Dark Highlands Productions
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©2010 by Dark Highlands Productions
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Dark Highlands Anthology Volume 1
October 2010
What is Dark Highlands?
Dark Highlands is a creative arts company that showcases regional writers, artists, and performers. We specialize in horror, dark fantasy, and supernatural fiction, as well as art, poetry, theater, and music that fall under those categories.
Dark Highlands Anthology was founded in February 2010 when JR Tschopp approached Brad Ellis of Orange Guy Media Design and writer Paul-Thomas Ferguson about the desire to create a journal for "speculative" fiction. Thus, the Anthology was born.
Our aim is to give writers, poets, artists, and performers specializing in materials with darker subject matter a forum in which to present their work through both print and digital means. We believe in the promotion of regional visual and literary artists and aim to support them by raising awareness of their creations. Dark Highlands staff does not receive compensation for their work on the Anthology and a portion of Anthology sales is donated to local arts groups.
Acknowledgements
No large undertaking is possible without the assistance of numerous people behind the scenes. The staff at Dark Highlands Anthology would like to thank our friends and families for help and support.
In particular, we would like to thank all of those who came out to help on the “Unholy Orders” photo shoot, including: Roberta Barton, Anastasiya Bauswell, Amanda Bennett, Johnny Hawkins, Jeremy Koester, Jeremy Mahr, Andy Masengarb, Craig Newkirk, and Rebecca Wren.
We would also like to acknowledge the assistance of IndieGoGo, Fred & Ethels, Cool Beanz Coffeehouse, Hippie Golf Wear, and the City of Rock Island.
Finally, we would like to acknowledge the invaluable support of those who bought into our idea, pre-ordered t-shirts, and/or donated money to get the Anthology up and running, particularly our IndieGoGo supporters:
Alison Benowitz
Teeocka Sylvester
Kendall Davis
Wendy Kauten
Beccy Harris
Amandia Daigneault
And several anonymous benefactors.
Thank you!
Cover artwork: Bells and Whistles by Alissa Rindels
Table of Contents
Modus Operandi by John T. Hawkins
movies for milkweed by David James Keaton
You Never Can Tell by Dick Michener
Infinite Regress by Andrew Walters
Horror Haiku by Joyce Paustian, Lucas Jordan, KatyLee Underhill
The Best Horror by Gregory Lewis
The Beast of L.T. Brown by JR Tschopp
The Tinker by Paul-Thomas Ferguson
Untitled lithograph by Charlie Ross
Faces in the Crowd by Bruce Walters
Bird of Prey by Alissa Rindels
Unholy Orders: The Supernatural Adventures of Israel Blake by Brad Ellis & Paul-Thomas Ferguson
***
Modus Operandi
Rock Island, Illinois
“Oh, I think it’s rather obvious; she was under the influence of something and thought she grew wings. The autopsy found traces of heroin and cocaine in her system. When you’re dealing with a case like this, you have to consider the deceased was in a business where this kind of stuff happens all the time. Just remember that for every young girl you see out here selling themselves, there’s a set of parents at home wondering whether they’re ever going to see their child again.”
That was the only comment Lieutenant Rafferty would give the media. Just hours before, he had been called to the scene of an apparent suicide. The body of a twenty-four year old girl, the same age as his own daughter, had been found by a neighbor. The medical examiner had sent his report, concluding, “Cause of Death: drug-related suicide.”
* * *
Lisa Stanning was on the phone with Michael, her fiancé. As of late, they had been fighting quite often; usually about Michael’s jealous fits. They had been on the phone for nearly two hours, crying, screaming, apologizing, and then screaming some more. That’s how the conversations had been for the last four months. They were addicted to each other, though neither of them would admit it.
Lisa had recently been hired at Pike’s Peek, one of the town’s more notorious ‘gentlemen’s clubs.’ Not that she was particularly fond of strutting her stuff for all the men to see, but the pay was good, as were the tips. She had been graced with an outstanding physique, and it was common for her to walk out with three hundred dollars on an ‘average’ night.
Michael, on the other hand, was not at all accepting of this latest venture in Lisa’s life. Who could blame him? He was a guy who had everything going his way, and he was used to it. He had been dating Lisa for four years, and engaged to her for the past eleven months. Now, the woman that would soon share his name was making a public spectacle of herself; showing every guy in town what, until recently, had been reserved for him.
“Lisa, you know the kind of scum that hang out in those types of places. I don’t want you associated with those kinds of people,” Michael stated firmly. “They’re all junkies and tramps. You don’t want to be thought of like that, do you? Come on!” Michael hesitated for a short moment. “I love you,” he continued, “and I know you love me, right?”
Lisa didn’t give him a chance to go any further. She knew what would be next: the ultimatum. “Goddammit, Michael!” she blasted. “You just don’t get it, do you? It’s a job. It pays damned good money, too.” She fumed. “It’s not like I sleep with any of them.”
