos sure to turn stomachs and cause nightmares. Tim Waggoner likewise returns this year with “Voices Like Barbwire,” an exploratory dig into old wounds and painful memories.

  For our money, Rebecca Rowland’s “Bent” wins the Most Cringe-worthy Story honor with her twisted tale of extreme body horror. Her well-drawn characters seem to come off the page but God forbid they do. Their idea of a pretzel party is truly twisted.

  Scáth Beorh takes Lovecraftian cosmic horror to its next level with “Lord of the Mesa.” Similarly, Sean Patrick Hazlett’s story “The Godhead Grimoire” possesses dangerous religious overtones and a forbidden bloodthirsty book. It explores what Sean calls “the dark side of mathematics,” but you don’t need a working knowledge of Fibonacci sequences to appreciate his finely crafted tale.

  “Carnal Bodies” by R.E. Hellinger is a shocking story of baroque horror and demonic necrophilia from Two Dead Queers Present: Guillozine. You’ll have to read this one to believe it.

  In “Crossroads of Opportunity” Ed Kurtz and doungjai gam take you on a-deal-with-the-devil-at-the-crossroads trip with a son driving his dead mother to an uncertain destination. Trouble is, his mother is a bit of a backseat driver and she just won’t shut up.

  Seras Nikita’s “Dad’s Famous Preserves” won’t do much for your appetite but it will show you a recipe for disaster when a jungle missionary’s foot infection blossoms into a stomach-churning nightmare.

  And here she is at last: “The Bearded Woman,” brought all the way from Rome, Italy, by the inimitable Alessandro Manzetti. His dystopian future tale takes us for a ride in the Bearded Woman’s circus trailer as she and her dwarf husband bring their marriage to a bloody end. This Lady Red Beard has an insatiable appetite for very exotic cuisine.

  Sara Tantlinger’s “The Devil’s Dreamland” takes us inside the Murder Castle of the infamous H.H. Holmes with her brilliant narrative poem of macabre beauty. Frank Oreto’s “All God’s Creatures Got Reasons” reveals that there are real monsters walking among us, monsters with a savage appetite for young flesh, but they are so skilled at covering their tracks, we never even know they’re there.

  “The Ugly” by J.R. Park introduces us to a couple of sweet little kids who
may have a good reason for torturing and eating cats. It’s a way to keep the Ugly at bay. Or is it?

  Doug Ford’s “I Have a Confession” takes a coldblooded plunge into sex with a ghost. But what if it’s not a ghost?

  In “When the Owls Call” Lyman Graves takes us “stealth camping” in a Texas park after hours, where a strange and dangerous gathering is taking place. David Lynch might say, “The owls are not what they seem.” But are they?

  Jeremy Thompson is back this year with his nefarious pal the Hallowfiend in “Bloodletting and Intrigue On All Hallows’ Eve’.” With a stylistic nod to Ray Bradbury, Jeremy delivers on our promise that something twisted this way comes.

  Capping it all off, Alicia Hilton serves up “Monkey See, Monkey Do” as a tasty little nightcap (for those with hardcore tastes). Salud!

  Sleep well. If you can.

  —Randy Chandler & Cheryl Mullenax

  VIGIL

  Chad Lutzke

  From Doorbells At Dusk

  Editor: Evans Light

  Corpus Press

  As we watched for more bodies, Mrs. Ashton handed me a cup of steaming coffee. It was my second cup that morning, this one better than the first. The first was from my own kitchen. From that percolating piece of shit I couldn’t bear to get rid of. Helen loved that thing. But I think she’d love Mr. Coffee even more, with its self-brewing timer and controlled temperature plate. I imagined Mrs. Ashton brewed with a Mr. Coffee. I’d have to ask her. Maybe I’d break down and get one after all.

