Fossil Lake: An Anthology of the Aberrant by Ramsey Campbell, Peter Rawlik, Mary Pletsch, Jerrod Balzer, John Goodrich, Scott Colbert, John Claude Smith, Ken Goldman, Doug Blakeslee Page A
Authors: Ramsey Campbell, Peter Rawlik, Mary Pletsch, Jerrod Balzer, John Goodrich, Scott Colbert, John Claude Smith, Ken Goldman, Doug Blakeslee
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child.
The wife of his bosom.
The cunt.
His wife had spent this entire weekend without him, never once complaining. She didn’t protest the other weekends when he had decided to pick up and go skiing, or fishing, or whatever other horse crap he told her. She was the ideal wife who never nagged or bitched. Who said nothing when he left her alone for days with the baby, while he was off plowing Sharon six ways from Sunday. Normally, a man would think that was strange, but Matthew didn’t consider it strange at all.
. . . not since the night last winter when he’d stolen a peek at his wife’s e-mail and discovered that his good neighbor and golfing buddy, Dick Habersham, had been fucking Andrea’s eyeballs out for months. The bastard even wrote something about wanting to stick it into her ass their next time together. Andrea probably had been riding Habersham’s cock this entire weekend while Derek slept in his crib in the next room.
Thinking more clearly now, Matthew smiled. Suddenly the night’s events made perfect sense. Even an ice monster roaming Fossil Lake’s snow covered woods made sense, an insatiably hungry beast hunting those poor fools who found themselves lost among the fir trees and white pines on a cold and blustery winter’s night. Those lost souls must have proved such easy prey.
“Easy prey.” Matthew said the words aloud.
[“Sometimes we never find ‘em.”]
He stoked the fire, sipped his coffee.
He would wait a respectable amount of time. Maybe a month or two, when questions regarding Sharon had died down and the media moved on to other stories. Plenty of winter remained, and the mountains along Fossil Lake got hit with blizzards well into the spring.
“The iceman cometh,” he muttered.
He climbed into the bed, pulling blankets over him and savoring their warmth. Speaking to Andrea had cleared his head. His world again had righted itself, again had meaning. He understood what to do now. Tonight he would sleep well after all.
Because there was no telling when another blizzard might hit these Rocky Mountains.
And because he knew that, unlike Sharon, his wife Andrea loved to ski.
WHAT’S YOUR BEEF?
Mark Orr
It wasn’t the first ride Bert Granchi took in a car trunk, but it was the longest.
The car bounced, driving the rim of the flat spare tire into his ribs. Bert grunted behind the duct tape gag. How far out into the country was the asshat going to take him before turning him loose and letting him walk back to town? They must be halfway to Fossil Lake by now, if not beyond it.
That she-male bitch Connie Maxon! This was all her fault!
So he sent her a few e-mails calling her a cunt for her bad reviews of the stories he scattered online like brilliant, beautiful stars across the skies. So he posted nasty things about her and her sicko lesbian lovers all over his blogs. So he called her house and cussed her out, and her asshole mother, too.
So what? She didn’t have to go and sic her uncle-fucking brother on him –
A sharp turn rammed Bert’s head into the tire well. He tugged at the ropes holding his hands behind his back and lashed to his ankles. No use. Jerry Maxon must have been a fucking Boy Scout. Bert usually got loose before getting dumped in the fucking middle of nowhere, but not this time. It would serve Maxon right to have to lift him bodily out of the trunk before cutting him free.
From the sound transmitted through the tires to the chassis, they were on gravel now. Bert didn’t know there were still roads left in Illinois that weren’t paved. Maybe they were in Indiana, or Michigan, or even Wisconsin. How would he get back from there? He thrashed around, but only tightened the knots.
Even the gravel gave out eventually, and dust from a dirt road drifted into the trunk. Bert sneezed, and waited. There was nothing else to do, except plan the story he would write about redneck cock-suckers who kidnapped darkly Gothic writers for ridiculously long
The wife of his bosom.
The cunt.
His wife had spent this entire weekend without him, never once complaining. She didn’t protest the other weekends when he had decided to pick up and go skiing, or fishing, or whatever other horse crap he told her. She was the ideal wife who never nagged or bitched. Who said nothing when he left her alone for days with the baby, while he was off plowing Sharon six ways from Sunday. Normally, a man would think that was strange, but Matthew didn’t consider it strange at all.
. . . not since the night last winter when he’d stolen a peek at his wife’s e-mail and discovered that his good neighbor and golfing buddy, Dick Habersham, had been fucking Andrea’s eyeballs out for months. The bastard even wrote something about wanting to stick it into her ass their next time together. Andrea probably had been riding Habersham’s cock this entire weekend while Derek slept in his crib in the next room.
Thinking more clearly now, Matthew smiled. Suddenly the night’s events made perfect sense. Even an ice monster roaming Fossil Lake’s snow covered woods made sense, an insatiably hungry beast hunting those poor fools who found themselves lost among the fir trees and white pines on a cold and blustery winter’s night. Those lost souls must have proved such easy prey.
“Easy prey.” Matthew said the words aloud.
[“Sometimes we never find ‘em.”]
He stoked the fire, sipped his coffee.
He would wait a respectable amount of time. Maybe a month or two, when questions regarding Sharon had died down and the media moved on to other stories. Plenty of winter remained, and the mountains along Fossil Lake got hit with blizzards well into the spring.
“The iceman cometh,” he muttered.
He climbed into the bed, pulling blankets over him and savoring their warmth. Speaking to Andrea had cleared his head. His world again had righted itself, again had meaning. He understood what to do now. Tonight he would sleep well after all.
Because there was no telling when another blizzard might hit these Rocky Mountains.
And because he knew that, unlike Sharon, his wife Andrea loved to ski.
WHAT’S YOUR BEEF?
Mark Orr
It wasn’t the first ride Bert Granchi took in a car trunk, but it was the longest.
The car bounced, driving the rim of the flat spare tire into his ribs. Bert grunted behind the duct tape gag. How far out into the country was the asshat going to take him before turning him loose and letting him walk back to town? They must be halfway to Fossil Lake by now, if not beyond it.
That she-male bitch Connie Maxon! This was all her fault!
So he sent her a few e-mails calling her a cunt for her bad reviews of the stories he scattered online like brilliant, beautiful stars across the skies. So he posted nasty things about her and her sicko lesbian lovers all over his blogs. So he called her house and cussed her out, and her asshole mother, too.
So what? She didn’t have to go and sic her uncle-fucking brother on him –
A sharp turn rammed Bert’s head into the tire well. He tugged at the ropes holding his hands behind his back and lashed to his ankles. No use. Jerry Maxon must have been a fucking Boy Scout. Bert usually got loose before getting dumped in the fucking middle of nowhere, but not this time. It would serve Maxon right to have to lift him bodily out of the trunk before cutting him free.
From the sound transmitted through the tires to the chassis, they were on gravel now. Bert didn’t know there were still roads left in Illinois that weren’t paved. Maybe they were in Indiana, or Michigan, or even Wisconsin. How would he get back from there? He thrashed around, but only tightened the knots.
Even the gravel gave out eventually, and dust from a dirt road drifted into the trunk. Bert sneezed, and waited. There was nothing else to do, except plan the story he would write about redneck cock-suckers who kidnapped darkly Gothic writers for ridiculously long
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