four short dark tales

JAKE JACKSON

Welcome to the first edition of These FantasticWorlds, a special online magazine availableonly to subscribers of the Jake Jackson mailinglist. Thank you for signing up.

contentsEach story is an echo in the universe of theThese Fantastic Worlds, chasing origins andmysteries across time and space

Echoes | Dark Blood ..........................3How do you defeat a creature who simply cannot die?

Echoes | Hoshiko......................................5Inside the secret drawer, the creature stirred:things were about to change…

Echoes | Bytes ............................................8It  woke, and found itself surrounded by thedead bodies...

Echoes | Masks ........................................10The gasman is surprised by the welcome hereceives at the shop at the end of the alley.

Many thanks to Frances Bodiam, Doug Wells andElise Wells. All content and design of These FantasticWorlds Magazine is © 2016 Jake Jackson.

These short tales first appeared in the SF &Fantasy Short Fiction Podcast, available oniTunes, Stitcher and more. . .

Jake Jackson is an SF and dark fantasy author.His fiction explores the interplay betweendreams, memory, imagination and self-delusion.Through long and short fiction, epic poetry,music and art he aims to create a body of workwhich explores our place in the universe, itsorigins, myths and futures. The first books willbe published in 2016/17

Based in London where he lives with his family,he has also worked and travelled across the USA,edited a number of books on mythology,(including Myths and Legends, Celtic Myths andNative American Myth) and created over 25 how-to music books, including Beginner’s Guide toReading music, Guitar Chords, Piano Chords,Songwriter’s Rhyming Dictionary (Amazon authorpage here). His 2012 music release Jakesongs,appears on on iTunes, Amazon, and Spotify.

Jake operates the website THESE FANTASTICWORLDS which features all things dark andfantastic, from movies to fiction, art, mythologyand science fiction.

Authors featured include: Ray Bradbury, RobertBloch, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood.Fantastic Artists include: Frank Frazetta, JeffreyCatherine Jones, Barry Moser, Paul Klee, WassilyKandinsky, William Blake, Gerhard Richter,Bernie Wrighton, Barry Windsor Smith andVirgil Finlay.

For updates and further information on the fantastic (movies, fiction, art,writing and more) please take alook at thesefantasticworlds.com

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Vampyres and humans have fought each otherfor centuries, but how can you defeat a creaturewho simply can not die?

Echoes | Dark Blood“The dead live forever.” He had heard thesewords sputtered and rasped at his back forthousands of years. For the first few decades hehad laughed at the idea, exhilarated, then as afew hundred more rushed by, the seasonalchanges of his youth were replaced by grandsweeps of history and he began to realize theimplications. It was a prophecy, an insult.

Once handsome, haughty and high-necked,Salvador had been hunting for centuries. Heremembered the miasmic taste of human fleshbefore he and his kind had been chased from thecities, and the brownfield lands had been set alight,their perpetual flames separating vampyre andhumankind. So the vampyres, ever pragmatic intheir desires, swept into the mountains of oldEurope, Africa, the Americas and Asia, and ravagedthrough the wild. They became masters of theforest, reducing themselves slowly to a feral stateof mind, barely speaking, as they battled to feed,and, in time, they spread out ever further from eachother, to extend their chances of survival.

Salvador remembered the last conversation hehad had with one of his own blood, the darkblood of the undead. A woman who hadbecome, for the convenience of the hunt, hispair. In their youth they had meant something toeach other, but human emotions were shedfrom their bodies, as soon as the hunger for thefresh blood of the living had taken them. Nolonger did they yearn for company, orconversation, now it was for the blood, only thered blood, for it satisfied them, kept them alivein the long nights, and the dark, burning days.

“So, I must leave you.” His companion, had stoodin the deep forest, her hands on her hips, faceand clothes ragged with the dirt of the years, her

hair as tangled as ivy, weaving across her face,and down to her waist. Her voice was low,inflected with the long despair of her kind,scarred by the battles with wolves, and bears,and recently the packs of mountain tigers eagerto protect their own paths and hideaways.

“It makes sense.” He nodded curtly. His haughtytones had been ground from him, and lingeredonly distantly on barely audible grunts.

“I have known you, for nearly a thousand years.”The redundant facts hung between them.

