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Twice
the Terror: THE HORROR ZINE (volume
2)
Edited
by Jeani Rector
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Twice
The Terror is 370 pages long
and is a mixture or short stories, poetry and art. I am not a lover of
poetry, so it would be unfair for me to pass comment on any of the
poetry and I will keep my opinions to myself. I will gladly pass
comment on the art though. I like it. Some very talented artist has
contributed work to the book and their work ranges from surreal to
semi-erotic to... well rather scary really.
The book contains twenty-six short stories and the first one is David Bernstein's
It's a
Boy. The central Character is
a soon-to-be-father named Jim. He and his wife, Beth Ann,
live on a farm on the outskirts of a small town in upstate New York.
With all of the fresh county air it should be a great place to bring up
a child and it probably would have been, but eight months ago there was
a zombie outbreak. Jim has only run into one zombie so far and he feels
the threat is minimal, but he still worries. It's hard not to when you
are dealing with zombies. Strangely enough, when trouble comes it is
not from the undead, but in the scaly form of a copperhead rattlesnake.
The second story The
Flock, by Chris Castle,
is also about a farmer, but in this story the threat comes not from
zombies, but from a flock of birds. They are gathering in the trees and
increasing in number each day. Jacob can see them while he is out
working the fields and he has heard the rumours. The old man from the
neighbouring farm says that the flocks ravaged the next town over and
swarmed through people's homes like dark angry angels. It does not
sound good, but Jacob has other worries. He and his wife never seem to
talk to each other. Then when she meets the old man's nephew for the
first time, she is positively exuberant, laughing and joking with him
until Jacob feels like an impostor in his own home; and all the time
this is happening the flock grows larger.
Zombies make a return in Jonathan
Grey Chapman’s We The
Zombies and these zombies are
as intelligent in death as they were in life. They can even appear to
be human if they wish to, but are enslaved to the service of their
master. We
The Zombies is written in the
first person and the reader gets to hear the zombie's side of the story
from the main character. He is the slave of a man named Fedor, who
forces him to kill people. He does not want to kill but has learnt by
bitter experience that he cannot resist Fedor's wish. Any attempts to
do so only cause his victim more pain. The story diverts in an
interesting direction when the zombie falls in love with his master's
daughter. Forbidden zombie love, talk about taboo! Sadly the
relationship is doomed from the start; it's never a good idea to
pretend that you are something you are not.
There is not a zombie in sight in the fourth story, Uncanny,
written by
Terence Faherty. The central
character is called John Mohr and he is on holiday with his wife, Dial.
Their marriage is on the rocks, but John is trying to save the
relationship. His psychiatrist has taught him some anger management
techniques and now John and Dial are taking a cruise through Alaska's
Inner Passage. The cruise was Dial's choice and John is not enjoying it
so his anger management skills are coming in handy. John gets a further
chance to practice his skills after three of his fellow passengers
insult him. Moment's later. when they die in a freak accident, all eyes
are on John, and perhaps it is his fault. He has been suppressing his
emotions for a long time and it is possible that they may have found an
uncanny way of expressing themselves. Then again it could be the work
of the spirit of the fjord. That is something that each reader will
have to decide for themselves.
The next story is Erasure,
written by Sandhya
Falls. This is a strange one
and no mistake, but it would have made an excellent episode for The Twilight Zone.
Can you imagine anything more frightening than the prospect of being
erased from existence? Just like that! No warnings and no explanation,
you just cease to exist. Nobody can help you and nobody will remember
you when you are gone. There will be no headstone, no mourners dressed
in black and not a tear shed because to all intents and purposes you
never existed. Such is the fate of Nethra Joshi, a writer who is about
to have a very bad day.
The Sixth story is the brain-child of the English novelist Christopher Fowler.
It is called The
Threads and, like Uncanny,
it is about a married couple who are taking a holiday in a last ditch
attempt to patch up their marriage. James and Verity Markham have
chosen a warmer venue than Alaska though. They are in North Africa and,
after yet another failed business venture, James is looking for a way
to make some extra cash. When opportunity knocks it comes in the form
of a rare and valuable carpet, but the owner of the carpet refuses to
sell it to James and so he steals it instead. This turns out to be an
extremely bad move and the Muslim salesman’s revenge is as
unique as it is macabre.
The seventh story comes from Hugh Fox.
It is called Who?
and is about a man who wakes up with amnesia. He has no idea who he is,
what he is, or even where he is, but it soon becomes apparent that he
is a man of education because he seems to have a surprisingly good
knowledge of many different languages. So good, in fact, that he is not
even sure what nationality he is. As the story progresses his memory
begins to return, but some things really are best left forgotten.
