During the summer, I was allowed to stay up late, which usually meant bedtime was an hour or so after dark. But I stayed up with my mom, waiting for dad to return.
She was reading one of her tabloids from the grocery store, and I had my nose in a comic book. But I don’t think either of us was getting much reading done. Every time we heard a car in the distance, we thought it might be him coming home with news.
Around 11:00, a car finally pulled up to the house. The sound of tires crunching gravel on the driveway drew me to the window. Mom went to the door, but it opened before she could touch the knob. Dad came in with Mr. Johnson, both men covered in sweat and dirt. Dad looked shaken. Mr. Johnson helped my dad into the door and left without a word.
If you’re looking for something profound and spooky that you can share with your friends back home, I can’t offer you that. I can only tell you what happened, what little I know, and from there we’ll take up the thread together.
This thing … this, whatever it is, I don’t even think you could call it a man … I started seeing it about a year before my wife died. It scared the hell out of me the first time, when it walked into our bedroom, slow and smooth like it belonged. I guess it was about three in the morning, one of those times when you wake up and feel so exhausted you don’t even want to look at the clock. Because no matter how much time you have left to sleep, it won’t feel like near enough.
When it walked in, this tall, thin man-shaped thing that looked like it was made of shadows, a jolt of adrenaline-laced fear shot through my body. My wife, Ellie, slept peacefully beside me, oblivious to the intruder. I both envied and hated her for that, as if somehow she had chosen for me to be the one who was awake and watchful and terrified.
This thing, this Shadow Man, walked to the foot of the bed and seemed to consider us for a moment. In truth, I have no idea. It had no face. How can you know what a shadow is thinking?
Hank woke up, drenched with sweat, cold from the dying campfire. His slimy body felt slimy, sandwiched within a soaked sleeping bag. For Hank, every morning was a reminder of age. His shoulder ached, jammed into the socket by the bone-dry ground. Hank winced as pain shot through his spine. His muscles played tendon tug-of-war. Hank always lost.
Hank unzipped the sweat sponge sleeping bag and stood, careful not to surprise his left knee with any quick movements. If the fire died, he would have a lot of cold, cranky cub scouts. He had promised to keep the fire going, lest the dark consume them. The campfire stories were too effective. Already stressed by the lack of Xbox and what terrors may wait in the woods, the lack of a fire might make them snap.
Hank decided to keep his promise and look for firewood, rather than risk playing the role of piked pig’s head in a live rendition of Lord of the Flies. He rubbed his eyes. His tears pushed away the fogged protein-haze of smoke-dried contacts that felt like scratch-and-sniff stickers on his eyeballs. Hank then noticed he was alone.
Over at the Confabulator Cafe, all our writers decided to do a little camping this week. As they sit around the fire, roasting hot dogs, making s’mores, and kicking back with an adult beverage or two, they’re going to share some stories. Specifically, campfire stories.
A campfire story is a spooky story told around a campfire. It could be a ghost story, a story of being lost in the woods, or even an urban legend (one of those stories that begins with “this happened to a friend of a friend of mine…”). The campfire is one of the most primal settings for storytelling, and the campfire story reflects our fears about the world. Often there’s a turn at the end of the story which leaves the listener wondering if being out in the middle of nowhere is really a good idea.
So pull up a log and grab a stick for roasting. The fire is warm and it might help keep away the things that live out there in the shadows.
Miklos had been dreaming of bacon for a solid week before he decided, by God, to do something about it.
Almost anything could be gotten at Capricorn Station. It was a transport and commerce hub for twelve star systems. Species, races, and cultures of all kinds passed through, for diplomatic or economic exchange, or on their way to somewhere else. Capricorn’s warehouses were stocked with goods from hundreds of planets and outposts, any of which a being could buy, within reason.
Unfortunately those reasons did not extend to cured, smoked, animal-based lipids in a protein matrix imported, at great expense, from Earth.
“I’ll have to make my own,” Miklos confided to the only customer in the bar, a shifty-eyed jack-of-all-trades who claimed his name was Anson.