  There were a dozen other people standing around, sipping from cups and watching the abandoned house on Summerdale. Just about every surrounding neighbor—except Mrs. Chisholm, her husband still hadn’t built that wheelchair ramp, so she sat in her chair at the bay window. I could see her lips moving, as though she was trying to make conversation, though nobody could hear her. Or maybe she was just going on to herself—or to God—about the poor kids being pulled from the ground at 201 Summerdale.

  Some of us were sitting. Lance Ludwick had brought card tables and chairs. And if we weren’t so afraid of being frowned upon, I’ll bet one of us would have broken out a deck of cards. But that’s just rude.

  Lance sat in his chair, nudged me. “I could smell that last one. Could you?”

  “I think I did,” I said. I had smelled it. It was foul. But I didn’t say a word. I felt like that was rude, too.

  Every so often, Ms. Brininstool would wander over to an officer and ask for a body count. Each time she’d come back with a new number, and each time we’d all look at our laps and shake our heads in disbelief. I think every one of us felt a little guilty. We’d all been in that yard, tending to the lawn, planting flowers, and even hanging decorations during Halloween to lessen the eyesore. And not one of us knew about the kids buried there. Yet there we were, walking about on top of them, only a foot or so of earth between us and them.

  It was Charlie Sawyer who found the first one. Charlie’s dog, Oscar, had passed, and with the new pool and the deck and the patio taking up most of his yard, he carried old Oscar over to 201 and dug a hole. Except he’d only got down less than two feet before the blade of his shovel cut through the leg of a boy he figured had been there the better part of a year.

  That’s when the cops were called, followed by the coroner. And within an hour the block was lined with news vans, unidentified vehicles with law enforcement pouring out of them, crime labs and a few volunteer firemen to help turn the yard inside out. That’s when the neighborhood showed up for an impromptu wake—though a block party is what it more resembled—for whatever poor souls were buried back there.

  It wasn’t until Ralph Wygant rolled out his barbeque that any of us suspected one of our own responsible for burying those kids. I knew Ralph more than most, and to me the man was just showing off his goods. I knew he’d gotten a bonus at work and with it bought himself a new gas grill. In poor taste? Yeah, it was. But I don’t think Ralph was insensitive as much as he was an idiot. And once the steak drippings hit the charcoal, there was more than one guy standing around it, asking questions about charcoal this and flame-broiled that. For a while the talk was pure testosterone. A grill tends to do that. Mix it with trying to be strong around your woman while bodies are dug up across the street and you’ll sprout hair on your chest just standing nearby.

  Still, that’s when we all started questioning whether or not any of us on the block was capable of such monstrosities—killing kids and burying them. I overheard more than a few people slinging gossip: What of Mr. Lincoln? Such a night owl he is, always on his porch reading into the wee hours. Or Rick Wenger and how he seemed to hate kids, always cussing at them for cutting through his back lot to get to school. Or about the McPherson boy who came home early from the Army on account of mental problems. Not sure which ones, but enough wrong upstairs that the government didn’t trust him, and maybe we shouldn’t either.

  As I listened, I made up my mind that you could have found suspicion in any one of us. Hell, even Mrs. Weimer. She spent more time than any of us over at 201, tending to the perennials, shovel in hand.

  And Halloween in particular brought everyone out. Every single one of us made our donation to the late-October decor. Jack-o-lanterns, styrofoam tombstones, and poster board cutouts. The house was covered in and surrounded by them, thanks to us. It was the one time of year that the chipped paint, broken windows and splintered porch added character to the surroundings rather than stand as an ugly wart in the center of mid upper class Hillfield.

  Most of the decorations were up. Except the jack-o-lantern. Like the star atop a Christmas tree, that was saved for last. Someone, normally Mrs. Weimer, would set a jack-o-lantern on the porch Halloween day, unlit so no kids would mistake the house for one offering sweets, what with the house glowing in holiday spirit and all. The kids around the block knew better, but sometimes we’d get those from several blocks away with overstuffed bags, on a quest to find more than they could handle, wandering into unknown territory. The thought made me wonder if some of those kids found themselves buried under the lawn of 201.