Stephen
Gallagher's Not
Here, Not Now is about a man
who likes to live his life in the fast lane. This is a guy who keeps
the pedal to the metal and his brain in low gear. When you live like
that sooner or later you will hit something and the proverbial brown
stuff will hit the fan. In this case the mess happens when he turns a
corner and is faced with a choice. He can hit the parked cars, choose
the garbage truck, or hit a child. Hitting the brakes is not an option
because he is going too damn fast. Guess which he chooses. If you
guessed the child, you guessed right, and after he has mowed her down
he just keeps on driving and tells himself that it was everybody's
fault but his own. And does he slow down? Not likely, some guys never
learn until it is too late.
In Michael
W. Garza's I
Hate
Clowns, three
thirteen-year-old boys break into a big, creepy old house. Abbey Manor
has over a hundred years of bad history and the rumours connected with
the house range from murders to bizarre rituals. In short, it is just
the sort of place that young boys cannot resist. They are not the first
to break in and they probably won't be the last, but getting out of the
house proves to be a lot harder than getting in. Climbing through the
window was easy, but the window has locked by itself, they are now
trapped and, just to make matters worse, something is moving in the
shadows and it is moving towards them.
Ed
Gorman's contribution to Twice
the Terror
is a story called Emma
Baxter's Boy. It is set on a
remote farm and the opening of the story finds Joel and Emma Baxter
standing on their porch and watching the police search the
outbuildings. The Sheriff has received reports that a child has been
seen playing on the Baxter's property. The Baxters deny this, but the
Sheriff and his deputy are searching anyway and Emma is worried in case
they find the entrance to the root cellar. Joel is less
worried about this and it soon becomes apparent that, if there is a
child hidden in the cellar, he does not share his wife's love for it.
He has his reasons for this, of course, and that is where the real
story lies. And the horror.
In Larry
Green's A Bad
Day a woman named Melanie is
laying on a cold tile floor, nursing a bullet wound, and listening to
the gunman threatening the cashier, at the front of the store. Everyone
else is dead. Melanie should be busy getting dead too, but she isn't.
She is having a bad day and is much too busy getting angry to worry
about the bullet hole in her stomach. In fact, Melanie welcomes the
anger and you do not have to get far into this story before you realize
that the gunman is probably destined to have a bad day as well. But
that's all right. He's a nasty guy and he deserves it. Go get him
Melanie.
In Soul
Money Terry Grimwood
takes the idea of getting mugged, turns it on its head, and presents
the reader with a 'runt in a suit,' who is wielding a knife, and a big,
scruffy-looking ex-con as the victim. The big guy is called Nick and he
does not want any trouble because if the police get involved
he thinks it unlikely that they would take his word over that of his
clean-shaven attacker. Especially not if he told them that the man
demanded that Nick take his wallet. Nick has little choice. He takes
the wallet and its contents make a startling difference to his life.
The guy in the suit had a good reason for his strange behaviour though.
Nick learns this the hard way and then he too must try and get rid of
the wallet.
Dr.
Kevin Hillman's story, The
Colony Man gets full marks
for strangeness. It is an extremely imaginative tale that begins with a
death. Joseph Blackthorn has just been murdered by his best friend, who
hopes to step into his shoes and take a walk on the wild side with
Joseph's wife. Joseph is dead; let's get that straight right from the
start. When your body is nothing but a broken mess of flesh and bone
and a colony of ants are busy snacking inside your head, it is pretty
hard not to be dead, but in his own strange way Joseph lives on and the
story takes an interesting turn into the further weird when he gets the
chance for a reunion with his wife.
Kurt
Jarram begins his story not
with a death, but with the statement 'First you must understand that I
am about to die.' Beheld
is written in the first person and as the central character writes his
final words he has a syringe at the ready, it is filled with poison,
and he has every intention of using it. He is not the reluctant
possessor of a sinister wallet and he mind is not filled with the fear
that it will, one day, be the playground of insects; his problems
though equally strange, come from a very different
source—canvas and paint. He has dedicated his life to the
study of the macabre and the terrible, the latest addition to his
collection is a painting, and it is inexplicably bad.
What is it like to die and will we be allowed to enjoy one last dream
before we go? In Michael C. Keith'
s Last
Dream that is exactly what
happens. The people at Last Dream Incorporated record such dreams and
they have been doing it for so long that they no longer check the
videos before they send them to grieving relatives. Why would they?