“I’m surprised you still count them.” Salvador felta slight discomfort, and knew that in a previouslife he would have interpreted its meaning. Butnow, nothing mattered. Even the animals werein retreat, there was little for the vampires tosurvive on but insects and fern. The pairs hadbegun to split and find new territory.

There had been days where no animal passedby. It was as though they had learned tocommunicate in ways beyond the simpleterritorial noises of their nature. Salvadorrealized, as the long years stretched behind himthat the animals possessed similar qualities tohumans, in their desire to group together, thepassing of knowledge from one to the other,from one generation to the next. They hadlearned to hide from the vampyres.

So the hunger grew. And the vampyres did notdie, they became more crazy the longer it tookthem to feed. Salvador tried to keep the bodiesof animals he had killed, saving parts of them forthe long, barren weeks, but soon they stank andfestered, and so many times he would stumblethrough the woodland, coughing, retching,hallucinating.

Once, he reached the edge of the mountainforest, and dragged himself up to the cliff-top,and wondered why he didn’t fling himself off.What was his purpose? What was his motivation,

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his enjoyment, his usefulness? Thousands ofyears of hunger, satiation, sleep, now longperiods of desperation clutched at his eternalstate of being.

And always, he would remember those who hadsuccumbed to the despair of the cliff. Theshambling, broken creatures on the scree below,they still lived, but their bodies burned slowly inthe morning sun; no longer able to raisethemselves they suffered the slow death of theburning days, but spread over the years, eachmoment dying a little more, with no food, andno ability to leave, with every bone in their bodyeither shattered, or repaired into such animpossible misshape that no longer could theyuse their limbs. Those who had draggedthemselves out would find themselves attackedeventually by the mountain lions, their headsripped from the bodies, and gleefully discardeddown the chasms by the remnants of fierce andfrightened packs. But still they lived, without themeans to move, or feast.

Over two thousands years had passed since thevampyres had been separated from the humans.It had been several hundred since Salvador hadencountered any other vampyre. And nearly 50since he killed his last animal, and surrenderedto its lively juices.

Now the forest lay silent. And Salvador lookedacross at the nearest city. A once Golden Gatenow shivered in the dank air. He noticed that thefires in the fields all around had long beensilenced, and wondered how he could not havenoticed. The intense hunger he supposed, hadled him to sleep for weeks, almost hibernating.He had taken to masticating handfuls of grassand leaves, but they seemed infected and madehim gag. He tore strips of bark, but the trees tooseemed to be dying.

It was early evening and Salvador looked outacross the valley and observed the sun jerkingdownwards from the hazy sky. He determined to

find out if there was any food near the humancity, and if his head was torn from his body bysome baying mob, then so be it.

He shambled down the trail, following the lineof the old forest, along the old highway. Nobirdsong disturbed his journey, no animals fellsilent at his passing, everything was still exceptfor the chaotic fall of his own feet.

He reached the burnt ground that marked theline between human and vampyre. No fires ofany sort flared around him as he fled throughand rolled onto the human side. He coughed,and clutched at his chest: the lack of meat andblood over the last decades had left him weak.He could feel the random pulse of bloodthrough his veins, aching and tearing throughhis own body, wearily seeking vitality.

Soon he approached the City walls, build like aprison’s, but designed to keep everyone out.

Now there was no one.

And as walked up to the massive central gate,he found it slightly ajar, as though a wind hadopened the mighty gates on a whim. But within,there was only dust. No humans, no rats, no flies,no life whatsoever.

He roamed through the streets that had cradledhis youth, but found little to remember, still lessto eat. He penetrated further throughout thedense, silent streets, watching for traps, forhidden signs.

But he was tired, starving. The whole city hadeither been abandoned, or the inhabitants hadbeen incinerated in the hot, pulpy sun of the lastfew hundred years.

Salvador clambered up the broken inner-cityhighway, its gigantic girders rearing into thesky, as though they had tried to reach the sunbut had fallen back, melted and contorted. He

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placed a foot across the top, and gazed at thedesolate streets below, stretching into thedarkness beyond. He missed his footing andtripped. He fell at an awkward angle on theraised girder, and suffered a blow to the chestas he slumped down, then the sharp, rustededge of another girder, disturbed by his fall,swung across and sliced his head from historso. Salvador’s body slumped high, while thehead of the most ancient of vampyres, acautious and determined creature, bouncedonce before landing disrespectfully into anascent vat of tar, laid as a trap by longforgotten humans.