I work in dreams. Daydreams, nightmares, wet dreams, if you can dream it, chances are I—or one of my coworkers—had a hand in it. The longer your fantasy, the longer I’m pulled away from whatever it is I’m working on. The pay is great. It has to be. You can’t hold down another job when working this one, well, maybe if you’re a writer, but even then some months there’s barely enough time to sleep, let alone work freelance.
I can’t help when I’m called away. I don’t have business hours. I can sometimes squeeze in a day off—usually on a Friday or Saturday night when the world is too inebriated to miss dreams. If I’m needed, I’m yanked away from whatever I’m doing without so much as a by-your-leave. A minute’s notice would be nice—just enough time to pull my pants up or turn off the stove. I’d rather throw out a half-congealed mess that went cold than have to move for the eighth time because my kitchen caught on fire or the apartment flooded. (more…)
I get out of the limousine at the hotel’s side door. This is a private affair, very exclusive one of a kind evening. Of everyone invited, I’m the least – the very least – of any of them. I don’t have any kind of standing and yet they asked me to be here. I’m still not sure why but maybe I’ll be enlightened during the appetizer course.
It’s not a service entrance I’m shown to, it’s the private entrance, the one the punters never get to see. There are two goons on the door and the concierge meets me with a slight smile of recognition. “Good evening, sir,” he says, “if you’ll follow me?” I nod and walk past the goons. I stick my finger in my collar and loosen it a bit.
The elevator ride up is quick, the car itself opulent, like something out of a dream that Winsor McCay constructed from Scheherezade’s notes for tales not told. I’m let out on the penthouse floor and follow the concierge to the right. He leads me through a double door, across a foyer that has a single painting in it but I don’t have time to properly take it in. It appears to be a Maxfield Parrish, but it’s a fleeting impression. M’sieu Concierge is holding open another door, waiting for me to enter The Room.
“Let’s not be too rough on our own ignorance,” someone was saying as I entered, “it’s what makes America great!”
I couldn’t believe who it was. Moreover, I couldn’t believe who he was talking to.
She pointed at me and he turned to look. Both of them welcomed me.
“Frank,” I said. “I mean, Mr. Zappa.” I shake his hand and he sips from his cocktail. I’m bewildered and it shows. I’m stunned to be in the same room with Frank Zappa and Mata Hari. “Miss Margreet.” She holds out her hand and I bow over it unsure whether to press my lips to her delicate fingers or not. I do and she smiles at me when our eyes meet. “A pleasure,” I say, “to meet you.”
She hooks her arm in mine and Frank leads us to the table. The two men sitting there are not who I expected, even with Frank and Margreet flanking me.
“Eschew the monumental. Shun the Epic. All the guys who can paint great big pictures can paint great small ones.” Papa Hemingway was sitting on one corner of the table with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a cigar in another.
“Being privileged to work hard for long hours at something you think is worth doing is the best kind of play,” Robert Heinlein said. He smiled and sipped his drink. It appeared that he and Hemingway were getting along famously.
I accepted a drink from Mata Hari (she preferred to be called Margreet) and sat next to her and across from Heinlein. Zappa sat next to him and of course Hemingway sat at the head of the table. Margreet leaned in close and said, “He’s used to life in the fast lane, travels all over the world, already risks his life racing at over 300km/h and seems to be handy with a gun.”
“I see that,” I say and that’s all I say when a door opens and a parade of waiters came through all carrying plates filled with food. They took positions on Heinlein’s side and the platters floated over our heads and landed on the table.
“Tapas for appetizers,” a voice said from the door. He looked familiar, the chef: wavy brown hair, a goatee and an impish smile. He nodded at me and he waved his hands and smaller plates whirled in a circle overhead while an army of wine bottles marched from the far end of the table. Hemingway’s smile was as big as the ocean and Zappa looked bored. The chef twisted his hands at the wrists and the wines were poured, a red and white for each of us.