Last Dream Videos have always been a positive experience for their
viewers. It never pays to cut corners or take things for granted
though, and everything turns sour when a customer receives a video
nasty that reveals her husband's real feelings towards her. It's not
good at all, but the people at LDI are nothing if not resilient and
they soon learn how to adapt their business.
I'm not sure how I would feel about fishing waters that bore the name Bone
Lake, but in Mark LaFlamme's
story the characters do not seem to mind and the story opens to find
two friends, Carlton and Rupert, sitting in a shack on top of the
frozen waters, and fishing through holes in the ice. It doesn't sound
like my cup of tea, but Carlton and his friend are not drinking tea,
they are drinking Jack Daniel's. I suppose that could make all the
difference and anybody might need a little Dutch courage to fish a
haunted lake. Bone Lake isn't a ghost story though; the waters are
haunted by a living man named Joseph. His wife and young daughter
vanished in a storm and were in all probability claimed by the lake,
but their bodies were never found and this has made Joseph’s
loss harder to bear because he still has hope. Now the big man wanders
the area around the lake and is forever asking one question:
“Have you seen them?” The answer is always
“No.” Then one night Carlton and Rupert pull
something big out of the water that shocks them so much that they never
fish the waters again, but , when Joseph asks them, “Have you
seen them?” the answer is still “No.”
I’m not sure that I would class this as a horror story, but Lee Landers’ The
Twinkie Killer certainly has
an unusual title. It is set in Dallas on a cold Christmas Eve morning.
A man called Harrold is sitting in his car drinking whisky and trying
to share a Twinkie with his dog, while he watches a house across the
street. Inside that house his friend Jimbo is busy having sex
with Harold's wife and all poor Harold has to keep him warm is a bottle
of whisky and his temper. And he has run out of Twinkies! This guy is
not having a good day folks, and you will probably not be surprised to
learn that he has a gun in his pocket and is preparing to pay a visit
on his wife.
Bottom
Feeder is the brainchild of Deborah
LeBlanc.
I was looking forward to reading this one and was not disappointed. The
story is set on a farm where a runaway named Nina has been offered some
work. A big part of the job will involve slopping up the pig's dinners,
but Nina's hardest job is stomaching the idea because their food smells
as bad as it looks. And it looks terrible! Strangely though, even the
biggest, ugliest pig on the farm, a boar named Ol' Maudawan, is
decidedly more pleasant than Lervette, who owns the farm. As far as
career choices go, Nina is onto a loser, but she tries her best, even
though she fears that there is something strange about Lervette and her
farm. Then, when a ghostly girl appears and tells Nina that she is
danger, she decides to flee the farm, but she will have to get past
Lervette first.
In Paul
Levinson's story The
Harmony, three boys are
singing on a street corner when a policeman wanders over to them. The
boys expect him to give them the inevitable time to break it up and
take it on home lecture, but Officer Dave surprises them. He joins in
instead and his voice is in perfect harmony with theirs. When they do
'break it up’ Dave gives the boys the address of a place on
Simpson Street. One of the boys visits it and is welcomed into a true
haven for singers, where he gets the chance to add his voice to those
of some incredibly talented singers. He soon becomes obsessed with the
place on Simpson Street and spends most of his time there. It is like
an addiction and once he is well and truly hooked, he learns that, like
any addiction, it has its price.
Bentley
Little's weird and wonderful
offering is called The
Security System and it is
about a married couple who return from vacation and discover that they
have been burgled. Disillusioned by the local police force they decide
to install a security system, but one company, ABS, seems to have
cornered the market and Kent and Debbie dislike the ABS representative,
Mr. Rollins, and refuse to have anything to do with the company.
Rollins is not so easily deterred though. He is a man who takes high
pressure sales tactics to a new level and is willing to break into
their home, sniff Debbie's panties and take a dump in their bath tub
just to prove how vulnerable they are without an alarm. And that is
just for starters.
Graham
Masterton's Underbed
is about a young boy named Martin who is one of those rare children who
are happy to go to bed early. Martin is an imaginative child and as
soon as his mother closes the bedroom door he pops his head under the
blankets and travels to any and every place his mind can dream up.
Martin has just watched a programme about potholing and he decides that
tonight he will rescue a young boy who is trapped in an underground
cavern. When he cannot find the boy he finds a new a new mission
instead and goes in search of a missing girl who is lost somewhere in
Underbed. Martins search takes him into dangerous territories, however,
and when he eventually does find her she is in Under-Underbed and that
is where the darkest things live.
The next story is Bruce Memblatt’s
The
Police Station and
it’s a strange one folks. The central character is a man
named Michael Reardon. He does not know how he got there, but he is
being interrogated at a police station unlike any he has ever seen. The
two guys who are playing good cop bad cop with him are a little strange
as well, but as they fire their questions at him Michael's memory
begins to return and he finally remembers the events that landed him in
his present predicament.