He woke. His head still almost immersed in thevat, a single eye exposed to the sky. He couldjust trace the desiccated remains of what hadbeen his body for some thousands of years,swinging limply in the wind, with the chains andthe cables of the broken road above.

And then he felt the itching and the pulsing. Hisdark blood had combined with the tar and hadslowly begun to eat its way out of his skull.

“The Dead live forever,” how right they were, butlittle did they realize the horror of it all. Salvadorsaw other heads, their eyes wide, and otherbodies, shivering in the emerging dawn, theburning sun releasing its fingers of torture tocreep across the ground, and banish the night.Oh, so now he understood pain again, regret,remorse, finally, and as the dark blood munchedat his undying head, he wondered at thepointlessness of his conscious existence. Deathit seemed was unattainable, but utterly desirable.

Every night, just before she went to bed, the littlegirl opened the secret drawer. Inside, thecreature stirred: things were about to change…

Echoes | HoshikoHoshiko’s mother finished reading the story.She leaned to extinguish the bedside lamp. Thedistant sounds of an owl arced around the roofof the little cabin nested high in the woods.

“Goodnight Mumma.”

“Night, night sweetheart. Sleep tight.”

“Okay.” The little girl smiled. She drew in thegentle fragrance of her mother’s skin, andrecalled all the happy memories of her few shortyears. It made her feel safe. Even after her fatherhad died, and her mother had spent so manymonths in tears Hoshiko now felt calm in theprotection of their home, and the hounds in theyard, and the wolves in the wood.

Sometimes she would say quietly to herself,muttering disconsolately, that she felt her fatherhad left them in body, but not in spirit. Shewished it was so. At night, when she looked outof her window, to the valley below, sheconnected the pinpoint stars in the sky, with theblinking lights of the hamlet, each one flickeringto a close as the candles were blown into silence,and the night drew in. In her mind she tried todraw the smiling face of her father.

This night though, she yawned more readilythan usual, and didn’t ask for another page tobe read.

‘Are you––?” her mother stroked her head, aslight hesitation teasing at her breath.

“Yes Mumma. Just tired.” She yawned again, andopened half an eye, surprised that her motherwas so easily deceived.

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“Alright then, I’ll tuck you in.” Hoshiko turned herhead on the pillow, and curled up, seeking thewarmth of her own body amongst the coldpatches of the bed.

“Love you.”

“Love you too.” She felt her mother’s eyessweeping across the room, her pause forreflection, then the soft footsteps to the door,the wheeze of the door handle closing and theerratic creak of the wooden stairs recedinggently to the living room below.

Hoshiko felt her breathing slow, and fought herbody’s desire for sleep: her mind was tooexcited, as she remembered what she hadfound on the window just two days before, inthe crook of the night, as the house and theforest all around lain deep and fast with sleep.

* * *

It had started with a tiny thump, then whatsounded like a bag of sugar bursting, andscattering into silence.

Hoshiko had been terrified, but curious. Thequiet night had stretched across her mind, butdetermined, she whisked back the sheets, andreached for the chair, moving it over to the highwindow.

She had rubbed her eyes, and dragged wispsof hair from her face. She sighed quietly, placedher hands on the inner ledge, and pulled herselfonto her toes. Timidly she lifted up her eyes, andshe saw a tiny object nestling in the corner ofthe outside ledge. It was a creature, curledagainst the windowframe.

“Oh!” Hoshiko caught her breath, and nearly fellfrom the chair. Her eyes dropped down, and fora moment, she wondered if she had willed thisas a dream. She paused, and gathered hercourage to look again.

Her eyes flicked open.

It was still there. Nestled against the side of thewindow, looking a little forlorn.

“Aww.” Hoshiko reached out, overwhelmed bythis curious, slumbering little being.

Carefully she arched her arms upwards andplaced her hands underneath the prone form,gently scooping up the warm body, andbrought it to her chest. Still standing on the chairshe cradled the little figure and smiled, feelinga slight shiver beneath its shimmering skin. Shestepped down carefully and looked around herdark room, wondering what to do with her newcharge.

“Come on now.” She spoke soothingly, trying toresist the temptation to stroke the creature.

“How about here then?” She remembered thather top drawer was only half full of socks andleggings.