“And just what in the hell is that supposed to mean?” Michael blasted back. “Am I supposed to be relieved by that little comment?” he asked sarcastically. “Why can’t you just get a normal job, and keep your clothes ON?”
Exhausted, Lisa finally had had enough. “Look, Michael. It’s late and I’m tired. Goodnight.” Lisa hung up the phone and looked at the clock. It was 3:22 a.m.
* * *
Lisa awoke at 11:45 that morning. It was raining. This was a good day to call in sick to work. It wouldn’t be a lie either. She hadn’t slept all that well after her and Michael’s telephone bicker-fest, and it left her with a headache that was still pounding eight hours later.
The apartment was cold, and having hardwood floors didn’t help things any. She hastily put on her grey sweatpants ~ the ones that used to belong to Michael ~ then rolled over to the other side of her bed, thus avoiding the toe-numbing cold of the floor, to retrieve her favorite wool slipper socks. There. Now she was ready for that one final morning necessity.
“Coffee,” she mumbled to herself, and sleepily staggered toward the kitchen. A halfway phony phone call to Pike’s and three cups of coffee later, Lisa was ready to face the day. For some reason, that meant calling Michael.
“I must be crazy!” she said to herself. “Ok, so I’m crazy.” Picking up the phone again, she dialed his number and waited to hear Michael’s voice. There was no answer after five rings. Disappointed, Lisa hung the phone back on the wall.
As Lisa walked back toward her bedroom, there was a sudden knock at the door. Lisa wasn’t expecting anyone. Quietly, she crept to the door and cautiously peered out the peephole. It was Michael. Relieved, she opened the door to let him in.
“I just called your place, not five minutes ago,” she said with a smile.
“Don’t tell me you forgot. Today’s Thursday. I’m at the gym all morning,” Michael explained. By the look of him, and the rancid smell of sweat intermingled with Brüt cologne, she really had no reason to doubt him. She smiled.
“Go take a shower, I’ll make you some lunch,” she told him, in a tone that was almost seductive. Yes, this was the same man she had fought with only hours before, but the sight of him just after working out had always had its effect on her. With a small kiss on the cheek, she aimed him down the hall to take his shower.
After finishing their lunch, Michael took Lisa by the hand and led her down to the bedroom, where she sat upon the bed amongst the pillows and blankets. Lisa was sure this was Michael’s way of apologizing for the way he had been treating her lately. And, in a way, she was apologizing, too. After all, she was letting him romance her.
Michael always had a wild imagination when it came to sex. So it really came as no surprise to Lisa when he started tying her arms and legs together. It happened to be one of his little fetishes that she rather enjoyed. It was different. It was exciting. It was dangerous!
“Are you gonna blindfold me, too, Mikey?” she teased.
“Well, now that you mention it…” Michael replied. Reaching into his gym bag, he pulled out a sweaty bandana he used while working out. “Will this do?” he asked, in an almost childish, bratty tone, twirling the bandana over his head.
“You’re a bad boy,” she said tauntingly. “You think of the naughtiest things, don’t you?”
“Well, I keep thinking about you in that bar, how you dance around with nothing on, and it does give me some ideas,” Michael said with a sheepish grin. Lisa could tell today was going to be especially interesting.
Michael gently tied the bandana around Lisa’s head, pulling it snug over her eyes. He then kissed her deeply on the mouth.
“Excuse me, I seem to have forgotten something,” Michael whispered into her ear. “I’ll be right back.”
“What did you forget? You’re not going to leave me here, are you?” Lisa asked. She was frightened. Michael didn’t forget things like this. He was practically a Boy Scout when it came to ‘being prepared.’
“Don’t worry, Lisa. It’s right here in my bag,” he said comfortingly. “Just relax. I’m right here.”
Michael opened his gym bag and found his clean white socks and the syringe he had brought for this occasion. He then went and sat down on the bed next to Lisa, who waited patiently. Slowly, he brushed the socks against Lisa’s thigh, teasing her. He trailed the socks along her stomach and up her chest, stopping just under her chin. Then, with a violent jerk, he forced the socks into her mouth. Before Lisa knew what was happening, Michael had pulled the bandana down over her mouth to hold the wad in place.
Lisa’s eyes were wide. She tried to scream. The socks made her screams inaudible. Michael didn’t like the way she was jerking about. It made his next task more difficult.
“Hold still, honey, I’m not going to hurt you. No, no. I wouldn’t do that.”
Lisa could hear the sarcasm with which he said those words. But she figured that if she did what he wanted, maybe there would be a way to get out of this alive. With her heart pounding and tears starting to streak down her face, Lisa reluctantly tried to relax.
“That’s better,” Michael cooed. He was sick. The sound of his voice had somehow changed. It was still the same voice, but the tone ~ it just didn’t sound like Michael anymore.