The central character in Geoff Nelder's
In
Abstentia, is also a little
confused. Like Michael he does not know where he is or how he got
there, but he also has a further problem—he has no idea who
he is. All he knows is that he is in a park and the little girl with
him seems to have all the answers. Is she his daughter? He does not
know. He discovers who he is in the end though, and he also finds out
who she is and she is not a girl who likes to play nice.
I've read some strange stories in my time, but demonic scrunchies?
That's a new one on me and I think that Shawn Oetzel's
Scrunchies
is easily the weirdest story in the book. It is about a man who has a
perfectly normal and happy life until the day his girlfriend comes home
with a bagful of scrunchies. At four for a dollar they were such a
bargain that she bought eight of them. Unfortunately all she can see is
their startling colours and not the hair-raising monster within.
In Chris
Reed's story This
Moment Will Haunt You Forever
a hard-hearted businessman gets his just deserts. His name is Paul and
what begins a normal day at the office quickly becomes anything but
normal when he looks up from his desk and finds a Native American
Indian man standing in the doorway. Paul cannot understand how the man
got past his secretary, but that little mystery soon becomes the least
of his worries. The Indian's name is Mr Wood and Paul's company is
suing him for credit card debt. Wood has been ill and he has two young
children to take care of, but he is willing to pay the original debt,
it is the extra charges that he cannot manage. With little regard for
Wood's problems, Paul sends the man away and soon finds himself on the
wrong side of an Indian curse.
Neither Indians nor curses feature in Dean
H. Wilde's Flesh;
instead the reader is granted the dubious privilege of meeting a very
strange family who live out in the woods. In you are scared of dark,
lonely woods though; try not to worry because the central character, a
reporter named Rich, will be there to keep you company. Rich has
decided to go out to the Clevelle place because one of their clan has
recently turned up floating the wrong way up in a bog and he can smell
a story. Rich's is right there is a story and he soon sniffs it out,
but it is a lot more story than he can handle and it may have been
better for him if he had kept his nose out of the Clevelle's business.
Flesh
is followed by forty-three pages of art and poetry before the reader
reaches the Editor's Corner, which contains two of Jeani Rector's
stories Under
the House and The
Burial. The central character
in Under
the House is a ten-year-old
girl named Kayla. She is an only child, but, unfortunately, in Kayla's
case this does not mean that she receives any extra love or that she is
spoilt. Just the opposite, in fact. Her father has a drink problem and
is abusive when he has been drinking. Kayla and her mother are
invariably the targets for his drunken wrath. When Kayla discovers a
hole in the clapboards underneath the back porch she crawls through the
gap and believes that she has found the perfect hiding place to shelter
her from her father's rage, and it is not long before she has a chance
to use her sanctuary amongst the foundations of the house and so while
her father rages on the other side of the floorboards above her head,
Kayla sits in the damp darkness, listening, waiting and hoping that her
father will not find her.
Well folks, this is it, the last story in the book, The Burial.
When one of the tribal elders gets sick Fourteen-year-old Ahija is
forced to take his place and be a pallbearer. This is big
responsibility for the young man, a scary one too, because if the
ceremonies are not performed in the correct manner the malevolence of
the Chidis will escape from the body of the dead man and, once free,
will find somebody else to possess. Ahija may be frightened, but he is
no longer a little boy and he is of the correct bloodline, and besides,
his father will be there with him and with many years experience in
such matters, what could possibly go wrong. Something does go wrong
though, very wrong indeed, and Ahija has a tough decision to make.
Twice
the Terror is quite a mixed
bag of stories and I am sure that most lovers of the dark fantastic
will find something inside it that will get their hearts racing against
the shivers that are running down their spines. I have my own personal
favourites of course. The Flock
was an early favourite because the farmer was such a believable
character and it was hard for me not to feel sorry for him. I love
Little's story and the dark humour of the piece was not wasted on me.
LeBlanc's story is also a dark favourite, that Lervette, is one scary
old lady. Did I hate any of the stories? No, I can honestly say that
there was not a single one that forced me to skim through the pages or
skip along the paragraphs. If you decide to read the book you will
probably find favourites of your own; there really is something here
for all tastes. Even Twinkie-loving readers need not be disappointed.
What? You don't want to read it! Well that is okay, each to their own,
as they say. You will never know what you are missing and, as an added
bonus you will be able to save on electric and sleep with the lights
off; but remember, sometimes twice the terror can be twice the fun.
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