“You’ll be safe here.”

“Yes.” A voice dropped into her head, the soundof an echo without an origin, a shadow withouta body.

“Oh! Did you––?” Hoshiko’s eyes leapt wide.

“Yes.” A low, gentle whisper, almost a chuckle,surged into her ears as the little girl stared at hercupped hands.

“I can’t see your lips move.” She tried to stopherself blinking.

“Of course, my sweetheart.”

“Oh,” she hesitated, unsure what to do.

“I am tired.” The voice dropped into Hoshiko’shead again.

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“Shall I call my Mom?”

“No. She’s the very last person you should call.”

“But I don’t have secrets from my mother!”

“Then you must decide whether you should trustme or not.”

“But I don’t know you.” Hoshiko chewed herbottom lip, and looked hard at the little creaturein her hand. “I––” She paused, a frown pricking ather forehead, then decided to place the creaturein the drawer. She returned to her bed, eventuallyto fall asleep, both excited and troubled.

* * *

The next few days were full of anxieties andwonder. She checked on the creature, moving itfrom drawer to drawer each night, trying toavoid her mother’s artful eyes.

After five days, when her mother had finishedreading her story that night, and the candle wassmothered, her mother closed the door and leftthe room in darkness as usual. This nightthough the familiar voice rose once more inHoshiko’s head.

“Now, I am rested. Come, there is much to do.”

Hoshiko threw open her eyes and flung off herbedclothes and headed for the chest of drawers.She could see a glow trickling from the edgesbetween the wood, and when she looked inside,she could barely see the little figure within aburst of tiny lights.

“All is not what it seems.” The voice in her headspoke softly again.

The little girl put a hand to her mouth. Sheseemed unable to blink. She held her breath.She was not sure what to think about thiscreature of light.

“Bring me to the middle of the room.” The voicecommanded Hoshiko. “Don’t worry. You won’thave to do anything, as long as your motherdoes not come in.”

“Place me at the centre of the room.” Hoshikoraised her hands, the figure cradled within.

“That’s right. In the air, in the very centre.”

The little girl lifted the tiny figure on the flat ofher palm and slowly let go. The creature stayedsuspended in the air, its eerie light pulsing.

“Now, you must listen carefully.” the voice in theHoshiko’s head continued, “you are being heldas prisoner. Your mother is not who you think sheis. You have not lived here all your life. Your fatherdid not die.” The words, terrifying, shocking,were spoken kindly. The little girl began to cry.

As the creature finished, the room began toshiver into life, calling deep surges of shadow,swirling the dust from the corners of the roominto a quiet storm.

“Do you know your name?”

The little girl looked through her tears, andstammered, “Hoshiko?” The shadows quiveredaround her legs.

“Yes, but do you know what it means?”

“I––” The little girl grimaced, her eyes fought thetears, as she tried to think.

“Have you never been told? Think hard, think back.”

Hoshiko struggled, “I’m not sure,” rememberingsomething before, words spoken that she hadnot heard. Or were tidied away. She rattledaround in her memories, and found filaments oflight, buried deep.

And then, she found it, the voice, the stories,endless rainbows of stars, and she looked up at

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the blistering ball of light in the centre of herroom, and heard the voice of her father call hersoftly from her eternal past.

“Hoshiko: Little star!”

“Yes!”

The room burst. A thousand shards of lightwriggled free from the walls, the floor and thetimbers of the ceiling splintered into fragments.The darkness inside the room, and the entireforest beyond shattered wide, unravelling yearsof deceit, and imprisonment.

And in the centre of the ever widening ball oflight, now massive, the little girl spoke withoutlips.

“Father, you came for me!”

“Of course. Always.”

And the little star, with her father, shot into theheavens, two comets flaming through the darkskies, hurtling towards the meadows of lightbeyond; and below, an angry figure, a mis-shapen, hideous beast, shook its fists and ragedat the dying light of the disappearing stars.

The creature woke, surround by dead bodies.Shocked and disgusted it heard a lonely call for help...

Echoes | BytesAs the sun licked across his rough, pocked-marked face, Tor, slummering amongst the rootsof the ancient copse, stirred. The emerging lightspread warmth through his creaking veins andhe tried to lift an arm. Something heavy lay ontop of it. As he yanked it free he grunted andrealised his mouth was smeared and fetid. Andin the air around, the stench was intolerable. Hespat, and coughed. Then rememberedsomething of the night before.