Michael uncapped the syringe and grabbed Lisa’s arm. He started kissing her arm, stroking it. Softly. Gently. Sweetly.
With another sudden thrust, he stuck the needle into her arm. Lisa jerked, but Michael had a firm grip on her. He continued the injection and smiled.
“Sweet dreams!”
Michael waited for about ten minutes and then checked her pulse. It was weak, very weak. Lisa was unconscious. Michael untied her arms and legs and then walked over to open the window. The air was cool, and the smell of the damp city soon filled the room.
“Tonight’s a good night for flying, don’t you think?” he joked. Lisa gave no response.
Michael went back over to her and removed the gag from her mouth.
“How silly of me; asking you questions when you’re out cold like this. I’m sorry,” he smirked. “Now upsy-daisy,” he said as he lifted her from the bed and carried her to the window.
“Look, it’s a bird! It’s a plane!” He giggled to himself. “No, it’s just you…” Saying that, Michael gave Lisa a hefty shove out the window and watched her as she fell. “…another whore.”
Michael quickly gathered his belongings and hurried out the back door of the apartment. Nobody saw him.
He pulled up to his house and composed himself, then went upstairs to his apartment. Michael dropped his things just inside the door of his apartment and, as normal routine, went to check his answering machine. He expected to hear Lisa’s voice. It wasn’t there. She hadn’t let the answering machine pick up.
The phone rang. Michael let it ring a second time, then he answered.
“Hello.”
“Yeah, Rafferty, you better get over here. We got another ‘Peter Pan’ case. What a mess. This is number three. These chicks are dropping like flies,” the voice said urgently.
Michael responded, “I’ll be right there,” and hung up the phone.
***
movies for milkweed
Sewickley, Pennsylvania
“She loves me. . .she loves me not. . .”
- Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Wings off Flies
The parking lot in front of my apartment used to be sunk into the ground about five feet on all sides. It looked a bit like a huge community pool, maybe a bit more like the biggest cell in a TV dinner tray, you know, the one that always held the meat. The inclines on the sides were gradual and only noticeable during the winter, when the tray filled with snow and slush and you needed a little extra gas to clear the entrance and hit the road.
New residents would spin their tires there for a couple days until they figured out the only way to start their day was to keep a routine, maintain that speed.
You’d think this obstacle would have made me late for work every day, and, yes, I had to dig myself out or give the car another running start to get up the hill every January. However, those inclines were the only reason I ever made it to work at all. Those slopes would encourage my legs to start running right before I reached my car, if only for about two or three steps at the most.
And I kept that momentum until the day she moved in.
* * *
In a film class once, we learned that the first movie ever made was really just a blurry, black-and-white series of images showing a horse running. It revealed for the first time that between gallops, every one of a horse’s legs are off the ground at the same time. This is also true with humans, which the teacher proved in the second movie ever made, a man running. The third movie ever made, bizarrely enough, was some crazy short about electrocuting an elephant. It didn’t mean much of anything to me.
However, according to those first two films, running is actually the act of throwing your body weight and catching it, if only for a second. Throwing and catching myself (something my brother could actually do with a football when, disgusted with my performance, he would try to play two positions at once) was the one thing that gave me a sense of purpose or urgency in the morning. A jog of one, two, three steps tops, would wake me up enough to navigate the traffic and the red lights to get to work and behind that all-important cash register on time. I was actually running to my car to go to work without ever knowing it. I figured this out 28 jobs, 4 assumed names, and 13 different parking lots later, and I was never late for work again.
Until I moved here.
The day I bought that shovel was the worst. I was nine minutes late, exactly.
At first, I blamed the landscapers and the smoothing out and slow death of that small hill near the TV tray, the one that had me flying to work like a racehorse, in the air for about zero point two seconds.
But it was mostly her. Once she moved in, she was always in front of me, just a couple steps ahead so that I couldn’t pass. And she wasted even more time turning around and slowing down, as if I was trying to hide something or sneak up on her. I wanted to yell that she was making me late for work, that I needed to run for at least three steps to get up off the ground, that I needed that small hill for momentum.
But that would have taken way too long to explain.
That was the day I went to the hardware store with a nervousness I used to reserve for buying pornography.
* * *
Once, the theater in our town let the kids pay for their tickets in milkweed. The government was sponsoring a program to collect the fibers to make parachutes, and it was also a great recruiting tool for cannon fodder, similar to those captive-audience military commercials they’d been sneaking in after the candy bar cartoon told you to turn off your cell phone. Someone somewhere figured that any kid who collected plants to pay for a movie ticket would also be broke and hopeless enough to find the prospect of patrolling through hateful glares in a foreign land exciting. Sort of like the attention a 7-year-old boy gets when he takes his new toy and runs up and down the aisles making sputtering airplane noises during a Holocaust movie. I can tell you this with certainty: someone will try to take that toy away.