Hemingway tore into the tapas with gusto and Heinlein reached over for the plate near Margreet. She demurred and the meal was on. There wasn’t a lot of talking as the soup course came next, then a light salad. It was when we were about half way through the fish when I finally asked the question.
“Why am I here?”
Heinlein glared at me. Heminway snorted. Zappa leaned forward and said, “There’s no reason to assume that my idea of what‘s better would really be better.”
Hemingway drained his red wine, picked up his whiskey. “That terrible mood of depression of whether it’s any good or not is what is known as The Artist’s Reward.”
The old man, Heinlein, was stoic and staring me down. He was daring me to ask the question again. I didn’t. Finally, he said: “You live and learn. Or you don’t live long.”
The chef came back in with the waiters, bearing dessert. It was a cake of some kind that was on fire. Margreet clapped her hands. I looked at her, expecting a response. She sighed at last and said, “I am a woman who enjoys herself very much; sometimes I lose, sometimes I win.”
They’d all said something, I’d spent the entire evening with them, all influential people in their times, and had no idea why they’d assembled for me. The chef walked around the table while the others all stared at me.
“You’re here,” he said, “because
A final note: Each of the quotes ascribed to the real people in the story is something they said while alive. Hemingway, Heinlein, and Zappa’s came from Wikiquotes and Margreet/Mata Hari’s come from her page at thinkexist.com. Finally, the story is printed accurately above. It ends just like that, like a lot of dreams do, in the middle of a sentence. Thanks for reading!
“The world didn’t end in fire, didn’t end in ice,” grumbled Chef Wallace. “Either of those, I could have used to cook. But no, we are stuck in this awful entropy, this perpetual 80 to 100 degree wilting vegetable hell.”
Darwin and Gwynn exchanged eye rolls. The assistant cooks knew they were about to hear another lecture on “back when I was in school, it was all freeze this, set fire to that” extravagance. Wallace shook with rage, and the assistant chefs backed up. In this era of limited food, it was remarkable how the carbohydrates of yesteryear still padded his mighty flesh.”Back then, if our Humble Cooperative Leader would have asked for ice cream, I would have gone to the liquid nitrogen stock, and voila, deluxe ice cream, immediately. But what am I supposed to do for his birthday now? Ten years I have not had a refrigerator, let alone a freezer, let alone a proper ice cream maker.”
“You’re dropping down the well?” Lisbeth asked. Glyphs fluttered in agitation around her head, broadcasting confusion and disappointment, anger and bitterness. Beneath her halo, Lisbeth further punctuated the sentiment of her glyphs with a mildly furrowed brow. The effort marred her otherwise placid expression.
“I am,” Ji said with a smile. Glyphs of confidence and comfort blossomed above his head. He reached a tentative hand towards Lisbeth’s arm, but she flinched away from his touch.
“Why?” she demanded. Her face returned to perfect calmness, but the agitation of her glyphs continued.
“Maybe it was something I ate.” Claire said out loud, wiping sweat off the bridge of her nose with the sleeve of her t-shirt. Dan started at her, his head still on the pillow, his eyes foggy with sleep. “I’ll go spend the rest of the night on the couch.” Claire said to him.
“You don’t have to do that.” Dan protested in a drowsy mumble. Claire took her pillow and left the bedroom. She shut the door and stuffed her pillow against the crack at the bottom of the door frame.
Claire made her way to the kitchen, turning on every light along the way. She opened the microwave door and the refrigerator too. Their meager light doing some small part to abate the darkness of night.
She turned on the radio and glanced back at the bedroom door. The pillow was still in its place blocking light and sound from reaching the sleeper within.
Claire used the broadside of a chef’s knife to smash a couple cloves of garlic. She slipped open her cell phone and used one hand to dial a number while the other hand started the stove and pulled a skillet from the cabinet. Claire edged the phone into the crook of her neck and held it steady with her shoulder while she peeled the garlic and threw it into the hot oil of the pan.
During the summer, I was allowed to stay up late, which usually meant bedtime was an hour or so after dark. But I stayed up with my mom, waiting for dad to return.