“Ah, why can’t I control myself!” He slapped the tree.Leaves trembled, flecks of dust and dirtshuddered from the branches and scatteredaround the hollow that had held Tor’s sleepingform during the hours of darkness. Sighing, Torwatched the passage of the aimless motes, hiseyes traveling down the length of the tree untilthey fell upon the other bodies lying amongst thetangled roots. Tor put his hand to his mouth.Fourteen of them, each mangled into a variety ofcontortions, limbs bent into unlikely positions,horns shattered, hands either missing or truncated.

Tor bent over and retched. Tiny pieces of flesh,and red, wriggling lumps slithered onto theground, slipping into earthy crevices, their foularoma adding to his general discomfort. Thelumps seemed to take on a life of their own,which disgusted Tor further; he lifted his headand drove his horns into the ground, crushingthe pulpy masses, splitting them. He watchedthe dark juices ooze inelegantly.

Tor breathed deeply, trying to take control ofhimself. He looked up again, and his eyesglanced through the gap in the trees, furtherinto the copse. There were more bodies,discarded and folded over every root and stone.

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“I don’t remember all that!” He scratched his chest,noticing the dried blood on the broken nails.

“Not sure what I do remember.” He stepped overthe nearest body and peered behind the tree.The dense foliage beyond was still gripped bythe darkness, but it was clear that the whole floorof this area of woodland was covered in bodies.

“Uh.” Somewhere he heard a moan. He turnedswiftly, narrowed his eyes and crouched. Thesound came from outside the copse, towardsthe slow, painful, rise of the sun. He shielded hiseyes and tried to see beyond, to the stretch ofland that lay between him and the distant hills.But the sun was too bright. He decided toignore the moan. Perhaps it was just one of thetrees, or the wind passing through.

He had just managed to calm himself, when heheard the moan again. This time it was a littlecloser. So he stepped back and tried to hidehimself behind the nearest tree. But his hornstangled with the branches and rattled at the wood.

The moan stopped, mid-sound, it’s ownersuddenly aware of a presence, if not its location.Tor closed his eyes. he felt sick again. He tookanother step back but this time stepped on atwig, which snapped. “Oh come on!” He hissedin frustration at himself. He shook his head andstepped out of the shade, his foot striking outbeyond the wooded copse. It squelched. Hisfoot felt wet, and uncomfortable. He lookeddown. He had stood in the stomach of anotherbody. And to its right was another prone form,this one face down but it was next to a furtherbody whose head was all but severed.

“Oh God.” Tor placed his palms across his faceand tried to hide the tears that squeezed fromhis eyes, slipped across his cheeks and queuedto fall from his chin. For a moment he stoodthere, feeling foolish, with the sun hauling itselfup slowly from afar, warming his hands, heallowed himself to look through the gapsbetween his fingers. What he saw horrified him.

“Who could have done this?” He allowed hisarms to drop by his side. In front of him, in thevalley and the plains that sought across to thehills of the horizon, was a sea of death. Bodiespiled on top of bodies, a charnel pit of flaccidflesh and broken limbs, rib cages thrust into theair, skin and muscle fluttering, gored.

And then he heard the voice again. This time itsimpered.

“No, oh no!”

Tor was puzzled, through the sight of hisdisgusted eyes he began to see a pile of bodies,just to the left of the copse. Where everythingelse on view across the entire landscape waseither silent or still, this pile of death shivered,then rocked. Tor looked on, apprehensively, asthe pile shook again to reveal a bloodied figurepushing through the corpses, emerging from afrothing, oozing gap.

Tor moved across to put out his hand.

“No, no,” the figure’s filmy eyes popped and lolled,then widened with fear. Both it’s horns werebroken, and, as it clambered out of the wallowinghole its Boney spine, spikes protruding fiercely,was clearly broken. The creature’s gait wasawkward, and angular, as though walkingbackwards through a narrow tunnel.

“Let me help you!” Tor moved forward again, hishand reaching out, but the creature shuffledback, scrambling up the bodies behind it.