  And here it is, Halloween. Go figure.

  The odor hit me again. I couldn’t ignore it this time. It was stronger, like hot garbage filled with Lord knows what. I stood up, covered my mouth, and headed over to Wygant’s barbecue grill where he flipped steaks and drank beers with Steve Lincoln.

  “I’ll be throwing plenty more on, Richard. I had Suz empty the freezer. Looks like it’ll be a long day. Help yourself.” Ralph pointed to a red cooler that sat in the driveway near some lawn chairs. I knew there was beer inside. Ralph was big on beer. You’d rarely catch him without, but never drunk. I had my suspicions he’d sip on the same one for hours.

  It was a little early to be drinking, but I flipped the cooler lid and pulled out a bottle of Stroh’s. Steve was never sold on one brand. He’d try a different kind every time, so what could have been in that cooler was anybody’s guess. Steve handed me an opener and I popped the lid. “To the kids,” I said, then took a gulp.

  “What the hell kind of monster does this, Richard?” Steve asked.

  “One that’s gonna burn for it, I hope.”

  “You think he’s still out there?”

  “None of us know a damn thing, and we may never know.”

  “Some are saying…”

  “People are talkin’ shit.” I cut him off. “We all look guilty in one way or another. But I don’t think any of us did it. I think this has been a safe place for someone out there to dump these poor kids for a long time now.”

  “Seems like one of us would have seen somebody,” Ralph chimed in.

  “We probably did,” I said. “Probably chalked it up as one of our own, keeping up the yard.”

  That day, among the gossip and the wonderment and the worry, was a bond formed between every one of us, black vinyl bags filled with decomposition the catalyst. With each body removed and loaded into a van, our bond strengthened. The horror we experienced th
at day would stay with us forever, and it’d be nothing anyone else could ever relate to. There’d never be a shoulder to cry on that wasn’t one of our own. And through the years we’d meet other people. Some we’d marry or date or have as friends, and we’d have kids and grandkids and so on. And on those days when we’re staring out the window, fighting back tears, they’d ask what was wrong, and we’d lie and say nothing. That nothing was wrong.

  “I’ll never set foot on that land again,” Steve said.

  “If I do, it’ll be to fetch my lights and that’s it,” Ralph said.

  I knew none of us would ever go there again, and the house would sit buried by overgrown shrubs, the grass would turn to meadow until the city steps in every few months, cuts it and leaves the foot-long blades scattered about. Mrs. Weimer would never return to the perennials and they’d die away, choked out by weeds, wilted by the piss of roaming dogs. And finally, the city would take it all away, tear it down. And there’d only be a scar in the curb where a driveway used to be. An open lot that would never be used to play catch in or have a pick-up game of ball.

  A news reporter had just finished with her hair and makeup and whatever the hell else they do before they go live, then had a test run of their spiel, with Ms. Weimer nearby for an interview. It seemed a little premature yet, that reporter standing there all pretty and composed in front of Summerdale’s own hell house. Even worse than setting out chairs for the morbidly curious and grilling steaks for the hungry in waiting. After all, she didn’t know a thing about our little neighborhood, the history of the house, the time we’d each take to look after the aging, wooden blemish. Yet there she stood, microphone in hand, not a hair out of place, getting ready to share our corner of the world with those who’d never know otherwise. All for the ratings, the bragging rights—a little game I knew damn well every news station plays, and I suspect if we could look behind that curtain we wouldn’t like what we saw one bit. Well, how’s that for digressing?

  The reporter spent a good many minutes drilling Mrs. Weimer with questions. She answered them the best she could. She talked about our neighborhood being quiet and about our dedication to the house and how things will never be the same. Then at the end, she looked right at the camera and gave the most enduring condolences I’ve ever heard. Then the reporter was done with her. And I could tell by the look on Mrs. Weimer’s face that she’d felt used and regretted talking to them at all. A quick one-night stand with News 41 was all it was.