“NO!” It’s voice came to an abrupt end, as thecreature fell backwards onto the splintered,exposed ribs of another wretched body. Thevoice died in a babbling blackness. Tor let hishand drop to his side. He looked out to see ifanything else moved, but apart from theslowly shortening shadows the piles ofbodies lay inert, a few trees behind himshedding leaves and dust still, as a faint

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breeze picked at their branches, and dabbledwith the rotting flesh all around.

He looked at his hands, saw the smears of blood,the streaks of dirt and death across his arms. Heseemed strangely satisfied to be the onlyremaining creature on this landscape, as thougha part of him had started to act independentlyof his consciousn mind.

Suddenly, he felt what seemed to be a huge fistsmash into his back. It shoved him forward, buthe managed to stop himself falling. He shookhis head, he couldn’t breath, and tried to turn,but the force of the blow had shocked his bodyand he couldn’t even twist. But behind him heheard a fluttering and spinning. The airexploded with tiny buzzing sounds and whirls,and he found his body was collapsing, foldingin on itself, his skin shrivelling as the bones andmuscle seemed to disintegrate. He screamed inpain and confusion.

As the remnants of himself fell to the floor, hisempty limbs, his unravelled skin folding ontothe body-strewn plain, his brain and eyeballswere the last to function. He saw a huge clusterof tiny spores blooming out from behind him,spinning and expanding; they scattered into astorm of colour and fell upon the bodies allaround, devouring every particle in their path.

Tor’s last memory was his first, accessed in thesefinal moments. He remembered his full name,Terraform Unit 101, and remembered lyingdown in a lab, with the container of terra-bytesinserted into his back, primed for activationwhen he had destroyed all living creatures onthe planet, preparing the way for the newsettlement of species. The demon experimenthad reached an end.

His synthetic cranium shattered, his eyeballsrolled out, and within seconds the terraformingspores consumed the host unit that hadincubated them for centuries.

The gasman, a reluctant family man on a lateemergency call, is surprised by the welcome hereceives at the shop at the end of the alley.

Echoes | MasksThe row of fourteen grim faces seemed to floatin the dark shadows just below the beams,under the stairs. The gasman had been calledto fix the leak and had been heaving at the inletvalve when the lights flickered, dimmed andfinally extinguished. He remembered the callhe’d made to his wife, earlier that evening.

“Just one more call to make.”

“Wilbur dear, you’re not getting any younger. Iknow you think you’re superman, but you can’tgo on all day and all night.” Her warm, lovingtones purred from his phone.

“Come on sweetheart,” he sighed in the face ofthis familiar argument, “I’m not going to be allnight, just this last job.”

“Ah, but we both know what that means. Yourjobs can last five minutes or five hours.” His wifesounded regretful, resigned even. Did she knowhe slipped away sometimes to have a quietdrink before returning home, he wondered? Heloved his wife, and his five children, but he wasso tired at the end of the day he found the noiseat his arrival, too much to bear. Every day.

He took every job they offered him, even thelate ones, especially the late ones. Although hewas tired, and near to retirement age he wasstill one of the strongest of the gas fitters,certainly the most experienced. All the youngerfellows clocked-watched and rushed home totheir young partners, grateful that Wilburwould always pick up the emergency jobs, theones that arrived at the last minute andrequired a volunteer to take them. Fondly heremembered watching the time himself,

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checking off every minute until the end of theshift, but now the weary years of children, theclatter expectation, and love was almost toomuch to bear. Perhaps they had been wrong tohave children so late.

Of course, he felt guilty, and berated himself forbeing disloyal. As he trudged down thealleyway to his last appointment, the lamplightcasting longing glances at the full moonpeaking over the high tenement walls heremembered, the arrival of the first of hisexhausting five children.

Up to then Wilbur and Wilma had been thedynamic dubya, the WW, the wonder womanand her Wide-eyed Wonder, the heartbeat ofevery late night party, dancing and laughing,having a good time, the toast of the friends, theenvy of their neighbours. That all changed withthe children. And he did love them, he toldhimself, time and time again, to keep theperspective, to remember what a joy andblessing they were, and when he read to them,or hugged them, he always felt the warm glowof parenthood, as it should be, as it was writtenin all the manuals and magazines he and Wilmahad read in the months before their first childhad graced their home, before burning steadilythrough their bank account.

Indeed, he began to take more jobs, workinglate to earn the overtime to pay for the clothesand the packed lunches, the school trips and thebirthdays. Wilma understood the need, andwould have been pleased to earn herself, as shehad before, a teacher in the local school. But thecost of childcare, and the niggling accusationsof neglect kept her at home.

He didn’t resent this family that needed its father,but he saw it for what he thought it was, asuccubus, feeding off the energies of his life,draining him to a husk, his brain crumpled likefragile, burnt ball of paper in the moment beforeit would expire in the exhaustion of its years.

And oh, they were very noisy. With the five ofthem he no longer had a little room of his owninto which he could retire at the end of his day,just for a short half an hour of peace, a bridgeinto the relentlessness of being the father andthe provider. Now the room had gone, with thefourth child, lilith, shoving him from his sanctum,like a cuckoo in the nest.

So, with these thoughts hurtling, as ever, inhis head, he approached the shop at the endof the lane. It was early December with onlythe promise of snow, but the creep of earlynights brought Christmas ever nearer. Thealley seemed to narrow as he hadapproached the shop. When he looked backthe walls behind him were unfeasible high,peering down on him, accusing him ofneglect, they seemed to question his motivesfor taking this last job, on this day. Heshrugged, turning his attention to thenondescript door in front of him.

He laid down his heavy bag of tools, then, usingthe ornate brass knocker tapped on the solidwooden portal. There was no immediate answer.He waited for a moment, wondering, as always,how long it was respectable to walk away insuch a situation. His usual answer was to countto forty. There was no logic to it, but thirty wasthe number he employed for his press-upswhen he was younger, and fifty seemed toolong to be standing outside someone’s housewithout raising suspicion.

He had just decided to turn and leave when thedoor opened cautiously.

“Ah, the gasman. I’ve been so looking forward toseeing you.” That was an unusual welcome.Most people complained about how long theyhad to wait, or moaned about the problem thathad prompted the need for the gasman.

“Yes. may I come in? This is my last call, and I’mhoping it won’t take too long.

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“Oh, me too!” The old man entangled his bonyfingers, disconcerting Wilbur who felt the oldman’s eye linger on his face, a little longer thanwas comfortable.

“What seems to be the problem?”

“Well, as usual, as soon as the Winter comes, Iturn on the boiler and does it work? Of coursenot.” The old man looked up at Wilbut with akindly, expectant expression. “I have animportant customer whose coming to my shoptonight, so I’m hoping you can help me quickly.I mustn’t let him down.”

“I see. Perhaps you could show me to the boiler,then?”

“Of course.” They walked through the house. Onevery wall, there were garish costumes, andposters, outlandish paintngs and sculptures,stuffed goats and rats.”

‘I run the joke shop, in case you’re wondering.” Theold man gave such a look to Wilbur that it madehim shiver with need to escape. “The customer Imust meet tonight has a very particularrequirement, so I hope you can solve my problem.”

“Uhuh.” Over the many years of repairing andmaintaining the gas appliances Wilbur hadvisited many strange homes.

“It’s here.” The old man gestured to the doorunder the stairs.

“Of course.” Wilbur sighed. “I could haveguessed that.”

“I don’t think it will take too long.” The old mansmiled; it was almost a rictus.

Wilbur opened the door and saw immediatelythe gas connections snaking across the walls.

“Look, I’ll need to turn this off before I check theboiler.” He regarded at the old man andreceived a nod in return. In the tight spacebelow the stairs he bent down and tried to findtwo of the most obvious wrenches for this sortof job. The door closed quietly, without himnoticing, but he did see the masks hangingabove his head, their phosphorescent pallorglowing subtly. Unconsciously he foundhimself count them. All fourteen were grim,their dark sockets awaiting human eyes to fulfilltheir purpose.

Then the lights cut out.

Wilbur looked up and saw the masks stillilluminated eerily. He slipped, fell and crashedhis head against the gas pipe behind him,knocking himself out.

The door opened swiftly. The old man appearedwith a knife, and kneeling down, he held it toWilbur’s face.

“My customer needs fifteen masks. I think youcan help me!”

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Coming Soon...A brand new series of books from Jake Jackson:

a feast of SF and fantasy packed with robots, timeloops and creatures lurking from the beginnings

of the universe.

Graveyard Planet • Fibonacci RisingShattered Eye • Dark Tales of Hunter & Bain

For updates and further information on all thingsfantastic (movies, fiction, art) please take a look at

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